New York state’s Public Campaign Finance Board is preparing to deny $7 million to Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman because he didn’t include his running mate’s name on a form . . . that doesn’t exist yet.
This November is the first statewide taxpayer-funded campaign cycle, but the board — set up with a 4-3 lefty tilt — is wasting no time in proving its real master is the state’s Democrat perma-party.
The nitpickery that could deny Blakeman and running mate Todd Hood up to $7 million in campaign bucks is the sort of thing a reasonable board would point out to a candidate for correction before taking drastic actions.
So it’s hard to escape the conclusion that the system, designed and signed into law by the same Dems running the state now, is doing what it was built to do: Protect incumbents, especially ones named Kathy.
The state system is modeled on the “gold standard” version in New York City, which has achieved none of its promised goals, and all of its secret ones.
Proponents said public financing would broaden participation in the electoral system, enabling unconnected newbies to run for office, and make re-election of incumbents less automatic.
Hah! City incumbents still almost always get re-elected, and public financing hasn’t democratized campaigns so much as just shifted power to unions and government-funded “nonprofit” community-based groups that are built-in amplifiers for hard-left politicos.
Staffed by hard-core partisans and engineering slanted debates, the system encourages candidates to adopt extreme, niche views to appeal to ideologues; it’s demonstrably shifted local Democrat politics to the left, as seen by the rising appeal of socialist, class-war politics.
With matching funds at a staggering 8-1 ratio, the taxpayer now spends hundreds of millions of dollars each election cycle to ensure the re-election of mediocrities, and the promotion to power of insider hacks: political staffers, union “organizers” and non-profit managers.
It’s rare to find a local elected official with any real-world job experience.
And all that public money flows right to the pockets of the political consultants who advise campaigns and raise money for them while also working for the unions and nonprofits that rely on taxpayer money to keep the pork barrel rolling along.
Meanwhile, at the state level, Gov. Kathy Hochul isn’t even participating in the public campaign financing system.
Why should she? She’s already raised a formidable $20 million campaign war chest.
But in her typical paranoid style, she wants to rig her own system to deny her opponent a fighting chance at beating her this fall.
The best thing would be for New York to get rid of public campaign financing altogether; this isn’t the system’s first scandal.
Short of that, the board needs to give Blakeman the money that he legally is owed, or defend its hackery in open court.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
