If Only The Mayoral Election Could Be Cleaned Up

The way the Mayor and 18 19 Council members (with Vacca flipping) thus far are trying to extend term limits has become a distasteful campaign to many New Yorkers. The maneuvering is very unlike the Mayor that came in eight years ago and a far cry from the man that called a legislative fix to change term limits "disgraceful."

One of the arguments from his side is that the extension gives voters more of a choice but in reality the power of incumbency deters many from seeking office and will shoo away a majority of those thinking about those once-expected 35 empty seats in the Council next year. With the Mayor claiming to spend $80 million on his re-election race, how is anyone supposed to have a chance to compete? Well as Connecticut shows, you can take the money out of the equation.

From The NY Times:

At a time when roughly half the states are seriously considering public financing of campaigns, Connecticut’s initial experience has exceeded the expectations of even its most enthusiastic supporters. Of the 343 candidates running in General Assembly elections, 258 — about 75 percent — are seeking public financing.

“I think that for many reasons, Connecticut has made history this election season,” said Beth A. Rotman, Connecticut’s director of public financing. “We’ve had an unprecedented participation rate for the first elections with voluntary public campaign finance, and we’ve virtually eliminated special-interest money from the elections.”

Connecticut’s experiment with campaign finance reform happened only when it hit bottom. After the resignation of Gov. John G. Rowland in 2004 and a spate of other public corruption cases, with the state’s image moving from “the Land of Steady Habits” to “Corrupticut,” public financing suddenly became something other than a pet topic for good-government types.

Here in New York we are about to hit a bottom of our own if the Council passes this awful legislation. Unfortunately the passage of clean elections looks more bleak than the Mayor losing his bid for a third term this afternoon. If the people on his side really wanted to reform the system and give New Yorkers a choice for deciding who they should elect, clean elections would be a tremendous step forward in letting our government represent the people again, instead of the billionaires it caters to presently.