Lawsuit Against The Campaign Finance Board Gains Speed

When the City Council decided to trample the will of the voters in New York when they passed the term limits extension, they probably expected some outrage but no real resistance. With lawsuits against the decision in the courts, talk of overriding the bill in the Statehouse (unlikely to go anywhere, but never say never) and challengers popping up to do battle with the Bloomberg 29, the heat is truly on. Now those politicians that were starting to run for higher office but are now going with a safer re-election bid have another hurdle to jump.

From Dan Jacoby at The Daily Gotham:

On the same day that Mayor Bloomberg signed the term limits extension into law (and held that mockery of a "hearing"), the Campaign Finance Board issued an "Advisory Opinion" in which they gave people who had spent a lot of money on higher office a "do over" if they choose to run for their current seat.

It's a clearly and obviously illegal ruling, to anyone who bothers to read NYC's campaign finance law, something the CFB theoretically should have done. For those who haven't read the law, ask yourself if high-spending incumbents should be allowed to pretend they didn't spend the money, just so that they can get your tax money to spend on their campaigns, and so that their opponents' spending was limited while they went crazy. Ask yourself if the campaign finance system, which was supposedly designed to level the playing field, should be [ab]used to tilt that playing field instead.

As Liz notes, the CFB says they're just trying to make things fair. The problem with their "leveling" of the playing field, is that it gives an edge to elected officials that already starting from higher ground. That is why several challengers in next year's Council races have signed onto this lawsuit and according to Jacoby, the fairest thing for the voters would be to quash the CFB's recent decision and let the rules stand as they were before.