We in the universal health care movement have long understood that grassroots democracy is essential to our success. We won’t achieve our “health care for all” goal without it. That’s why we have long supported election campaign finance reforms that rebalance and counter the inordinate power of special interests and large donors by supporting and growing grassroots power in both our legislative and electoral processes.

Three years ago, New York State created a landmark public campaign finance program for candidates for public office. It is going into effect now for the 2023-4 election cycle, and incumbents and challengers are already enrolling in this new program. It is modeled on New York City’s very successful program that has been in operation for two decades.  

Both the State and City systems provide significant matching funds for small donations up to $250 from local residents and constituents, so that grassroots candidates can run for office without being reliant on outside big donors and political party bosses. These programs fundamentally shift the balance of power in elections by changing the financial rules of the game. They provide public funding to candidates who can demonstrate significant grassroots support from their own voters. It makes our democracy much better.

What just happened:

A new bill has suddenly been introduced in the NYS Legislature in the literal final days of this year’s state legislative session that will significantly weaken New York’s new public campaign finance program and violate the spirit of its intent. This bill is likely to move forward to passage by the end of this week, completely skipping any normal legislative process of passing through committees, etc. This new bill will make it more difficult for new candidates to challenge incumbents, and will allow candidates to receive matching funds for the first $250 of any larger donations (up to the legal limit of $18,000 per person.)

What YOU can do:

Those of us who believe in grassroots democracy need to immediately contact our State Senators and Legislators to voice our objections to these changes — small donor matching funds should only be for small donations! We also need to object to this new bill coming forward now out of a backroom deal during the final days of the legislative session, with no time for public awareness or debate or regular legislative process.

Fair Elections for New York has created a special digital toolkit for people to use to contact a targeted list of state legislators and ask them to vote against weakening the existing law, so that this new bill doesn’t sail through without any objections. To be clear, all expectations are that this new bill will pass. But for now, we need to get a cadre of courageous legislators in each chamber to stand up for strong grassroots democracy, to set the stage for what comes next with the roll-out of this new system.

Remember, the fight for good democracy is part-and-parcel of our fight for universal health care.

Thanks for jumping into this fight over the next few days.