You’ve got to give Gov. Cuomo points for chutzpah. Just days after praising the Public Campaign Finance Commission for slashing maximum donations to candidates for state office, there he was at a huge $25,000-a-table fundraiser for his birthday.
The new limits, you see, won’t kick in for him until after November 2022 — when he’ll have run his last race under New York’s current election laws, even if he goes for a fourth term. (Members of the Legislature, similarly, won’t face the new limits until after their next campaign season.)
Meanwhile, the “reform” that came out of nowhere at Cuomo’s behest starts kicking in next year: Third parties will need to win many more votes in 2020 statewide elections to automatically keep their ballot lines.
The commission has arguments for all of this, notably that Cuomo and other pols have already started fund-raising for their next runs, and it’s odd to change the rules mid-campaign. But the commissioners — chosen by Cuomo and the Legislature’s leaders — plainly didn’t look too hard for other ways around that issue.
They also left in some other gaping loopholes in their scheme for taxpayer funding of political campaigns — such as setting no limits on donations to party committees. Big money won’t even have to sneak around the limits — as long as it’s going to candidates who have party bosses’ support.
“Make me chaste — but not yet,” ran one famous sinner’s prayer. Cuomo’s done one better: Even as he takes credit for virtue, his system won’t require him to embrace campaign-finance chastity.