Campaign-Finance Bill, Small-Party Hardball Wind Up in Budget

Three weeks after an upstate judge nullified a law that created a state campaign-financing system and made it harder for smaller political parties in New York to maintain their ballot lines on the grounds that the commission that ordered those changes usurped the prerogatives of the State Legislature, legislators reinstated those changes under the state budget deal finalized April 2.

Besides authorizing a new system of public funding for state elections that critics charged was designed to benefit Governor Cuomo, that portion of the budget bill restored a higher threshold of 130,000 votes that state political parties will need on their lines in the 2022 gubernatorial election in order to keep their spot on the state ballot for the following four years. Until now, the threshold had been 50,000 votes.