New Report Fails to Vindicate Public Campaign Finance

Earlier this month, the progressive Brennan Center for Justice released a report on New York State’s public campaign finance program. The 2024 election was the first one conducted where candidates for the state legislature were able to obtain taxpayer funding through matched contributions for their campaigns. In 2026, candidates for statewide office, including governor, will also be able to obtain taxpayer funding for their campaigns.

The Brennan Center’s report concludes that the public campaign finance program has been a complete success. This should surprise no observer of Empire State politics; the Brennan Center, after all, has been a major booster of taxpayer funding of campaigns generally and the New York State program in particular. After years of advocating in favor of public campaign financing, it’s hard to imagine the Brennan Center would have come to a different conclusion.

The Brennan Center report, however, completely ignores major problems the program encountered during its first run in 2024. For instance, as was predicted by its critics, the public campaign finance program appears to have allowed unscrupulous candidates and consultants to corruptly obtain taxpayer funding for campaigns. One Democratic candidate for state assembly in Queens allegedly used fake donors and forged signatures to obtain over $160,000 from taxpayers for his campaign. The candidate lost the Democratic primary (he was trounced), but that didn’t end the apparent hijinks surrounding his campaign. Late last year, the story broke that the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office were investigating the campaign and its participation in the state’s public campaign finance program.

Those who know the history of public campaign financing—particularly in New York—could see that this would happen. Long before the state public campaign finance program was launched, New York City established its own system of taxpayer funding of campaigns for local office. This program, which is administered by the New York City Campaign Finance Board, has a well-known history of corruption and chicanery. Former New York State Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin was prosecuted for his involvement in a scheme to illegally take public campaign funds for a race for New York City Comptroller. While the charges were dropped last month, it wasn’t because prosecutors came to believe Benjamin was innocent. Prosecutors dropped the charges because a key witness died, making it impossible to prove Benjamin’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Long before Benjamin’s 2021 campaign was hit with corruption charges, John Liu’s 2013 mayoral campaign was embroiled in a public matching funds scandal involving fraudulent donors. Liu, who is now a state senator, was fined $26,000; his campaign treasurer and a campaign fundraiser were prosecuted and convicted on federal corruption charges.

Problems with New York State’s rollout of the public campaign finance system didn’t end on Election Day 2024. At a December meeting of the state’s Public Campaign Finance Board, the Board’s Democratic majority approved a resolution altering the rules of the program to allow participating candidates to transfer money to party committees without facing any penalty. The resolution was added to the Board’s agenda at the last minute; the Board’s Republican commissioners—three of the Board’s seven members—were outraged. Under this newly adopted rule, candidates participating in the public campaign finance program are effectively allowed to serve as middlemen enabling taxpayer dollars to be sent to political party committees. It is hard to believe that this is what proponents of the public finance program—including the Brennan Center—intended.

Not only does the Brennan Center fail to address these issues with the public campaign finance program; its report is also premature. The program and randomly-chosen campaigns participating in the program are required to undergo a post-election audit. Given that this audit is not complete, the Brennan Center’s declaration that the program was a success should strike most New Yorkers as hasty.

Unless state legislators amend or scrap the program, New York, in 2026, will once again see an election cycle of taxpayer-funded state campaigns. As they do their work in the months ahead, lawmakers in Albany ought to know that problems with the state public campaign finance program—and public campaign financing generally—are deeper and more widespread than the Brennan Center and other advocates of taxpayer-funded elections would have you believe.