NY campaign finance plan will make matters worse, November 26, 2019

 A simple, unsolicited solution for reducing big money in New York political campaigns: make donors give to a race rather than a candidate, then divide that pot of money equally among the qualifying contestants.

If a donor really believes in Candidate X — and is truly confident in his ideas — the donor should have no fear of what Candidate Y has to say. Let the donor unleash an unlimited bankroll to promulgate X’s intellectual largesse across the airwaves; Y’s inferior reasoning would naturally falter in the full-throated competition of ideas that would ensue. But if said donor fears what Y has to say — if the donor wants Y to be heard as little as possible — he’ll logically limit his donation to the race. In this, campaign spending would be self-policing. Indeed, incumbent candidates might end up begging big-money donors to reduce the amounts they give.

There would be problems with such a system — would it be constitutional for example? (Arguable.) But it would be a heck of a lot simpler and more effective than the convoluted matching fund program the State Public Campaign Finance Commission approved on Monday. It also wouldn’t cost the public a dime. (Disclosure: a client is challenging the commission’s legal authority in court.)

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