NY Money in Politics

In NY, the Governor and the State Assembly are Domocratic and the Senate is Republican by a thin margin. Here are some players who are using their money to keep it this way.

Tom Golisano, the unpredictable Rochester businessman with deep pockets and never-ending political ambition, brought fresh drama to a chaotic election year on Tuesday with his announcement that he would pour at least $5 million into the state’s legislative races.

That is about 10 times what the average Senate candidate spends in an election, and slightly more than all the money held in the Republican Party’s statewide campaign accounts.

His aim, Mr. Golisano said at a news conference, was to throw a scare into — and maybe even replace — Albany’s political elite. He certainly drew their attention.

“Those elected officials on either side of the aisle who are not focused on Tom’s issues should be focused on them now,” said Assemblyman Bill Reilich, a Rochester-area Republican. “He puts his money behind his beliefs, and people definitely take him seriously.”

Mr. Golisano was critical of the state’s top leaders, especially Sheldon Silver, the speaker of the Assembly. Mr. Golisano, who has run for governor three times and flirted two years ago with a fourth bid, also said that he thinks about running for governor again “every day.”

But his influence may be most felt in races this fall for the State Senate, where Republicans have ruled for more than 40 years but now cling to a one-seat majority, their last redoubt of power in Albany.

Mr. Golisano’s political leanings are not easy to categorize. Although he ran on the Independence Party ballot in his three bids for governor, he considered seeking the Republican nomination in 2006 and has been friendly with Joseph L. Bruno, who stepped down last month as Senate majority leader.

But Mr. Golisano acknowledged on Tuesday that he had had informal conversations with at least three Democrats who are challenging Republican senators in western New York, adding that he was no longer certain that New York was well served by a Republican majority in the Senate.

“A lot of people have had the philosophy: to have a Democratic Assembly and Republican Senate is a good way to have a good system of checks and balances,” Mr. Golisano said. “If it’s been successful, you could have fooled me.”

At the news conference, he criticized state leaders for spending too much money and for passing too many costs to local government, saying that budget increases should be limited to the rate of inflation. He emphasized that it was not enough to cap local property taxes, as Mr. Paterson has proposed, and that they needed to be cut.

Mr. Golisano also called for changing the state’s system for financing campaigns and drawing legislative districts, two issues that have long been the bane of government watchdog groups that argue that generous campaign finance limits and extensive gerrymandering have made the Legislature immune to public pressure.

“The establishment doesn’t want to get it done,” he said.

Any candidate who supported his goals, Mr. Golisano said, would have his support. Those who did not would have a problem.

“We are going to endorse Republicans, we are going to endorse Democrats, we are going to endorse independents,” said Mr. Golisano. “It’s going to be for candidates all over the state.”

It was clear on Tuesday that Mr. Golisano’s announcement had certainly been noticed by incumbents in both parties, especially in western New York, where he is well known as a businessman, philanthropist and the owner of the Buffalo Sabres hockey team.

Erick Mullen, a political consultant for two Democratic congressional candidates in the region, said that Mr. Golisano’s re-entry into politics would “redefine kingmaker in the Empire State.”

“Golisano will shift the center of political power away from Albany and paralyze any Republican contemplating a run for governor,” said Mr. Mullen, who was a strategist for Mr. Golisano in his 2002 bid for governor. “The big question is, to what end?”

If Mr. Golisano does play a major role in the legislative contests, it may set the stage for a billionaires’ battle with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who has been a generous patron of Senate Republicans in recent years, regularly writing $500,000 checks to party leaders.

On Tuesday, people from both parties seemed eager to align themselves with Mr. Golisano’s movement, or at least to avoid antagonizing him.

John E. McArdle, a spokesman for Senator Dean G. Skelos, the new majority leader, downplayed suggestions that Mr. Golisano would target Senate Republicans, noting that they have supported many of the causes Mr. Golisano is now pressing.

“We’ve had a very active and good relationship with Tom Golisano, and he has been very supportive of the majority,” Mr. McArdle said.

Mr. Golisano also tempered speculation that he might back a primary challenger to Mr. Silver, who represents a Lower Manhattan district. Two such challengers — Paul Newell, a community activist, and Luke Henry, a lawyer — have emerged recently, but Mr. Golisano said he had not spoken to either one.

Mr. Golisano’s past political efforts have had mixed success; he failed to garner more than 15 percent of the vote in any of his three races for governor. But those efforts made the Independence Party, which Mr. Golisano helped establish in 1994 with millions of dollars of his own money, the state’s third largest, with a permanent slot on state ballots.

It remains a potent force in New York and its endorsement is considered a precondition of victory for Republicans in many areas of the state.

His new group, which he named Responsible New York, will be organized as an independent committee, solely financed by Mr. Golisano. Under the state’s broadly drawn election laws, the group will be able to spend as much money as Mr. Golisano desires on whatever he wants, including advertisements that advocate for or against candidates. The only condition, said Mr. Golisano’s lawyers and officials at the state Board of Elections, is that the committee not coordinate in any way with any candidate for office.

But the new committee is still likely to draw legal challenges from Democrats and Republicans, said Blair Horner, the legislative director for the New York Public Interest Research Group.

“I think the parties will mobilize at warp speed on this issue,” said Mr. Horner.

He added that he did not share Mr. Golisano’s interpretation of state election laws, saying that he thought that the new committee might be restricted in what it could say about candidates in independent advertisements. But he said there was a “delicious irony” to the notion of Mr. Golisano using a loophole in the campaign finance laws to give a headache to incumbent lawmakers.

“Incumbent legislators who accepted the status quo could face a challenge through one of the loopholes they refused to close,” Mr. Horner noted.

Rudy Giuliani is set to announce that he is launching a “new” PAC: Solutions America. “It’s the first major political move by the former mayor since his run for president flamed out in January.” The purpose of the committee is to support New York State Republicans in their elections.

Speculation around this launch is that the former candidate for the GOP nomination is using this committee to stay relevant in New York politics. It fuels the notion that the former Mayor of New York City is looking to run for Governor of New York in 2010.

Mike Bloomberg has a history of cutting "thank-you" checks.

He has done so with the state GOP to the tune of $501,880 after he switched from the Democratic Party to the GOP in advance of his first run for mayor. Even though he's no longer a Republicans, he continues to be among the biggest patrons of the Senate majority, who have long carried his water in Albany, and, to a lesser degree, has also contributed to the Assembly minority.

In 2004, Bloomberg contributed $250,000 of his own money to the city Independence Party, which endorsed both his 2001 bid for mayor and his 2005 re-election.

The $150,000 was the mayor's first contribution to the state Independence Party and the largest single individual donation the third party has ever received, according to MacKay, who has long been at odds with the city party and has made repeated efforts to sideline its dominant force, Lenora Fulani.

In addition to the mayor's personal check to the city Independence Party, a nonprofit youth organization run by Fulani, the All Stars Project, was awarded a grant in excess of $200,000 from the city's Department of Youth and Community Development. And in 2002, the city approved an $8.5 million tax-exempt bond so the All Stars Project could finance a theater and HQ.

Fulani announced last August that she was forming a committee to explore a potential mayoral run in 2009, but she hasn't said much about that since then.

Is it time to get this kind of money out of Politics?

Michael H. Drucker
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