Syracuse, NY - Green Party activist Howie Hawkins came to the Fair Elections forum Thursday to talk about fair funding for elections, but the organizers said members of the public could not talk.
When they asked the audience members to submit written questions, there was a loud shuffle in the back of the room.
“I came here because I was invited to speak from the floor,” Hawkins shouted in front of about 150 people. “It’s bullshit.”
Then, he grabbed his coat and stormed out of the event
Hawkins said later he had not planned to have an outburst, but he has a lot of questions about the campaign finance proposal that seems to be gaining momentum in Albany in the wake of new bribery scandals.
The general idea is a public financing system that would give $6 of public money to match each $1 of money raised in small private donations (under $250). The idea is supported by Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and Senate Minority Leader John Sampson.
The Fair Elections for New York campaign is supported by the groups Citizen Action of New York, the Working Families Party, the Sierra Club, several labor unions, the campus-based group Democracy Matters, the Brennan Center for Justice and others.
The group is starting an $800,000 advertising campaign this week and will be hosting house parties and more rallies across the state. They bought a 30-second ad spot during the Final Four game between Syracuse University and the University of Michigan.
What Hawkins wants to know is this: What’s wrong with the "Clean Money" campaign finance reform proposal that has been in negotiations in Albany for years?
The Greens call private campaign donations “legalized bribes” and would prefer to take all private donations out of the equation. The Clean Money proposal would ban private money and put in place a system of equal campaign grants for all candidates.
That kind of system would have been a great help to Hawkins in his race for governor. Hawkins was the Green Party candidate for NY governor in 2010. He raised about $45,000 compared to Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s $33 million.
Here is what Hawkins wrote in an email late Thursday night:
“This campaign for partial funding is bankrolled by the high rollers and corporate bosses.
What burns me up is that many well-meaning progressives are being bamboozled by the rich again and these liberal groups are doing the ground operation for them.
The devil is in the details and the rank and file won't know what those are. They will think they got a good reform when in fact they got the privately funded incumbents some additional public funding.
The Sampson-Silver bill will get worse when the four men in a room get to wheeling and dealing. But it may not get out of the room, which would be for the good. They will probably lower the contributions limits a little and, if they do go with matching funds partial public funding, it will be slowly phased in, starting with a race the few care much about like Comptroller.
I wanted a dialogue on these issues, not to just sit in a rally for a bill I don't support, not to let them weasel out of a read question without any follow up or comment. There's a big difference between a question on a card and letting audience make 2 minute comments and questions.”
Charlie Albanetti, spokesman for the Fair Elections group, said they asked participants to submit written questions because it was a large crowd.
He said the systems of public financing Hawkins advocates have been struck down by the courts. Those kinds of systems went into play in Arizona and Connecticut, but have since been modified. Courts have said participation in public funding systems has to be voluntary.
The Greens disagree. They say the U.S. Supreme Court only disqualified the “fair fight” supplementary grants that top off the basic public funding grant when a privately funded candidate’s spending reached a certain threshold.
