Looks like Assembly’s top Dems just don’t need little people back home
We knew New York state’s top leaders take big campaign money from special interests, but it’s still a shock to learn how little they rely on anyone else.
The reformers at Reinvent Albany just revealed that the top two dozen members of the Assembly majority barely get any donations from the residents of their districts.
More On:
new york state assembly
New state bill would allow inmates to be jailed near their kids
Why getting Trump’s tax returns won’t help Democrats
Cuomo schedules lavish fundraisers as legislature tussles over major issues
NY Assembly’s shameful snub of fallen-soldiers’ kids
The review of the 2017-18 campaign disclosures of Speaker Carl Heastie and other Assembly leaders found that a full half of the leadership’s donations came from corporations, trade associations or labor unions — that is, from outfits doing business with state government. Just 16% of the cash came from individual donors in their districts.
Heastie (Bronx) had just one such contributor, out of 430 donors. Assembly Members Vivian Cook (Queens), Steven Otis (Westchester) and Jose Rivera (Bronx) reported none. Helene Weinstein (Brooklyn), who chairs Ways & Means, had just two, plus six out-of-district individual donors, out of 118 total contributors.
Ithaca’s Barbara Lifton stood out: 96% of her donors were in-district residents.
Heastie’s explanation to The Post: Besides using his campaign funds “to support events and residents” in his community, he passes a lot along to other Democrats, including (last year) candidates running for governor in Florida and Georgia. And he didn’t want “to ask my constituents to support election efforts outside of my district.”
Right. As if his predominantly black constituents would object to helping black candidates Andrew Gillum, Stacy Abrams, Tish James and so on. Anyway: Just set up a PAC for the purpose, and let the people decide.
There’s something fundamentally off when the state’s most powerful politicians rely so little on the support of the people they supposedly represent.
