Gov. Kathy Hochul vetoed legislation that would have widened the net of eligible campaign contributions for matching public funds under a new system that is being rolled out in the 2024 elections….
“Signing this bill would effectively reduce the impact of small donors on elections,” Hochul wrote in a veto memo on Wednesday. The legislation is in “direct contravention of the purpose” of the public campaign finance program, she added.
The bill would have allowed for the first $250 of any contribution to a campaign in an election cycle to be matched by state funding. Currently, the program only allows matching donations for contributors who gave no more than $250 in a cycle. The amended version would have allowed larger contributions from deep-pocketed donors to receive a taxpayer-funded boost.
Tag Archives: public financing
“Portland’s campaign finance program scales back ahead of 2024 election”
Portland’s campaign financing program doesn’t have enough money to operate at full capacity ahead of a historic election year. For some candidates, this means losing hundreds of thousands of anticipated dollars to run their 2024 campaigns.
The city’s Small Donor Election program works to help candidates who lack wealthy donors by rewarding those who pledge to only accept individual campaign donations under $350. The city matches the first $20 of all individual donations made to participating candidates 9-to-1, effectively turning a $20 donation into $180. . . .
Under the program, candidates who received donations from at least 250 Portlanders could receive up to $100,000 in matching funds, those who collect 750 donations could collect up to $200,000, and those with more than 1,250 donations would be limited to $300,000 in matching city dollars. A mayoral candidate can rake in up to $750,000 in matched contributions.
But, due to a lack of money in the city’s general fund, those caps will shrink. According to an analysis by the Portland Elections Commission, those funds could drop by 60% at the start of 2024. That means candidates who counted on bolstering their budgets with $300,000 of city dollars will only be about to count on $120,000.