Report: Assembly Leaders Get Few Contributions From People in Districts. Heastie – One In District Human Donor

Only 16% Of Campaign Donations Assembly Leadership Receives Are From People In Their Districts

Speaker Heastie Had One In-District Human Donor; Ways & Means Chair Weinstein Two; Members Otis, Cook, And Rivera Had ZERO

Clear Need For Small Donor Public Matching System

The 24 members of Assembly leadership have raised very few donations from actual human beings living in their districts, according to a Reinvent Albany analysis of itemized campaign contributions available in the ​New York Open Government portal​. Assembly members with leadership titles raised just 16 percent of their contributions last election cycle (2017-18) from in-district residents. Nearly half of their contributions were from corporations, associations, and unions – many doing business with state government.

Speaker Carl Heastie collected donations from 430 contributors for his candidate committee​, but just one from a person living in his district. ​Ways & Means Chair Helene Weinstein had only two individual donors from her district​ and just eight human beings who donated to her campaign out of 118 contributors. Members Vivian Cook, Steven Otis and Jose Rivera reported zero in-district individual donors.

Reinvent Albany is part of the ​Fair Elections​ coalition advocating for passage of a public financing system modeled on New York City’s that matches small dollar contributions to encourage fundraising from everyday New Yorkers. A public financing system would enable elected officials and candidates to rely more on constituents in their districts, rather than companies and organizations, to raise funds for campaigns.

Some Assembly leaders actively fundraised in their districts. Barbara Lifton, representing Ithaca and surrounding communities, was the top in-district fundraiser, bringing in 96 percent of her itemized donations from people in her district. Crystal Peoples-Stokes and N. Nick Perry, representing Buffalo and East Flatbush respectively, each raised 40 or more individual contributions in-district, showing small-donor fundraising is feasible in communities of color and less prosperous areas of the state. Peoples-Stokes had the fourth highest number of in-district individual donations, and Perry the sixth.

The constituent-based fundraising practices of these leaders would be incentivized under a public financing system like New York City’s, which matches donations from ordinary New Yorkers. ​Research by the Campaign Finance Institute​ shows virtually all elected officials would raise more funds under a public matching system than they do currently without one.

The chart on the next page shows fundraising by Assembly leaders for the 2017-2018 election cycle, ranked from worst to first by percentage of in-district individual donors (the far right column):