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STUNNING: STATE DEMOCRATIC PARTY BOSS CLAIMS TO BE ARBITER OF WHICH NEW YORK POLITICAL PARTIES ARE ‘CREDIBLE’
Conservative Party Champions Will of Voters, Political Freedom; Reiterates that State Commission is “a Sham”
New York-Nov. 15…New York State Democratic Party Chairman Jay Jac0bs, Governor Andrew Cuomo’s handpicked leader of the constitutionally dubious New York State Public Finance Commission, declared on Thursday that his commission will determine which New York State political parties are “credible” and which are not. New York State Conservative Party Chairman Gerard Kassar called Mr. Jacobs’s statement, “stunning, self-serving, and wildly anti-democratic.”
“We have to make sure that people who run for offices on these party lines are running from party lines that are actual credible parties that have some demonstrated level of support,” Mr. Jacobs told The Capitol Pressroom.
New York State political parties are formed by achieving a 50,000-vote threshold in quadrennial New York gubernatorial elections, an established benchmark that goes back almost a century. Governor Cuomo’s commission, ostensibly created to establish a taxpayer-funded state campaign system, is now arbitrarily proposing that parties be required to attain as many as 250,000 votes in a gubernatorial year in order to exist. It has been suggested by good-government political observers and others that the Democratic-Party-boss-led commission has set its initial sights on The New York Working Families Party for revenge, a competing party on the political left that famously irritated Governor Cuomo by backing a competitor over Cuomo in the 2018 Democratic Party primary. With such arbitrary powers, the commission, or a subsequent commission, could then come after The Conservative Party, the third strongest party in New York, by establishing even higher thresholds, Chairman Kassar warned.
“Governor Cuomo and the New York Democratic Party boss are trying to kill off political competition in New York right before our eyes, and that’s a frightening scenario for everyone,” Chairman Kassar said. “They are using the guise of campaign finance to rationalize their ploy, but no one is buying it — a power grab is a power grab is a power grab. How can they possibly think that a state political party chairman should decide the fate of competing parties? It’s a preposterous attempt.”
The Public Finance Commission has proposed a wildly expensive matching fund program for state candidates — taxpayers matching political donations at a ratio of 20-1 under one suggestion — and then claimed that such a program would be too expensive with New York’s multiple party lines system. It’s convenient recommendation? Effectively abolish competing political parties, the Conservative Party noted.
“From day one, this Commission has been blatantly unconstitutional,” Chairman Kassar continued. “It has no authority to make law — only a duly-elected legislature can do that — and it has no right to end fusion voting in New York, a constitutionally protected practice going back more than 100 years. The work of the Commission is furthermore null and void because its members inexplicably failed to swear a required oath of office.”
A spokesman for Governor Cuomo angrily claimed two weeks ago that no oath of office for commission members was necessary. Those members quietly took oaths this week. Under clearly established State law, the Conservative Party maintains, all previous commission work must be nullified.
“This circus needs to end,” Chairman Kassar continued. “If Governor Cuomo wants to change the law to benefit himself, he should propose bill language to his allies in the State Legislature. This surreptitious end-around has blown up in his face.”
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