New York appeals court revives Blakeman public funds bid

ALBANY — A New York appeals court has ruled that state elections regulators created a bureaucratic trap and faulted the Public Campaign Finance Board for rolling out new gubernatorial ticket rules without updated forms, guidance or training before they denied potentially millions of dollars in matching funds to candidates who subsequently failed to comply with the byzantine rules. 

Calling the state’s handling of the rollout “irrational,” a five-member appellate court in Albany on Thursday unanimously revived Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman’s bid for public campaign cash and ordered state elections officials to let his campaign cure defects the agency never properly explained.

The swift ruling, which upheld a state Supreme Court justice’s decision, came a day after attorneys for Blakeman, the Public Campaign Finance Board and two minority Republican members of the board had squared off in front of the appellate panel and laid out their arguments.

“I am very grateful that the trial court and the appellate court saw through this scam to keep me and (lieutenant governor candidate) Todd Hodd from getting our public matching funds,” Blakeman said at a news conference outside the state Capitol on Thursday.  

Blakeman’s lawsuit centered on whether he and Hood should be excluded from New York’s public campaign financing program because of a paperwork issue that the appellate division confirmed was the fault of the campaign finance board, which is an arm of the state Board of Elections. 

The voluntary program, created in 2020, is intended to reduce the influence of special interests, increase government accountability and encourage broader candidate participation and public engagement in elections. This year is the first election cycle in which the funds are available for candidates for statewide offices. 

A new state law required candidates for governor and lieutenant governor to run as a joint ticket. The Public Campaign Finance Board, which administers the program, created new rules that required the candidates to file a joint certification form to qualify for public matching funds. 

In March, the board, where Democrats hold the majority, ruled 4-3 that Blakeman and Hood were ineligible to apply for the public matching funds. The candidates sued, saying the state did a poor job rolling out the program. They said the board did not update the newly created official form or training materials and didn’t warn candidates that the paperwork was incomplete or give them a chance to fix it. 

Those regulations were formally adopted Wednesday, according to the Department of State. 

Adam Fusco, an attorney for Blakeman, noted in his argument Wednesday that his client had taken a training session for the matching funds program in January — a day after the new regulations went into effect — but there was no mention of the new requirements during that session.

“They didn’t update their website, they didn’t do any of the things that one would do if they’re facilitating compliance with the statute and fostering
democracy,” Fusco told the appellate judges. “The purpose of the statute and the purpose of the program, as I understand it, is to improve public confidence in the state’s democratic process, so all those things go hand in hand with that.”

Earlier this month, a lower court agreed with Blakeman in a ruling that found the board acted arbitrarily and failed to provide his campaign with proper notice and an opportunity to cure the error. The mid-level appellate court agreed. 

“An agency’s determination is arbitrary and capricious when it is taken without sound basis in reason or regard to the facts,” the justices said in the unanimous decision. 

Attorneys for the four Democrats on the board appealed the lower court’s ruling, saying that Blakeman’s gubernatorial ticket was ineligible for matching funds because Hood never filed paperwork by the deadline. They insisted that Election Law deadlines must be strictly and uniformly enforced and that the lower court improperly rewrote the rules by allowing Hood a post-deadline “cure period.” 

“The provisions of the Election Law ‘make it crystal clear that the time limitations for filing are mandatory’ and ‘foreclose the judiciary from fashioning exceptions, however reasonable they might’ appear to be,” the attorneys wrote. 

The filing of the appeal was opposed by the panel’s three Republican commissioners. Those in the minority publicly condemned the appeal and defended the lower court’s ruling in a 31-page brief that accused the board of being incompetent, inconsistent and failing to follow its own rules. 

Commissioners Peter Kosinski and Anthony Casales, who were petitioners in the opposition case, said that the board’s logic did not make sense and they accused its majority of trying to argue two incompatible things at once: that Hood was supposed to file separately and Blakeman’s filing was defective because it didn’t include Hood.

“These two things cannot be true at the same time,” their attorney wrote in court filings. 

It wasn’t immediately clear whether the Public Campaign Finance Board would appeal the decision to the Court of Appeals, the highest court in New York. 

Gov. Kathy Hochul is not participating in the program, and her campaign has $20 million cash on hand, dwarfing what Blakeman has raised. The program could allow the Nassau County executive to tap into as much as $3.5 million in matching funds, a significant boost for a campaign that polls indicate has little name recognition outside of New York City. 

In order to qualify for matching funds, he needs to raise $500,000 in contributions of $250 or less and receive more than 5,000 donations from New Yorkers. Spectrum News NY 1 reported last month that Blakeman’s campaign had met both thresholds.

In a statement, Brian Kolb, the Public Finance Board vice president and a former state assemblyman, praised the appellate court’s decision. 

“Today is a great day for New York state elections,” Kolb said. “This was never about Republicans versus Democrats. This was about right versus wrong and choosing fairness over political gamesmanship. I am pleased this distraction has now ended, and we can return to the core mission of the board.”