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It’s no secret that political campaigns are expensive. If you want to run for office, you need money to fuel the run. In New York State, the Public Campaign Finance Board helps candidates for statewide offices pay the bills by offering matching donations. On Tuesday, the board voted 4-3- along party lines- to deny Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman to qualify for matching funds in his challenge to Kathy Hochul for Governor, due to a technicality on the paperwork. Blakeman’s staff, however, contends that the technicality- specifically, a request for paperwork submitted by Blakeman running mate Todd Hood- was not asked for until after he filed it, meaning he could not have the correct information on the original filing.
Former Westchester County Executive Rob Astorino didn’t have the matching fund system to help fill his coffers when he ran for governor against Andrew Cuomo in 2011, but he knows how the system works, or, in this case, how it works like a game of three-card monte. He appeared on 710 WOR’s Curtis Sliwa and Larry Mendte in the Morning program to break it all down for the voters.
Astorino first went over the basics on how matching funds work in a statewide election in New York: “You have to raise from at least 5,000 separate individuals a contribution from each person of at least $5 to $250, so if somebody gives a $10 check, they count as one of the 5,000. When you do that, if you go over the 5,000 number of people… then you qualify for the matching funds, if you raise at least $500,000. So that’s the threshold when you do that.”
Astorino then explained how and why the Democrats are putting their thumb on the scale to keep the money from Blakeman “Now on this other nonsense, this ministerial crap that he didn’t sign a second page listening Sheriff Todd as the lieutenant governor with him, that’s so ridiculous. I mean, they knew, they planned this out. There’s no question in my mind, Hochul and the Democrats, they hatched this whole idea way back when that they would change this form after he sent it and make sure that he’s disqualified, and then they found the four people on the campaign finance board, all four Democrats, to go along with the game.”
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