It was not opposition put up by billionaires or big corporations, but an 11th-hour warning issued by Mario Cilento, president of the New York AFL-CIO, an umbrella group of more than 3,000 affiliated unions.
“Now is not the time,” Cilento said in a statement.
The last-minute opposition helped derail a push to introduce a small-donor matching system to state candidates. Lawmakers ultimately agreed to allow a nine-member commission to decide later on a framework for public financing.
It also shocked some progressive activists and Democratic elected officials, many of whom have deeply forged alliances with big labor. But while unions are typically among the staunchest of Democratic allies, they also happen to be some of the biggest money players in New York politics.
The New York AFL-CIO and its affiliates have spent more than $3.9 million since the start of 2018 on state and local elections. The Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee alone took in more than $1.6 million from unions last cycle, or nearly half of its total haul, according to an analysis by The New York Times.
Unions have contributed at least $159,000, or about 40%, of donations to the political action committee of the Assembly speaker, Carl E. Heastie, since the start of 2018. They have also given more than $234,000 to the campaign account of the Senate majority leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins, in the same period — about 30% of her donations.
The New York group’s stance contrasts with the view of the national AFL-CIO, which has endorsed HR 1, a sprawling bill pushed by congressional Democrats to expand public financing of campaigns in House and presidential races. (The bill stands little chance of passing the Senate.)
But New York has long been a stronghold for the labor movement and its political voice here has remained powerful even as it has waned nationwide.
“We understand the sentiment for public financing, but we don’t need that,” Michael Mulgrew, president of the United Federation of Teachers, which represents New York City teachers, said in an interview.
“It is not a priority,” said Joseph Geiger, executive secretary-treasurer of the New York City District Council of Carpenters, which spent $750,000 on campaigns last year, records showed.
In interviews with a dozen unions, only two — Local 32BJ, which represents janitors, doormen and airport workers, and the local arm of the Communications Workers of America — offered unqualified support for public financing. Two others were vocally opposed. The rest declined to comment, took no position or declared other matters to be of greater importance.
A public financing system would typically lower the maximum contribution to candidates, but then offer a generous matching-fund allotment. In New York City, for example, candidates can receive an 8-to-1 match of public funds to small donations.
Those who favor such a system say it lessens the advantages of incumbency by reducing the impact of large donors. But for some of those large donors, including unions, that might be a reason to oppose it.
When the Supreme Court was considering the landmark Citizens United case, which found that government cannot ban corporate political spending, the national AFL-CIO filed a brief supporting corporations. The union argued that looser restrictions on political spending would help labor unions, although it later said that the ruling went too far and has urged the case be overturned.
In New York this year, when a coalition of activists fighting for campaign finance reform, which included the two supportive major unions, reached out to other unions to ask for their support, they were rebuffed, said a person familiar with the coalition’s efforts, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to protect their projects with labor unions.
“If we’re not there, then it would be slanted in a direction that is much different than the unions,” Mulgrew said, adding that his union’s donations counteract the influence of right-leaning groups.
The powerful health care union 1199 Service Employees International Union declined to comment on its position, as did other influential labor groups such as the Hotel Trades Council and the building trades union. The statewide teachers’ union said it supported public financing “in principle” but not if it came at the expense of education and health care funding, according to a spokesman, Matt Hamilton.
Stuart Appelbaum, head of the Retail Wholesale and Department Store Union, said he supported donation limits but had not been focused on the topic.
“This is not my issue,” he said. “This is not where I focus my energy, but I do know that political money corrupts the process.”
Support for public financing could have created not just financial difficulties but also political ones. Powerful Assembly members, Heastie included, had expressed reservations about the idea.
Alison Hirsh, political director of the Local 32BJ of the SEIU, which pushed for public financing, said union leaders must be cognizant of how their political decisions would affect their other priorities.
“Unions are different than community activists,” she said. “Our No. 1 obligation is to raise standards at the workplace. There are a variety of ways leaders interpret that job.”
The health care union, 1199, had signed a letter to Gov. Andrew Cuomo supporting public financing in 2014, when Republican control of the state Senate made success unlikely. This year, with Democrats in charge of the Senate and Assembly, it did not weigh in.
The AFL-CIO, after its original appeal to lawmakers, said in a statement that it “had no position on this issue and that continues to be the case.”
One of the most vocal labor unions opposing public financing, the Civil Service Employees Association, which represents state workers, centered its opposition on the program’s projected $100 million yearly cost. Members wrote postcards and ran social media advertisements that urged lawmakers to think how else the money could be spent.
“We have way too many needs to be dedicating up to $100 million to pay for politicians to run for office,” said Fran Turner, the group’s director of legislative and political action.
The union has donated more than $400,000 to state politicians since the start of 2018.
The $100 million price tag was cited by Heastie as a primary reason many Assembly members did not support public financing, though he said concerns about curbing union spending had not played a role. The speaker said, “$100 million is $100 million and it has to come from somewhere.”
But other powerful officials have pointed to the benefits that unions reap under the current campaign finance regime.
Cuomo — who supports public financing and has received significant union backing — has suggested that championing public financing while taking union money could be seen as hypocritical. He used the term “dark money” to refer to spending by union super PACs during a radio interview this month.
“I don’t think there is any difference between Airbnb or 32BJ or charter schools,” the governor, a Democrat, said of labor’s super PAC spending at a news conference earlier this month.
A public financing system would not affect super PACs, which the Supreme Court granted significant leeway to spend freely on elections.
But union leaders — both those who support public financing and those who are more skeptical — say their political spending differs from that of corporations and other special interests because unions’ spending represents the views of members, who contribute through dues.
“It’s really small donors,” Mulgrew said.
Hirsh said that distinction was precisely the reason to back public financing.
“We don’t pass legislation because we can make a $5,000 contribution,” she said. “We pass legislation because our members are engaged and involved in the legislative process.”
Still, Democratic lawmakers have acknowledged the difficulty of disentangling donations from corporations — verboten in reform circles — from the labor union cash that they welcome with open arms. Unions may be a special interest, some argue, but they are a different sort of special interest.
That was the point Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz made at a rally outside his office in the Bronx last month. Advocates had gathered there to press him for support on public financing, decrying the influence of special interests in New York politics. He said he would support the proposal.
Still, he told them, “Not every nonindividual is a special interest.”
“I get contributions from 1199, from 32BJ, and groups like that,” he said of the health care and service workers’ unions. “And to me, those are groups that represent my constituents. So, not every nonindividual is a special interest.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.