Campaign board fights Blakeman effort to restore matching funds

ALBANY — Attorneys for the state Public Campaign Finance Board asked an appellate court on Wednesday to overturn a lower court decision that would allow Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman access to the state’s matching funds program for his gubernatorial run.

Christopher Massaroni, an attorney for the board, told a five-judge panel of the Third Department’s Appellate Division that because Blakeman's running mate, Madison County Sheriff Todd Hood, failed to file for the program the entire ticket was ineligible.

Blakeman, a Republican, is seeking to unseat Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul.

In his court filings, Massaroni argued that a decision earlier this month by acting State Supreme Court Justice Denise A. Hartman was "highly flawed" and should be overturned in part because state courts have repeatedly found that election law should be strictly followed.

Massaroni, who also represents the state’s two Democratic Board of Elections commissioners, argued that under state law, Hood had a duty to register for the matching funds program even after Blakeman had registered.

Because Hood did not register, he said, the board did not have a duty to notify Blakeman that his campaign was in violation of the program’s rules.

"I submit that it would be a tortured reading of the regulations to say that they get extra time to cure or to do the certification," Massaroni told the panel Wednesday.

The judges appeared focused on the question of whether they should consider the applications to the matching funds program as separate or whether Hood’s application was directly connected to Blakeman’s.

"Is that a bootstrap? That's the question. Maybe that's what it's going to come down to," Associate Justice Molly Reynolds Fitzgerald said.

Blakeman’s legal team argued that since the governor and lieutenant governor run as a joint ticket, they are essentially a single team.

Under that logic, Blakeman’s application to the board was incomplete and he should have gotten a chance to fix it, attorney Adam Fusco argued. "They had an obligation to reach out and allow for the chance to cure," he said.

A key element in the matter is a new state law, enacted last year, that ended separate primaries for governor and lieutenant governor, putting the two on one ticket.

Under the law, Blakeman and his running mate should have filed a "joint certification" application to the Public Campaign Finance Board. 

Blakeman filed for the matching funds program in December, days after announcing his campaign, and didn't have a running mate at the time. He received notice from the board that he was certified for the program and completed a training course.

During oral arguments before Hartman earlier this month, attorneys for the state board conceded that the board never created a form for both candidates on a ticket to fill out. 

Hartman ordered the state board to give Blakeman’s campaign one week to fix any problems with its program certification, but the board appealed that decision.

Hochul is not participating in the matching funds program.

The board's decision at its March 23 meeting denied Blakeman access to up to $3.5 million in campaign funds, which could prove crucial because Hochul is nearly $20 million ahead in fundraising, according to the latest available records.

Blakeman sued the board in April after it voted 4-3 along party lines to remove his campaign from the program.