For Immediate Release: June 28, 2018

Hawkins Calls on Cuomo to Stop Taking “Pay to Play” Campaign Donations

Howie Hawkins, the Green Party candidate for Governor, called today for the Governor “to stop taking campaign donations from those seeking contracts from the state – which he said he would do in 2016 after the Buffalo Billion bid rigging scandal first broke. The man is addicted to extracting as much money from donors as possible and continues to shake down those doing business with the state despite however many of his staff and state legislators are convicted for political corruption. It is time for an intervention to protect taxpayers.”

Cuomo’s broken promises with respect to stop taking “Pay to Play” donations are laid out in an article in the Albany Times Union. Pay to Play refers to companies and individuals seeking to do business with the state making campaign contributions.

“Cuomo is the kingpin of the cesspool of political corruption in Albany. He continues to rake in dollars while blaming inaction by the state legislature for his failures to pass even modest ethics reform. But he has spent eight years making sure that the legislature is dysfunctional, continuously helping to prop up the Senate Republicans,” noted Hawkins.

Hawkins remarked that in the 2014 Gubernatorial election, he got as many donations as Cuomo did. Cuomo’s donors gave an average of $3,500 – more than 100 times the average donation that Hawkins received.

“Many of Cuomo’s donors gave him tens of thousands of dollars, including exploiting the LLC loophole to go beyond the individual max. Most people giving the type of large donations that Cuomo routinely rakes in are usually seeking government favors in return. Cuomo has only been too happy to oblige them,” added Hawkins.

Hawkins noted that despite Cuomo’s massive campaign war chest, he has routinely improperly used taxpayer resources to promote himself, from multi-million dollars television ads to using a state truck to hand out campaign signs at the recent Gay Pride rally in NYC. “The man can’t seem to help himself. He just has to grab as much money as possible, from whatever source,” said Hawkins.

Hawkins has long advocated for a system of full public campaign finance reform on the Clean Money model to end the role of private donations in elections.