Small Donor Public Financing Plays Role in Electing Most Diverse New York City Council

This article, published by the Brennan Center, is about the city council primaries, which saw remarkable race and gender equity in fundraising, challenging typical campaign finance trends, citing RepresentWomen's 2016 and 2020 Reports. Read an excerpt here:

To use New York City’s small donor public financing program, a candidate first must show a sufficient level of public support by raising a threshold sum in small donations from a minimum number of residents. The candidate must also follow strict disclosure rules and contribution limits and earn every dollar they receive in public funds by raising matchable contributions from city residents. Participation is voluntary: candidates can, instead, raise money strictly through private donations.

The program has seen a number of improvements over its three decades, including increases in the size of the match. This year’s was the first citywide election to happen after 80 percent of voters decided in a referendum to increase the public financing match from $6-to-$1 to $8-to-$1 and to slash contribution limits in city council races from $2,850 to $1,000. Many of this cycle’s history-making candidates credit this increase for encouraging them to run and empowering their grassroots campaigns.

Our analysis found race and gender equity in fundraising across all competitive council candidates in the primary. ⁸ Among these candidates, men and women raised, on average, nearly the same amounts, with women raising 4 percent more than men. White candidates and candidates of color also raised, on average, nearly the same amounts, with candidates of color raising 2 percent more than white candidates. These candidates also relied to similar degrees on small donations and public matching funds in their fundraising, regardless of their race or gender identity. ⁹ This remarkable parity in fundraising trends held true not just for council candidates overall, but also in one-to-one contests when the top two candidates in a given district were of different races or genders. ¹⁰

To be sure, the city’s small donor public financing program was not the only election reform in play this year. Term limits, in place since 1993, opened more than half the council seats to newcomers, a window of opportunity not seen in two decades. ¹¹ Ranked-choice voting, adopted by ballot referendum in 2019, converted the primary from a winner-take-all contest to one that cycled through voters’ rankings of up to five candidates until one candidate received more than 50 percent of the vote. Research on term limits and ranked-choice voting, however, shows the policies do not always have the effect some proponents seek of increasing diversity and representation, sometimes resulting in the opposite. ¹² Indeed, the historical barriers that women, people of color, and particularly women of color face in traditional fundraising have impeded their ability to compete even for open seats.

Read the full article here.