Incumbent Protection Act

The fact that the Assembly speaker, Sheldon Silver, and the Senate Majority Leader, Joseph Bruno, signed on to the campaign finance "reform" deal pressed by Governor Spitzer is an indication that it isn't much of a reform at all. By reducing the size of campaign contributions that are legal in New York, the three men in a room made it harder for those who would try to dislodge them. Mr. Spitzer is sitting on a campaign war chest of millions of dollars, much of it raised from financial interests he was regulating as attorney general. The new rules will make it harder for anyone who wants to raise money to run against him for governor, because they require money to be raised in increments of only $25,000, rather than the limits of more than $52,000 that had previously applied.

Getting the attention of voters in New York can be an expensive proposition. New York City is the nation's most expensive advertising market, and buying television commercials here doesn't reach voters in Rochester, Syracuse, or Buffalo. If the government in Albany needs improvement as much as Mr. Spitzer claims it does, the right move would be to make it easier for citizens to back politicians who want to communicate with the public about the issues that are being faced there. As it is, campaigns about crucial issues, such as taxing, spending, education, and health care, are being waged by candidates hamstrung by laws that have the effect of limiting spending on educating voters to a budget smaller than that spent on marketing a midrange Hollywood movie.

Mr. Spitzer himself has an acute awareness of the importance of money in politics, having gotten himself elected attorney general only with the backing of significant amounts of cash from his own wealthy family. What the new laws would do is make it harder for those not born to wealth to raise the money necessary to get elected. This is being done in the name of "reform," but the effect will be to entrench the incumbents — particularly wealthy incumbents, like Mr. Spitzer — who have spent the state into a position where it has the highest state and local tax rates in the country. Meantime, the rules change that would really shake up Albany — term limits — is the one that Mr. Spitzer, pressed by his Republican opponent John Faso, expressed support for during the gubernatorial campaign, but has failed to follow through on now that he is in office.