Suit Against New Campaign Finance Law Claims Racial Bias

The real estate industry and lobbyists, who together provide millions in campaign cash for city candidates, are trying to overturn a new law that would vastly reduce how much they can donate.

A lawsuit financially backed by the business interests and others was filed Monday in federal court in Manhattan against the City Campaign Finance Board, which enforces the campaign finance system. The suit charged that the limits violated free speech and equal protection provisions of the Constitution and discriminated against minorities.

The law, which has been called one of the toughest in the nation, aims to diminish the influence of special interests on city campaigns. It reduces by more than 90 percent the amount that those who do business with the city can contribute, to $400 from $4,950 in a mayor’s race, for instance, and to $250 from $2,950 in City Council races.

The restrictions took effect this month.

The 96-page complaint was filed by James Bopp Jr., a lawyer who successfully challenged Vermont’s campaign finance restrictions before the United States Supreme Court in 2006.

In an unusual tack, Mr. Bopp claimed that New York’s limits would make it more difficult for minority candidates to run, because they tend to come from poorer areas where their neighbors cannot contribute, so they must turn to business interests for donations.

“When minority candidates run, their natural constituency is their neighborhoods and their neighbors,” Mr. Bopp said in a telephone interview.

“And the unfortunate reality is that the minority population is on average in the lower socioeconomic level and less able to contribute, so minority candidates have to rely — I am told by activists here, consultants — that they tend to rely disproportionately on contributions from outside of their district, and in particular, business interests. So that this would disproportionately affect them.”

The 13 plaintiffs include one African-American and four Hispanics, including two Republican former City Council candidates who say in the suit that they would like to run again, but could not afford to do so with the new limits in place.

Richard Briffault, a law professor at Columbia University and an expert on campaign finance law, said the lawsuit appeared to be a “stretch,” particularly the aspects claiming racial discrimination.

“It’s going to affect everybody,” Mr. Briffault said. “There’s no evidence that Hispanics or African-American candidates are particularly dependent on lobbyist donations than white candidates.”

The Vermont case Mr. Bopp won before the Supreme Court has been viewed by some experts as a harbinger of the court’s shifting stance on campaign finance reform. But that case dealt with restrictions that affected all contributors, and the justices felt that the limit — $400 per election for statewide races — would endanger the ability of some candidates to get their message out.

New York City’s law is different because it affects only certain classes of contributors, mainly people who do business with the city, like contractors, developers and financial underwriters. The law also bans entirely contributions from limited liability corporations and partnerships.

Mr. Bopp said the new limits imposed by New York City’s law are lower than any ever upheld by the Supreme Court. But because the city’s law leaves plenty of revenue sources for candidates to draw from and increases their public matching funds, Mr. Briffault said, it is unlikely to encounter the same problems as the Vermont law.

The suit also contends that the law is constitutionally untenable because it targets some entities doing business with the city, while leaving others, like labor unions and neighborhood organizations, unaffected.

“The city is claiming the potential of undue influence by people who are doing business with the city and then they exempt two of the biggest categories of people doing business with the city,” Mr. Bopp said.

City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, who pushed the bill past skeptical Council members worried about their ability to raise money, said the law was designed specifically to help candidates who did not have connections to the city’s high-powered lobbyists and developers.

“By incentivizing smaller contributions, this law will allow challengers and candidates of color with grass-roots support to mount effective, winning campaigns,” she said in a statement. She added that she was confident that the law would survive the court challenge.

But Councilwoman Maria del Carmen Arroyo, the Bronx Democrat who is co-chairwoman of the Council’s Black, Latino and Asian Caucus, said that the law raised legitimate concerns.

“There is a very strong sense from colleagues on the impact of campaign finance rules on candidates of color,” said Ms. Arroyo, who is not involved in the case. “It’s a program that’s meant to level the playing field, and it doesn’t seem to do that very well.” The caucus includes 25 of the 51 Council members.

A spokesman for the Campaign Finance Board said the board was reviewing the suit and declined to comment.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, who pushed for the new limits, defended the law on Monday.

“I’m not a constitutional lawyer,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “It’s a very well-intentioned and well-drafted piece of legislation and certainly we should have that law. Whether the way they drafted it’s constitutional, that’s up to the courts.”

Among the plaintiffs in the lawsuit are Tom Ognibene, a former City Council minority leader, and Yvette Velázquez Bennett and Viviana Vazquez-Hernandez, former Council candidates who are both Republican district leaders in Brooklyn. The New York State Conservative Party and the Kings County Conservative Party are also listed as plaintiffs.

Though only one lobbyist is named as a plaintiff, and no one from the real estate industry is, representatives from both industries acknowledged they were helping finance the lawsuit.

“We all find this repugnant, and so I think you’ll find that there are a number of people who are interested in the suit and have contributed,” said Sid Davidoff, a senior partner of Davidoff Malito & Hutcher, one of the state’s biggest lobbying firms, which is a contributor and is also acting as local counsel.

(Published by Times Online, February 12, 2008)