Referendum Plays Hardball with Corporations New York voters approved a campaign finance referendum yesterday that bans corporate contributions to candidates for municipal office. The measure pitted Mayor Rudolph Giuliani against Democratic gubernatorial candidate City Council speaker Peter Vallone in a bitter political battle over the future of Yankee Stadium. More than 60 percent of New York voters approved the initiative that changed the city charter. The new rule applies to all candidates participating in the city's voluntary campaign finance program, which tracks candidate spending and campaign donations.
Nothing is more important than campaign finance reform.
The initiative required that all candidates who receive corporate money but do not participate in the campaign finance program disclose which of their corporate contributors do business with the city government. Critics denounced the referendum as a crafty political ploy by the mayor, who used it to push the Yankee Stadium referendum off the ballot. According to New York City law, any initiative seeking to change the city charter must appear alone on the ballot. It just shows where this administration is, which is to threaten people who it feels oppose it. The cancelled stadium referendum would have asked New Yorkers whether tax money should be used to build a stadium for the Yankees on Manhattan's West Side.