Stephen Kaufman

Here's a question to consider about yesterday's appeals court decision to allow parties to spend money to affect primaries. (Story here.)

On the Daily Gotham, Daniel Millstone notes that what was claimed as a great victory by the Working Families Party - they were originally sued for spending $130,000 to defeat a sitting district attorney in a Democratic primary in 2004 - could actually hurt them by allowing, say, the Republican Party to spend money in WFP primaries.

Here's a related, wilder theory someone mentioned to me this morning: The ruling could provide the Senate Republicans with a means of remaining in power by electing... Democrats.

The idea is that in Democratic-majority districts where it might be impossible to elect a traditional Republican, the Senate majority could use its considerable cash advantage to back Democrats who, once they win, would vote for Joe Bruno for Majority Leader.

Imagine how this could have affected the primary between Stephen Kaufman and Jeffrey Klein two years ago. Or whether the Republicans might consider spending some cash to support Noach Dear, who is famously friendly with the Senate Republicans, in his primary challenge against Kevin Parker.

Most of the Republican pick-ups in recent years, it's worth noting, have come about when incumbent Democratic Senators switched party loyalties.

Just a thought.

-- Josh Benson

If you're following Gifford Miller's dance with the campaign finance law on what qualifies as a "petitioning expense," this ruling from the Campaign Finance Board this morning can't be good news for the Speaker:

"September 2, 2005 — The New York City Campaign Finance Board yesterday determined that expenditures for petition-gathers who also distributed campaign literature for the Bronx City Council campaign of Stephen B. Kaufman were not wholly exempt from the expenditure limit." On the other hand, Gifford's campaign finance lawyer, Larry Laufer, is a longtime CFB counsel who knows more about this stuff than anyone. And if Gifford does turn out to be within the letter of the law, Mike Bloomberg's presence in the race makes it hard to criticize him.  read more »

NOTE: The original version of this posting repeated an error in the CFB press release, which has been corrected.