Appellate Court Affirms Decision to Allow GOP Gubernatorial Ticket into Public Campaign Finance Program
By: Joseph T. Burns
On May 28, 2026, New York State’s Appellate Division, Third Department, upheld a lower court decision to allow Republican-Conservative gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman and his running mate, Todd Hood, the opportunity to obtain up to $3.5 million in public matching funds for their campaign. The decision carries meaningful legal and political implications for the 2026 election as well as for candidates who seek public matching funds in future elections.
Background
New York's Public Campaign Finance Program, enacted in 2020 and administered by the Public Campaign Finance Board (PCFB), provides matching funds to qualifying candidates for statewide office and state legislature. Participation requires candidates to register and certify their acceptance of the program’s terms with the PCFB. The candidate registration and certification are subject to a deadline of four months before the primary election. This year, that date was February 23, 2026.
After announcing his candidacy, Blakeman filed both forms in 2025 and received confirmation from PCFB that he was registered and certified for the program. The legal landscape changed, however, because the State Legislature amended the Election Law in 2025 to require that party designations for Governor and Lieutenant Governor be made jointly. Due to this change, the PCFB promulgated emergency regulations that treated a joint Governor and Lieutenant Governor ticket as a single candidate, requiring both candidates on the ticket to submit a certification to the PCFB.
When Hood was announced as Blakeman's running mate in February 2026, the existing Blakeman filing was rendered incomplete under the new rules. Hood never filed his own forms, and Blakeman's amended certification, filed after Hood was named, still did not include Hood. On March 31, 2026, in a controversial 4-3 vote that fell along party lines, the PCFB found the Blakeman-Hood ticket ineligible for the program.
The Court's Reasoning
The Third Department's decision to affirm the lower Court rested not on any sympathy for the incomplete filings of the Blakeman-Hood ticket, but on a series of failures by the PCFB itself that made strict enforcement irrational under the circumstances.
The Third Department identified several problems. First, the PCFB promulgated regulations requiring joint submission of the certification on a specific PCFB-prescribed form; the PCFB, however, never updated that form to accommodate a joint filing by both candidates running on a gubernatorial ticket. The regulation's language directed use of a single form, but the form simply did not exist in a version that allowed two candidates to sign jointly.
Second, PCFB's own internal communications acknowledged that the existing forms did not conform to the new regulations, and PCFB staff were instructed to review filings from Governor and Lieutenant Governor candidates on a "case-by-case basis." None of this, however, was communicated to the public or to the candidates.
Third, and perhaps most significantly, the PCFB failed to follow its own rules. When the PCFB determines that participating candidate filings are incomplete, it is required under its own regulations to notify the candidate and provide an opportunity to cure. While Blakeman’s initial PCFB filings were legally sufficient, the PCFB never informed Blakeman that subsequent filings were incomplete after Hood joined the ticket, never offered a cure period, and never updated its training materials to address the new joint-candidacy rules. The PCFB candidate training that Blakeman, as well as all candidates in the program, attended didn’t even mention the new joint-candidacy filing requirement.
The Third Department’s decision was clear: penalizing Blakeman, when no compliant form existed and no guidance had been issued, failed to serve the public campaign finance program’s statutorily established objectives.
The Decision’s Political Significance
The immediate consequence of the decision is that Blakeman and Hood will be given the opportunity to cure their deficient filing. The Third Department declined to state precisely how that should be accomplished; it suggested, however, that the Blakeman campaign and the PCFB look to the PCFB’s previously identified potential solutions as a way to resolve this issue.
The decision means the Blakeman-Hood ticket will now have the ability to qualify for and receive up to $3.5 million in public matching funds. For a candidate challenging an incumbent in a statewide race in New You, this is a significant political win and demonstrates that a campaign remains politically viable.
It is also worth mentioning that the Third Department’s decision noted that the circumstances in this case were unique to this election cycle — a product of recently enacted statutory changes and newly adopted regulations that left both the PCFB and the Blakeman-Hood ticket without the ability to fully comply with what is required of candidates seeking public matching funds. Courts in future elections aren’t likely to be as accommodating to candidates who have failed to comply with these or other PCFB regulations.
Advice for Future Candidates
Some lessons emerge from this litigation for anyone involved in a future statewide or state legislative race.
First, smart campaigns must check program requirements early and keep up to date on changes to the program, even after it has received confirmation of compliance. The regulatory landscape of New York's public campaign finance program has the potential to, and is likely to, continue evolving. Blakeman received written confirmation in December 2025 that he was registered and certified, but that confirmation was rendered incomplete by changes that took effect weeks later. Relying on prior confirmation without properly monitoring subsequent changes to the program can become a trap for inexperienced candidates or poorly advised campaigns.
Second, if the PCFB identifies any deficiency in your filing, engage immediately with PCFB staff and document everything. The public campaign finance program’s cure provisions exist for a reason. Future candidates who receive notice of a deficient filing and fail to act quickly are likely to find little sympathy from the Courts.
Finally, changes to the Election Law and amendments to the PCFB regulations create compliance complexity that should not be navigated without experienced counsel. The PCFB’s rules can be hyper technical, its deadlines are unforgiving, and as this case demonstrates, even the agency charged with administering the public campaign finance program can fail to keep its own forms and guidance materials current. Candidates who engage knowledgeable counsel early are well-positioned to avoid these potentially costly mistakes.
