What Candidates Need to Know Before Entering New York’s Public Campaign Finance Program
By: Joseph T. Burns
As 2026 approaches, many campaigns for state legislature or statewide office are weighing whether to opt in to New York State’s public campaign finance program. The program’s generous matching formula can dramatically reshape a race’s political and financial landscape. But entering the matching funds program is not simply a strategic fundraising decision. It is a legal commitment that places a campaign under an entirely different set of rules, oversight mechanisms, and potential enforcement risks.
Candidates and political operatives familiar with New York politics underestimate how participation in the matching funds program reshapes the day-to-day operations and compliance obligations of a campaign. Before joining, campaigns should understand what the program actually requires and why entering without the proper safeguards can create significant legal exposure for candidates and operatives.
The program is built around small-dollar contributions from individual donors. But not every contribution a campaign receives will qualify for the public match. Only certain small-dollar donations from natural persons count. Contributions from corporations and LLCs, for instance, are wholly ineligible for the public match. Campaigns entering the program for the first time will likely need to rethink their fundraising strategy. In practice, campaigns must design donor-collection systems that capture and thoroughly document qualifying contributions. This is where well-structured legal and compliance systems become essential. Participating campaigns that treat fundraising as “business as usual” will likely find themselves with large numbers of unmatchable or improperly documented contributions.
Obtaining public matching funds is not immediate; campaigns must first meet mandatory qualification thresholds, including both raising a minimum dollar amount in small contributions and securing a minimum number of matchable contributors. These requirements are designed to demonstrate a base level of grassroots support before taxpayer funds are released. For candidates new to the program, this means the early phase of the campaign must be carefully planned to gather verifiable contributions, with systems in place from the first day of fundraising. Legal counsel can help campaigns design compliant strategies for meeting these requirements and ensuring that the documentation supporting claims for matching funds will survive Public Campaign Finance Board review.
Campaigns participating in the program must be aware of what qualifies as a permissible expenditure of public campaign funds. Public funds, for instance, may be spent on direct mail advertisements, radio ads, and television ads. They may not be spent on any effort to remove an opponent from the ballot (for instance, through an objection or lawsuit to an opponent’s designating petition). Knowing what is and is not a legitimate expenditure of public funds can save a campaign time, resources, and aggravation when the campaign heats up.
Finally, candidates and political operatives must know that their legal obligations do not end when the campaign ends; participating candidates may be subject to a post-election audit. Certain participating candidates are subject to automatic audits while other participating candidates may be selected for an audit through a lottery. Participating campaigns are required to set aside funds for post-election audits.
The public matching funds program can transform a race. But it also places campaigns in a high-risk compliance environment, with requirements that even seasoned campaign veterans can find complicated and unexpectedly burdensome. And the 2022 cycle demonstrated that authorities will not hesitate to investigate when there are allegations of candidates and campaigns defrauding the program and the taxpayers of New York State.
Candidates considering entering the public matching funds program should do so with full awareness of the obligations involved and with competent legal guidance in place from the campaign’s outset. Establishing the correct systems early—supported by counsel experienced with New York’s Election Law—is the most effective way for campaigns to access public funds timely, avoid costly errors, and protect the candidate’s ability to run a competitive race.
