Borrowing a tactic from the successful campaign to persuade Albany lawmakers to legalize same-sex marriage, advocates for the public financing of state elections are turning to a celebrity to make their case to New Yorkers.
In a video made public on Thursday, the actor Sam Waterston criticized what he called a ?broken system? for campaign fund-raising and suggested the state could match small donations with public money in an effort to blunt the influence of deep-pocketed contributors.
?You can bet those fat-cat C.E.O.?s, millionaire lobbyists and multibillion-dollar corporations have their own interests in mind,? Mr. Waterston said as he lamented the influence of large donors in politics.
Mr. Waterston ? who appeared on Law & Order and currently plays a television news division president on the HBO program ?The Newsroom? ? made his pitch on behalf of Fair Elections for New York, a campaign backed by a coalition of good-government groups, labor unions and environmental organizations.
The groups planned to send the video to more than a million New Yorkers, hoping some will lobby their state legislators on the issue of public financing before the elections. A large part of their challenge is getting New Yorkers interested in a subject that even the most enthusiastic advocates acknowledge can come across as arcane.
?Make sure they know: the time is now for fair elections,? Mr. Waterston said.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, has said that improving the state?s campaign-finance laws is one of his top priorities, and government reformers are hopeful for action by the Legislature either in a special session after Election Day or next year.
But the idea of providing public financing for state elections has little support among Republicans, who now hold a narrow majority in the State Senate.
Celebrity endorsements have become a staple of campaigns to influence Albany. Last year, advocates for same-sex marriage recruited a large number of entertainment figures and other well-known New Yorkers, including Mr. Waterston, to record videos supporting their cause; this year, Yoko Ono and her son, Sean Lennon, have put together a coalition of celebrities, including Lady Gaga, to oppose the use of hydraulic fracturing, also known as fracking, to extract natural gas upstate.
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