Mayor’s Charter Reform Referendum Passes

Winning approval in last Tuesday’s (Nov. 2) election, was Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s referendum proposed to revise the voluntary campaign finance system used by candidates running for office in New York City..
According to City Board of Elections spokesperson Naomi Bernstein, with results in from "mostly all" of the City’s polling precincts, the vote was 243,986 in favor of campaign finance reform and 163,519 against the Mayor’s plan.
The singular campaign finance question was the only proposal to emerge from meetings of a mayorally appointed commission with the goal to decide whether or not to revise the City Charter.
Many critics of the Charter Revision Commission said that the 12 member panel was created to thwart a separate referendum, endorsed by City Council Speaker Peter Vallone, which would have given City residents an opportunity to vote on whether or not taxpayer money should be used to build a new Yankee Stadium on Manhattan’s West Side.
An obscure election law states that no other referendum shall appear on the ballot in a election year that the charter is up for review
A citywide total of 407,505 votes cast on the campaign finance question compared with 1, 330,000 voting in the Senate race. Proponents of the ballpark referendum claim that the appearance of the proposal in the lower right hand corner of the ballot may have confused voters.
"Proposal Number One," which appeared under the heading of "A Local Question" in Tuesday’s election, contained only one reference to the City Charter in the last line of a five line paragraph. Some advocates of a stadium referendum feel that voters could have pulled the lever without realizing that the issue was a proposal to amend the charter.