Today we are joined by Tim Dunn, who is head of Unite New York. He is leading some great initiatives in New York, and we’re pleased to have him join us today. Glad to have you with us.
Thanks so much, Holly. I’m glad to be here. We’re doing some exciting things in New York as a new organization, and I am glad to have a chance to chat with folks all over the country about some of the cool things we’re doing.
Sure. Now tell us about Unite New York.
Sure. Unite New York is a relatively new organization. We’re a non-profit, non-partisan membership organization that is focused on pro-democracy reform. We think that democracy is a good thing. And if you believe that it’s not a big leap to say that more democracy is better. And even in a blue state like New York, we have a lot of things to be done to improve our democracy. And we have seen some strides and reforms made in New York to make our elections more fair and more representative. But we still have a long way to go. We have gerrymandered districts that still almost guarantee re-election to incumbents. We have heavily partisan elections that are pre-determined by party bosses. And as a result, we had primary elections and general elections with abysmally low turnout in our last gubernatorial election.
Despite having primaries on both the Republican and the Democratic side, we had turned out of only 15% for both Republican and Democrat. And it really empowers the extremes in both parties, and it makes the average voter feel like their voice doesn’t matter. And in fact, in New York, 3.4 million New Yorkers that are not enrolled in a party, their voice doesn’t matter in the primary. They’re not allowed to vote in the primary, and that’s the second largest voting bloc in the state, more voters than are currently enrolled in the Republican conservative and working families’ parties combined. And we’re trying to do whatever we can to try to help all those voters have their voices heard and feel like their voices matter.
All right. So, what’s your goal? Obviously, it’s going to have something to do with term limits, right? [chuckle]
Absolutely. Yeah. We are looking at trying to move the state forward to get more folks involved in the process and have their voices heard as I’ve mentioned. And we’ve launched a campaign this year that we call ‘More Voices, More Choices’.
Oh, I like that.
Yes, we think that if we can have more voices heard and we have more choices for our voters, then ultimately, we’re going to have better outcomes in our elections. We’ve done some research recently where we saw that only 10% of New Yorkers think the state is ahead of the curve when it comes to election reform. And 55% of New Yorkers think the state is on the wrong track.
Wow.
On top of that, 40% of New Yorkers are thinking right now about leaving the state because of our broken election system. As we built the More Voices, More Choices campaign, we centered around five big issues to try to improve our democracy. And first and foremost, our tip of the spear, our number one issue, is implementing term limits for our statewide offices. New York is one of the states in the minority that does not have any term limits for what we call our constitutional offices, our governor, lieutenant governor, comptroller, and attorney general. They can serve as long as they want to stay in the office. And due to the nature of the fundraising apparatus in New York, Governor Hochul, after assuming the position from Governor Cuomo resigning in scandal, she raised north of $60 million within six months of taking that role on.
So really, folks are in these offices for a lifetime if they want to be, unless they’re led off in handcuffs, which unfortunately has happened far too often. We have had every one of our constitutional officers leave the office in shame in the last 20 years. So, we are starting with term limits on our Constitutional Officers and in fact, we have a fantastic…
Oh, we love that. [laughter]
Yes. And not only is this an idea and a concept, but we’ve also worked with Assemblywoman, Monica Wallace, out of Buffalo, who’s introduced legislation to do just that. She’s a real champion of term limits. She has a variety of different legislation on term limits. But the one that we are shining a bright light on is Assembly Bill 9095, which would implement a three-term limit on our statewide offices, our Constitutional Officers.
Now, we recognize this is not perfect legislation and we could probably tighten it up even more, but we think it is a logical first step in a state that doesn’t really like doing these sorts of things. Term limits are tip of the spear. We do have a few other reforms that we think would go well with it, including making it easier for independent candidates to get on the ballot. Right now, in New York state for an independent candidate to get on the ballot for Governor, you must get 45,000 signatures in 42 days. I will attest that that is an impossible…
That’s a little tough, huh?
It’s the most difficult threshold by population in the nation.
Wow.
It is impossible. And as a result, two years ago, it was only the second time in New York State history, we had only two candidates on the ballot for Governor since this law has been established. We are looking to establish citizen ballot initiatives so that the average citizen can petition an issue onto the ballot. We know oftentimes when citizen ballot initiatives are put in place, the first thing that comes forward from that is term limits. So, we’re a little cart before the horse with that, but we think that these issues go well together. We are also seeking to have rank choice voting and non-partisan primaries implemented, and have some legislation that’s been forwarded, Assembly Bill 479 that would implement that.
But our big push and our number one focus is term limits and that term limits legislation. We are seeking to get a Senate sponsor pinned down here in the days and weeks ahead. And our priority is going to be pushing that through this legislative session because that would require a constitutional amendment, which means it must be passed by two separately elected state legislatures and then ratified by the voters. We are excited about it and…
So how long would that take to get passed then if it takes two constitutional meetings?
So that means it would have to be… We are hoping to have it passed in this legislative session, which runs through the first week of June, and then two separately elected legislatures. Since the legislature is up for election this year, that means they would have to take it up again next year or the following year and pass it again. And then once that happens, it would go before the voters on the ballot for a general vote on the general election. And since 80% of New Yorkers support term limits for statewide offices, we are pretty confident that this will enjoy widespread support. Interestingly, Governor Hochul has offered her support for this initiative.
Wow.
She said on a campaign trail two weeks ago that she would support term limits for the governor. And so, we think the time is right. And another thing, and we share this with all the legislators as we meet with them, in New York, we really think the time is right this year, if you look at our national election, we have a presidential election this year, and I tell you, there’s not many people that I talk to that are excited about this presidential election. We are facing a presidential election this year with two of the least popular, most unenthusiastic candidates that we have had in a long time. We’ve got close to; I think the last poll I saw was 70% of Americans say they don’t want to see a Trump Biden rematch this year. We have two candidates that are collectively 150 years old running for president. And what better time than in that kind of a setting for the New York state legislature to act and implement term limits and say that regardless of what happens in Washington, New York state and the New York state legislature is going to stand with our voters and 80% of our voters that say we want term limits.
Now why are term limits so important to you?
Well, personally, I live in a district where I am represented by a state senator who has literally spent the last 40 years in the state legislature.
Wow. I guess he’s no fan of term limits.
No, I don’t think so because when, when redistricting occurred a few years ago, this member was put into a different district. And instead of running in that district, he didn’t like his chances, he literally moved to be in another district to run against another Republican. And primaried that Republican member, a strong younger female member of the state Senate primaried her and knocked her out of the state senate because he didn’t want to give up his seat.
Wow.
He is a 70-year-old representative who has been in office for 40 years. And I joke with people that at some point if you don’t like your wife that much then you got to see a therapist or something. But this cannot be and the state legislature and being in office for a lifetime is not what our founding fathers intended.
Yeah, you’re so correct on that.
These were farmers and business leaders and patriots that felt it was their duty to go serve and then return to their daily lives, not to make it a career path. And it is incumbent on all of us to try to serve our government and our community, but it’s also incumbent upon all of us to return to the real world. This is not a career path, nor should it be.
Okay. And what are the next steps for your organization on term limits? I heard you are looking for a Senate sponsor. Are you lobbying legislators right now, getting them to commit on this bill? What are the next steps and if somebody wanted to get active, what would they help you with?
Well, that’s a perfect question. So, yes, we are lobbying right now. I’m actually meeting with my lobbying team in just a few minutes here to talk about what we’ll be doing over the next week. We already had a lobby day a few weeks ago where we brought a bunch of people to the state capitol. And we conducted, over the course of two days, we were in meetings from 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM for two days. We met with close to two dozen state legislators, we got two additional co-sponsors during that time and really picked up a ton of momentum.
We are going directly to the state legislature and lobbying directly, we’ve also launched an aggressive digital campaign where we are on Facebook and on digital marketing tools taking this story to the elected officials and to grassroots folks to say, call and write your legislator. If you visit morevoicesmorechoices.us, that’s our campaign website. And if you’re a New Yorker and you go to that website, you’re going to have an action button right there. It’s the easiest thing you’ll do today. You click on this button, and it will take you to a place to automatically send an email to your legislator for you. You don’t have to look anything up. It’s going to say, here is your legislator. Let’s send them an email and say, we want term limits now. So that tool is available to you right now. We are going to be doing additional lobby days throughout the course of the legislative session. We are in a dead sprint to June to get this done.
What’s the June deadline?
The state legislature is in session through the first week of June. We want to get this bill across the finish line by that time. We’re hoping to get a Senate sponsor here in the next week or two. And then we’re going to be out in the streets. We just hired a new statewide organizing director who is literally taking us to the streets. Next week he is going to be with a team of volunteers at the New York City St. Patrick’s Day parade, out there canvassing and getting people signed up and getting them active. If you’re at the St. Patrick’s Day parade, look for Unite New York and out…
Is that the reason why you got the green behind you? [chuckle]
That’s my heritage. I live it. We are going to have folks out at the Dingus Day event in Buffalo. We are going to be all over the state at public events, canvassing. We are going to be on the ground talking to folks. We are going to be on digital outlets. We are going to be in newspapers and op-eds on digital. We are going to hope that the legislature gets sick of us because this is such an easy issue for the legislature to take up. It has no impact on the budget. It will ultimately improve our democracy. And you know what? It’s something that the people want. 80% of New Yorkers want to see this implemented. It’s a no brainer.
All right. Give us that website one more time, how people can get involved.
Morevoicesmorechoices.us, super easy to click and get involved. You can also visit our website at uniteny.org.
Well, thank you Tim Dunn: for getting involved in this issue and taking the term limits up in New York and we’re really pleased that you could join us today.
Thank you, Holly. Thanks for all you guys are doing across the country and it’s so great to have a partner like you guys.
All right. Thank you so much.