Andrea Senteno of the Gotham Gazette offers a summary of the state of campaign finance in New York, and New York City in particular, in an article which focuses on the various public financing methods in place and under consideration, from matching fund programs to Clean Elections.

Right now New York City has a matching program of public financing in place that matches small contributions to city candidates four-to-one. A proposal has also been introduced to give the city a Clean Elections full public financing program, as cities like Portland, Oregon and Albuquerque, New Mexico have done.

New York's Governor David Patterson, like Eliot Spitzer before him, is a strong supporter of Clean Elections programs and introduced a bill to publicly finance New York elections when he was a state Senator. Clean Elections advocates in the state are optimistic about their changes with Patterson at the helm, in a state which has wrestled with better campaign finance regulation for many years.