[l:http://www.observer.com/thepoliticker/2005/11/campaign-finance-musings.html|The Politicker] has a good piece on [l:http://www.observer.com/thepoliticker/2005/11/campaign-finance-musings.html|The NYC Campaign Finance System] which provides generous matching funds for participating candidates. It consists of an emai from Molly Watkins at Glover Park Group (she was spokeswoman for the CFB).:
The real problem is at the Council level, where incumbents are taking huge payouts to face nominal challengers and there is way too much money in the system. The program has succeeded in driving up the cost of campaigns for the lesser offices

I started writing about this issue in [gh:node/238|The Price of Victory], and will continue in the upcoming analysis of the entire campaign season with an eye toward how much money went into the political industrial complex of consultants and mail vendors and printers. A brief highlight is tha the Parkside Group received $158,364 from 16 candidates.

Esther Greenbaum and I will look at how much consultants billed, whether their clients had real challengers, how much public matching money their clients received. We'll also look into the kinds of expenditures made by candidates (advertising, literature, compliance, petitioning, etc...)