Archive: News

Webster, NY - The Capanna for Senate Committee filed their July periodic fundraising report with the NYS Board of Elections, bringing their total number of donors to more than 700.  The campaign has raised more than $25,000 from more than 700 individual donors and nearly $9,000 from unions since May 2007.  Ninety-Seven Percent (97%) of Capanna’s donors are either individuals or unions.
 
“This campaign is about People, with a capital “P,”” urged Capanna, “Not big money donors, not big corporate donors, but individual People who live and work in this District.”  Capanna’s donors hail from throughout the District and throughout the state, as she joins forces with activists ready for significant legislative change in Albany.  She also shows donors from all political parties, including Republicans and Independents, in addition to Democrats and Working Family Parties.

Capanna’s reports evidence a growing coalition of support from elected officials and candidates at all levels of government, from Stu Einstein (Mayor of Geneva) to Ted Young (Mayor of Watertown) to David Duprey (Trustee, Village of Waterloo).  Among the candidates supporting Capanna are Dan Maffei (NY-25, D), Eric Massa (NY‑29, D), Rick Dollinger (SD-56, D), Dave Garretson (AD-134, D), Tom Hasman (Monroe County Clerk, D), and Patrick Christopher (Monroe County Executive, WFP, 2006).
 
Capanna is living her passion for campaign finance reform.  She voluntarily imposed individual donor limits at $1,000, down from the permissible $15,500 Election Law limits.  “The median household income in our District is approximately $43,000.  It is not a representative democracy when a single, big money donor can contribute near 50% of the entire household income of a two-person, working family.”
 
As Capanna points out, in the current fundraising period, more than 400 donors contributed more than $14,000 to her campaign.  “The translation is that a single, big money donor can be said to equate to more than 400 people.  This perfectly illustrates the problem with big money contributions – with the stroke of a pen, the big money donor buys the influence that should belong to the majority, namely, The People.”
 
The fundraising theme for the campaign is “Change for Change,” and Capanna invites everyone she meets to get involved by contributing the change in their pocket.  “The Bush Administration has depressed the electorate to the point of despair.  Our fundraising campaign is all about reconnecting individual people back to the political system and empowering their voice.”
 
Capanna is awaiting confirmation from the Board of Elections on her Petition submission to appear on the Democrat and the Working Families Party lines of the November 2008 ballot.  She is the first Democrat to run for this office since 1992, and the first ever Working Families Party candidate for this office.
 
SD-54 includes Webster (Monroe County), Wayne County, parts of Ontario County, Seneca County, most of Cayuga County, and Lansing (Tompkins County).
 
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