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Adding new momentum in the fight to clean up Albany, the presidents of three national labor unions are commending New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for his leadership in pressing for public funding of elections in the state, and urging him to keep up the fight.

In a letter to the Governor, the presidents of the UAW, SEIU and Communications Workers of America write that ?uniting us all is a commitment to the idea that all workers deserve a voice and that in a democracy, wealth should not determine political powers. The status quo systems of elections in New York, with their sky-high donation limits and lack of public matching funds, undermine these principles.?

In its January 2010 Citizens United decision, the U.S. Supreme Court turned election and political spending upside down. With the Court?s determination that ?corporations are people too,? with free speech rights and other individual liberties, it eliminated the campaign spending restrictions that were put in place more than a century ago to stop corporations and other groups from exerting undue influence and spending millions of dollars and more in the electoral process.