ALBANY BRIEF
A Report on People and Issues in the State's Capital
Putting Mouth Where Money Is
Anti-lobby Push Targeting 27

by Matthew Cox- New York Newsday
Monday, June 12, 2000

Albany-Charles Juntikka didn't like being pushed around by bullies while growing up in a blue-collar suburb of Detroit.

Now, 30 years older and capable of throwing around his own weight, he and a group of high school and college students are taking aim at 27 state senators and Assembly members who they contend are standing in the way of measures that would reduce the influence of money on politics.

Many of the 27 represent so-called marginal districts, where party enrollment numbers or uniquely local issues make them vulnerable in this fall's campaigns, and Juntikka is unabashed about selecting them for that reason. Six of the lawmakers are from Long Island and three are from Queens.

"The only way to get the attention of the legislative leaders is to put intense pressure on their weakest rank-and- file members," said Juntikka, 46, a bankruptcy lawyer from Manhattan. "If we can defeat just one of them, they're all going to get religion."

Last week his organization, Students4Reform, unveiled a series of 30-second television ads that urge voters to turn out incumbent lawmakers who, according to the group, have accepted gifts from lobbyists or failed to support tighter limits on lobbying and campaign donations.

Similar messages appear on postcards the group has mailed to voters in the lawmakers' districts. The group's Web site, http://www.students4reform.com, lists toll-free phone numbers Juntikka pays for that forwards voters' calls to their elected officials.

Some lawmakers received so many calls that they complained to the phone company. Juntikka is personally funding the campaign and estimates he has spent more than $35,000, which has not been enough to buy many ads, though he says he hopes to find financing to run them more frequently right before the election.

Many interest groups try to influence lawmakers, but they usually are backed by larger organizations and are urging them to vote in favor of a particular bill, while also being generally less aggressive. Juntikka's ads, by contrast, urge people to vote against a particular legislator and are blunt and critical, oftentimes without contacting the lawmaker they are targeting-a courtesy extended by most other interest groups.

Juntikka's guerrilla-warfare style has angered some legislators, most of whom have never spoken with him or his organization. But he and his students, whom Juntikka pays $8 to $10 an hour for their part- time work, offer no apologies for their tactics.

"As long as we have their attention, we can work from there," said Eugene Khavkin, a senior at Stuyvesant High School who likes to work with computers and who helped Juntikka's group develop a statewide list of voters who rarely miss a November election. "We're not as guided by the standard rules of the game."

Sen. Michael Balboni (R-Mineola) appears on the list of targeted lawmakers, but said it's inaccurate to describe him as an opponent of lobbying reform because he supported the Senate's tougher restrictions on lobbying gifts last year and, like other Senate Republicans, is voluntarily abiding by the provisions.

"We're the ones who won't take dinners from lobbyists," Balboni said. "That's certainly meaningful reform."

Assemb. Audrey Pheffer (D-Rockaway), who co-sponsored a bill to fund campaigns with public money, which Juntikka's group supports, is also listed on the group's Web site, which cites her vote last year in favor of a lobbying bill Juntikka called "sham reform." Pheffer and other Assembly members should have persuaded Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) to pass a measure approved by the Senate that contained tougher restrictions, Juntikka said.

"That was the agreed-upon bill," said Pheffer, invoking legislative parlance that describes a measure that has received the blessing of Albany's three leaders, Silver, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno and Gov. George Pataki. "It was the bill I had the opportunity to vote on."

But Juntikka said he's not persuaded by that argument. He said the Republican-led Senate and Democrat-led Assembly have a shared interest in allowing reform measures to die. The Assembly, for example, repeatedly passes campaign finance legislation and blames the Senate for failing to do the same. The Senate last year adopted tough limits on lobbying, only to have the measure die for lack of Assembly support.

"The end result is the public gets nothing," Juntikka said. "They do it intentionally . . . I'll say to them, 'That's not good enough. You need to persuade your caucus to adopt these tougher laws.' We are not fooled. We want to see results."

Juntikka became a political activist about five years ago when he and a small platoon of students launched a signature-gathering campaign aimed at getting a proposition on the 1996 ballot in New York City to publicly finance elections. Although the courts ultimately rejected the effort, the New York City Council in 1998 adopted a law to match campaign donations.

While lawmakers question Juntikka's take-no-prisoners style, some observers say he has been remarkably effective. Nicole Gordon, executive director of the New York City Campaign Finance Board, said, "One could almost describe him as a one-man citizens' group. I think he has been an example of how much one person, or one person with the help of students, can do."

Several lawmakers targeted by Juntikka's group did not return phone messages, and a spokesman for Bruno contacted Newsday after learning this article was being written. "I am suggesting our senators basically ignore him because he could be breaking the law," said John McArdle, who said Juntikka recently failed to itemize his expenditures with the state lobbying commission. "He's doing this, unfortunately, with students who don't know better, or who may not be clearly informed about the issues or what Juntikka is up to, which is to promote himself."

Juntikka said he is not required to report to the lobbying commission because his group is advocating a "no" vote against incumbents, rather than promoting specific bills. He said he will file a financial disclosure form with the state Board of Elections in July.

Li Lin of Brooklyn, a junior at Stuyvesant High School who became involved in Students4Reform while working part-time for Juntikka's law firm, said she's been alarmed by some of what she has learned about lawmaking. One of the first things she questioned was the custom of giving majority-party lawmakers far more money and staff than their counterparts in the minority. "There are a lot of things that could be fixed," she said.

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