The Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United, which opened the floodgates to the buying and selling of elections, is a ruling Democrats love to deplore but nobody ever seems able to do anything about. Yet an intriguing idea came from a most unexpected quarter on Wednesday afternoon, when Gov. Andrew Cuomo, as part of his latest speech on cleaning up government, suggested that New York State could take the lead in attacking one of the ruling’s most pernicious effects.  Citizens United permits essentially unlimited political spending by groups acting independently of candidates and campaigns. In practice, candidates wink and nod and devise ways to coordinate with these supposedly independent groups, rightly believing that hapless federal regulators won’t act to punish them. Mr. Cuomo argues that New York and other states can step in to clarify and expose the ways that “independent” political-action committees work hand-in-hand with candidates, thus evading spending limits.  The core of Mr. Cuomo’s idea was detailed by his legal counsel, Alphonso David, in a two-page opinion on Wednesday. Mr. David listed some obvious red flags — if an “independent” spending group hires a candidate’s former staff members or relatives, or discusses strategy with a campaign — that need defining and codifying, so prosecutors could get to work. Mr. Cuomo’s office said that legislation to do this was still being worked on Thursday night, and that the governor intends to get it passed within the week.  It will be necessary to examine the bill for loopholes, and to see how well it will withstand any free-speech challenge. This plan may well join the long list of reform promises Mr. Cuomo has made, largely without effect, since he took office in 2011.  But the principle of cracking down on collusion is a good one. It has been made forcefully by good-government groups, like the Brennan Center for Justice, and by Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who has sponsored a bill making similar suggestions. Senate Democrats on Thursday proposed a package of campaign reforms targeting Citizens United as well.  But there is, of course, an ethical elephant-in-the-room. It doesn’t take a cynic to notice that the governor has long failed to deliver on a full slate of ethics reforms. There are spending loopholes to close and outside incomes to limit and corrupt pols’ pensions to seize. But much of this legislation is stalled, and the governor has been ineffective and indifferent in fighting for it.  Albany remains deeply uninterested in fixing itself, even in this year of years, when the two men who once ruled the Legislature, Sheldon Silver and Dean Skelos, have been sentenced to long prison terms for corruption.  A skeptic might wonder if Mr. Cuomo is engaging in an elaborate distraction. Citizens United is not nearly as big a problem in New York State as Mr. Cuomo says it is, because state campaign finance laws are so loose, the opportunities for lavish spending so broad. Donors with truckloads of cash might not waste time illegally coordinating though a political action committee when they could drive their trucks through existing gaping loopholes — freely and legally donating tens of thousands of dollars through limited liability corporations, for example, or to political parties’ “housekeeping funds.”  They would not have to worry a bit about Mr. Cuomo’s Citizens United crackdown. But that is another editorial. Citizens United is a disaster for democracy, somebody has to attack it, and Mr. Cuomo will deserve credit if he makes New York the leader in that effort.
The New York governor’s plan to fight the legal means of buying elections is commendable, if he can pull it off.