The statewide ballot proposition would expand discriminatory protections in New York to include ethnicity, disability, age, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, pregnancy or pregnancy outcomes and reproductive health care and autonomy. It has been the subject of widespread misinformation, including assertions that it would codify abortion laws in the state constitution or allow children to undergo medical procedures, including gender surgery, without their parents' knowledge or consent.
The shadowy opposition group got off to a strong start thanks to $6.5 million donated by Richard Uhlein, an heir to the Schlitz Brewing fortune who's poured funding into anti-abortion causes across the country.
But that group — a ballot issue committee called "Vote NO on Prop One" — was not registered with the state by someone from New York.
Registration documents obtained through a public records request show the ballot issue committee was registered by Cabell Hobbs, whose address is listed in Mclean, Va. — 30 minutes outside Washington, D.C.
Hobbs is also named as the treasurer for 85 political action committees active in this year's elections, according to a query with OpenSecrets, an election transparency group that collates data from federal election filings.
Most of them directly support Republican candidates running for office in several states across the country. Among them are U.S. Reps. Elise Stefanik and Claudia Tenney in New York.
Hobbs declined to take questions when reached by phone Wednesday but said he would pass along the inquiry about the group. He would not say who his contact was.
The only other person on the registration document is Jeremy Bebermeyer from East Lansing, Mich. The phone number listed for Bebermeyer was answered by a woman, who said she did not know him.
Its website does not name its donors or anyone involved with the effort aside from the mention of a spokesperson in a news release issued Monday. There are no directions on how to contact the group.
But New Yorkers will find the group's ads difficult to avoid before the election. It's already spent close to $5 million to flood the airwaves on television, radio and streaming services.
New Rights for Noncitizens
The Vote NO on Prop One committee has only released one ad but it's already been viewed more than 99,000 times on YouTube, where it can be uploaded at no cost.
The ad claims that if Proposition 1 passes, noncitizens would become entitled to rights now only available to citizens, including government benefits and the ability to vote.
"Critics say it could block local efforts to deal with the migrant crisis, give illegals the constitutional right to taxpayer benefits and open the door to noncitizens voting," the ad's narrator says.
That's prefaced by a brief visual of the proposal, which would amend the state constitution to protect against discrimination based on national origin and several other factors.
All of those protections already exist in state law but adding them to the state constitution would make them harder to undo.
Opponents of the measure have argued that, because discrimination based on national origin will be in the constitution, noncitizens will gain the new rights featured in the ad.
"New Yorkers mustn't allow noncitizen voting that would devalue the very importance of American citizenship," Putnam County Executive Kevin Byrne, a Republican, said in September.
The full legal theory is that, if a noncitizen claims the state discriminated against them by not allowing them to vote, a judge would side with that person based on the language of the amendment.
Richard Rifkin, legal director at the Government Law Center at Albany Law School, said he doesn't think the text of the proposal supports that theory.
"I just don't see how there's anything in this amendment that says you can't treat someone differently if they're not a citizen," Rifkin said.
That's because of what qualifies someone to vote, Rifkin said. You have to be a citizen of New York to vote here in elections. That's different from someone's national origin, which refers to the place where they were born.
"But that doesn't determine whether or not you can vote," he said. "Citizenship is different from national origin."
If a noncitizen is denied the right to vote, it wouldn't be because of where they immigrated from, he said. It would be because they don't meet the basic qualification for voting: citizenship.
"It's not based upon their national origin. It's based upon the fact that they are not a citizen," Rifkin said. "The word 'citizen' does not appear in the amendment."
There's also federal law, which overrules the state constitution. That means New York wouldn't be able to allow something that's explicitly barred nationwide, said Shawn J. Donahue, an attorney who specializes in Election Law and teaches at the University at Buffalo.
"A state constitutional amendment can not change federal law," Donahue said. "Federal law bars people that are noncitizens from voting already."
A big part of the confusion is because of how the amendment is written.
While it expands protections from discrimination in the state constitution, those protections aren't tightly defined. That's allowed different interpretations of the amendment to be used as a way to convince voters to choose a side, whether or not the legal theory has merit.
"I think that what opponents of this amendment are trying to do is to get people looking at other issues and not, let's say, abortion rights, which are very popular in New York," Donahue said.
The New York City Bar Association, a nonpartisan organization, has also argued that the amendment would not give noncitizens any rights reserved for permanent residents.
Who's Behind the Campaigns?
Most of the funding for the Vote NO on Prop One committee came from Uhlein's donation. Another $1 million came from Tom Tisch, part of the wealthy Tisch family in New York City. Investment banker Warren Stephens pitched in $500,000 as well.
But the identity of who has actually managed the committee and its efforts are a mystery to any voter who tries to find out.
Among the dozens of committees on which Hobbs is named treasurer are ones that support Republican superstars, like U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R- Texas., and Sen. Joni Ernst, R- Iowa.
Another committee was created by John Bolton, who was national security advisor under former President Donald J. Trump.
Hobbs was that committee's treasurer, records show, when it was accused of unlawfully working with foreign nationals employed by Cambridge Analytica, a consulting firm that was later found to have misused personal data harvested from Facebook.
As treasurer, he's authorized to approve spending for the Vote NO on Prop 1 committee. Most of it was directed to McLaughlin & Associates, a consulting firm with an address in Rockland County that placed the millions of dollars in ad buys for the committee.
After being contacted by the Times Union, the firm forwarded the inquiry to someone who claimed to be a representative for the Vote NO on Prop 1 committee.
That representative, Rob Ryan, said the effort had no ties to the state Republican Party. The person behind it, he said, is Bobbie Anne Cox, a constitutional law attorney who's teamed up with opponents of Proposition 1 to form their legal strategy against the amendment this year.
The campaign in support of the amendment has been led by two groups: the state Democratic Party and New Yorkers for Equal Rights, a group led by a coalition of organizations that have signed on in support of the measure.
Gov. Kathy Hochul supported an effort last year to raise $20 million to fund the coalition-backed campaign but that didn't happen. The combined amount spent by both groups adds up to less than $7 million.
New Yorkers for Equal Rights has spent $4.7 million on ad buys, door-to-door outreach, phone banking and consulting firms. Records show that close to $1 million of that was for online ads, campaign literature and email efforts.
"We have built a strong campaign to tap into the vast support for Prop 1 among New Yorkers — and we're ready to win on Tuesday," said Sasha Ahuja, campaign director for New Yorkers for Equal Rights.
"Late money from out-of-state, anti-abortion billionaires spreads lies, but doesn't kill the overwhelming support we have and clear momentum behind us," said Sasha Ahuja, campaign director for New Yorkers for Equal Rights. "New Yorkers know that abortion is on the ballot, and want their fundamental rights and freedoms protected."
The group's largest funder is the New York Civil Liberties Union, which donated more than $1.5 million. Groups who support access to abortion, including Planned Parenthood's political funds in New York, also sent more than $1.5 million to the group.
Other large donors include Lynn Schusterman, a billionaire philanthropist from Missouri who gave $400,000 to the group, labor unions 1199 SEIU and 32BJ and immigrant rights group Make the Road New York.
The state Democratic Party spent $1 million in September on paid media, including digital ads, text messages, and more than 1.5 million pieces of mail. The party plans to spend another million through the election.
Hochul and the amendment's supporters have largely focused on the amendment's protections for access to abortion in hopes that will drive more voters to the polls.
"If it's up to a governor going forward in the future, this is something I want to enshrine in our constitution," Hochul said in an interview Sunday.
But some opponents have asserted that abortion rights are not in jeopardy in New York and the proposition will not change that.
In an op-ed published in the Times Union last month, former U.S. Rep. John J. Faso called the ballot proposition "a Trojan horse intended to sneak new and controversial 'rights' into the state constitution under the guise of protecting abortion."
He argued the new categories added into the measure are already protected from discrimination under state law and he insisted that "it would seriously erode parental rights, undermine girls' sports and create new rights to taxpayer benefits for noncitizens."
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