Anti Semitism in NYC

Taxpayer-funded hate, thanks to the city campaign-finance system

By Post Editorial Board

March 3, 2017 | 7:33pm

In a fresh sign of the perversity of the city’s campaign-finance system, it looks like the taxpayers this year will be subsidizing outright hate speech.

In Upper Manhattan, Thomas Lopez-Pierre is making “greedy Jewish landlords” the centerpiece of his campaign against Councimember Mark Levine.

Lopez-Pierre vows on Twitter to use $100,000 in public campaign cash to inform voters that his bid for office is about “protecting” tenants from those greedy landlords.

His Twitter timeline is replete with posts tagged “Greedy Jewish Landlords” — including one targeting President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

The taxpayers may dodge this bullet. Lopez-Pierre has to jump through a few hoops to start collecting public funds: He needs to raise five grand from city residents and have at least 75 different donors in the district — and, of course, make it onto the ballot.

On the other hand, he’s already raised $9,400 from 59 donors, which is more than he managed in his aborted 2013 run for the City Council. And if he makes it, he’ll get six taxpayer dollars for every buck he’s raised.

Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito rightly says that to “have someone be able to spend [taxpayer dollars] to put forth that kind of a message is despicable.”

Yet the possibility is intrinsic to the system. As the city Campaign Finance Board has noted, the US Constitution won’t allow efforts to control candidate speech.

Nor should it. We’re firm supporters of free speech: Lopez-Pierre has every right to spew his bile, and others are free to donate to support him doing it.

But the taxpayers shouldn’t have to back him, too. That they might have no choice is one more reason to scrap taxpayer financing of political campaigns.