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A look at the political war for New York MMA legislation with Justin Klein
By Zach Arnold | October 12, 2010
Justin Klein, an attorney based out of New York City, appeared on Tapout Radio last night to talk about what is going on in the state of New York regarding MMA legislation and what needs to be done to clear political hurdles.
Justin is involved in a new project called the New York MMA Initiative and he is helping out charitably with a youth program that’s MMA-oriented in his area. He is looking for assistance in terms of equipment, so if you are a manufacturer of related goods and can help out, contact Justin. Here is what he is looking for:
“Well, right now, you know we sort of do it on a needy (basis) because it’s hard to get a lot of stuff but we need gloves, these kids need training gloves and, again, in terms of they don’t spar, I just want to throw out there because I know that question’s been asked. They don’t spar. They do grapple and they’re learning Sambo and Jiu-Jitsu but there’s no stand-up sparring, they do hit pads, that’s all they do. So I want to throw out there, but… they need training gloves, they need groin protection, and you know we got them a first round of rash guards and some board shorts but if we can get any of that gear we’d love that, too.”
We have the quotes from Justin’s appearance on the Tapout show last night. (Full-page mode.)
Regarding Zuffa’s political contributions to the New York gubernatorial campaign of Andrew Cuomo
“At the outset, obviously I’m sure you know this and most of the followers know this, Mixed Martial Arts is currently illegal in New York state and has been since 1997 and so, right now, there is a fairly heated Governor race going on between Andrew Cuomo and a man named Carl Paladino and… essentially there were reports, I think it was last week in the New York Post about campaign contributions from Zuffa to the Cuomo campaign and the number thrown out there was, you know, approximately $75,000 and I have looked at this issue a little bit earlier because I had seen on Fight Opinion mention that Zuffa had, in fact, contributed money to Cuomo’s campaign and I looked myself at the Board of Elections web site and I only saw about half that, maybe $36,000 being contributed but that said the mandatory filing last filing would have been in July so it is of course possible that Zuffa has contributed additional money. In The New York Post article it indicated that Cuomo had not taken a position which did not surprise me and frankly I have called his campaign myself a week earlier to see where he stood on the issue and he told me to send an e-mail and I never received a response but I had called the Paladino campaign and was told that he had not in fact taken a position on it so in the New York Post they indicated that Paladino had, and I think quoting here sort of, had reservations about cage fights. So that was news to me, so in fact today actually I followed up with the Paladino campaign and I had a fairly lengthy conversation with one of his campaign people and they said in fact he had not taken a position on the issue. They said that they were aware that there had been reports that he had but in fact he had not taken a position and he still hasn’t and people should look to where he generally stands on issues and, you know, a couple of those issues include the 2nd Amendment right to bare arms and other issues that Paladino where he stands on other issues to come to a conclusion about where he stands. So, as of right now, Paladino’s camp says he hasn’t taken a position and sort of as an aside here, the New York Post and Paladino have sort of a little bit of a… I’ll call it a ‘situation’ they sort of have a little bit of a heated issue between them. At a recent political thing up in Lake George, Paladino went at it with one of the editors from The New York Post (Fred Dicker) and they have a little bit of a issue there, so that might help explain why that was reported in the article.”
Why has legislation for MMA dragged for so long in New York?
“Well, I mean look you have, you know, and this thing will come up often, you have an Assemblyman upstate, Bob Reilly, who’s very vocal about this. In fact, he wrote a report to the full Assembly, I think it was called A Case for Why Mixed Martial Arts Should Not Be Legalized and, you know, his stance, you know, he added a few point but one of them and the main one is that violence leads to more violence and he doesn’t want to have more violence in the state than there already is. So, they don’t focus necessarily on, you know, boxing and that being, he sort of avoids the comparison. He likes to use, recently he was interviewed on Inside MMA and he said there that Mixed Martial Arts is different from other sports because the intent is to hurt the other person but he obviously, you know, making that argument he’s ignoring that when two guys get into a ring, it would be the same intent if you’re going to make that argument. But really it’s just a violence argument. We don’t need violence in the state and I think that they, you know, people like Assemblyman Reilly like to look back at the state of the sport when the ban was put into place in 1997 and they’re not willing to look beyond that and to see that the sport has dramatically changed since then, largely being an offshoot of the Unified Rules in 2000-2001 and he continues to look backwards and one of the recent things that I read that he was relying on in terms of the intent factor is he was looking back at the PRIDE rules without, you know, looking forward or looking at the current state and that is where MMA takes place are following the Unified Rules and one of the judging criteria is not damage to the opponent. So, I mean, I don’t think boxing, you know, that would be an argument that would be against, what about boxing? And response, you know, and this takes away from Reilly but my New York state senator Liz Krueger, she recently voted against the bill to lift the ban on MMA in the New York Senate and in fact it did pass the New York Senate… but she put up a blog post on the New York Senate web site, you know, and she made a number of statements and one of them was factually completely inaccurate but her position is boxing may be legal and boxing may take place but I don’t need to add to that by adding more violence. So, at least (on the surface) that’s the claim.
“It passed the New York State Senate and in fact it was also included in Governor Paterson, he had put forward his Executive Budget and he had put in a provision that would have lifted the ban on Mixed Martial Arts. So you knew this year that you had the Governor in favor and you had the New York State Senate in favor as well because it passed the Senate and that took it back to the Assembly and in both regards, both on the budget track which is a way in essence without getting into too much detail to avoid the normal legislative process in the sense that if the Governor puts it in the budget and the Assembly and the Senate agree to the same budget, then that would be a way to do it without having it go through the normal process which is to pass both houses by a majority and then get signed into law by the Governor. And so in both instances, the Senate and the Governor in their proposed budgets included lifting the ban on Mixed Martial Arts. The Assembly did not and in terms of it passing the Senate and then the same bill, a parallel bill in the Assembly made it through the Tourism committee, made it through the Codes committee, and again stalled out in the Ways and Means Committee. So the obvious sticking point is the Assembly and that is where Reilly resides, he in fact is on the Tourism committee so for the past two years the bill has passed out of his committee, so it’s obviously not that he has such great control of that body. But at this point he has the ear of the Speaker of the Assembly and the Democratic Caucus and it’s not moving and so it’s stalled out for the last two years.”
Does it matter if the state Governor ends up backing MMA legislation or do others control the political power?
“Because this year was a good example and although Paterson had his own issues and he wasn’t going to be running for reelection, he was in support of [lifting the MMA ban]. But ultimately the thing that needs to change is the Assembly and, you know, that’s where there are plenty of lobbying efforts involved and Reilly mentioned it on Inside MMA that Madison Square Garden has lobbyists involved, that Zuffa has lobbyists involved. The lobbying needs to be directed at the Assembly. .. And there’s two ways of looking at it. Cuomo… is more likely to have, you know, at least it would appear a better relationship with the Speaker of the Assembly Sheldon Silver and Paladino has gone record basically saying that he thinks that the Speaker of the Assembly should basically be in Attica and so there’s two different approaches there and I think both could be, you know, both could work. I mean with someone’s who completely anti like Paladino and his relationship with Silver, you know it’s possible that Silver’s going to realize to get anything done you’re going to need the Governor’s support for at least something, so maybe it gets thrown in some sort of trade to get other legislation passed and with Cuomo it’s possible that if Cuomo was in favor he could sit down with Silver or sit down with some other people in the Democratic Caucus and say, look, this thing has vastly changed, enough already, you know, let’s look at the sport for what it is now and let’s not look at it for what it was in 1997 when the ban was put into place.
“Madison Square Garden, they see it as a potential large source of revenue and if you look, there was a report commissioned and it was commissioned by Zuffa but it was done by a company out there and they estimated and this was recently repeated by Marc Ratner in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, they repeated that one event in Madison Square Garden could lead to $11-14 million dollars in economic activity. That includes hotels, restaurants, and of course concessions and other direct revenue that would go to MSG, so they’re for it. Also on the side of who’s for it, the current Chairwoman of the New York State Athletic Commission, Melvina Lathan, she is for it. And again, you know the counter to that by someone like Reilly would be that these people seek to derive revenue from it. The commission would make money if MMA was legalized here and so would the Garden, but they’re clearly for it. And in fact Governor Pataki, you know, he who signed the law signed into law the ban of MMA in 1997, he has now said that in fact he’s for it, it’s a different sport and entirely different circumstances now. So you can take that for what it is but, I mean, there is a lot of support for it but there’s also a very, I will call it… I’d say largely inept political system here in New York and, you know, there’s real problems in the Assembly and if you don’t have the right people supporting a piece of legislation, it could be a long, a long road unfortunately.”
What will it take to clear the political hurdles?
“Well, I mean, if you’re out there and you’re listening, you should write letters, call, I mean, these New York politicians as much as they might like to think they’re on the Federal level, they’re not and they should be accessible and you should be able to call their offices. I frequently call Assemblyman (Jonathan) Bing and he is one of the co-sponsors of the bill to legalize MMA and I talk to him frequently and his advice and he constantly, constantly repeats this is people need to call their Assembly people, especially in the city here, you know, which is where I am (NYC). Call them and say, listen, you need to look at this and get beyond what Bob Reilly is putting out there in his opinion piece on why it should not be legalized and you need to realize that this is a different sport and he’s using old examples to push his agenda. The sport has changed, the rules are in place, you can’t look back at PRIDE rules and judging criteria and you have to look at what the sport is now and that’s really the key, I mean get involved. And obviously, you know, I got involved. I started this charity where I’m trying to, you know, help these kids and stuff like that. There’s other ways to get involved in New York and get involved in Mixed Martial Arts and, you know… but largely on the political side I think it’s going to take writing letters and talking to your legislators, e-mailing, writing letters and just picking up the phone and calling because a lot of times you will get them on the phone.”
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