Activists’ Stunt Livens Up a Routine Senate Session

Nathaniel Brooks for The New York Times Protesters showered state senators with fake hundred-dollar bills in Albany on Wednesday to call attention to the role of money in New York politics.

ALBANY - There wasn’t much to see in the State Senate on Wednesday: the reciting of the Pledge of Allegiance, the honoring of a basketball player and a bunch of empty seats where elected representatives are paid to sit.

But there was something to grab the eye. Shortly after the beginning of proceedings, about 15 protesters who had posed as guests sitting in the upstairs gallery suddenly tossed hundreds of fake $100 bills onto the chamber’s floor below, a prank meant to call attention to the issue of campaign finance reform.

The protesters made it through a couple of rounds of chants -- “What do we want? Fair elections!” -- before being asked to leave by the chamber’s security guards.

Outside, one demonstrator, Josh Silver, said the protest was intended to show that the state’s people wanted “common-sense reform to clean up New York.”

“The point is to tell Albany that the world is watching,” Mr. Silver said.

And sure enough, on the Senate floor, several amused senators took photos of the activists and scooped up the funny money. Senator John A. DeFrancisco, a Republican from the Syracuse area, even thanked the protesters for spicing up another ho-hum day of lawmaking in front an otherwise sparse audience.

“We wanted to provide some entertainment for our guests,” Mr. DeFrancisco said, “and we asked those people to come out and throw some money on the floor and make absolute fools out of themselves.”