The Seneca Nation plans to spend $500,000, and possibly up to $1 million, to defeat lawmakers who say tribes should be forced to pay state tobacco taxes.

The tribe has already identified three Democrats and three Republicans for defeat. One of them is Sen. Martin Golden, a Republican who was booed at a recent hearing when he suggested that the U.S. victory over the British during the Revolutionary War authorized taxation of tribal retailers.

Golden was “particularly hostile, offensive and disrespectful," tribal councilor J.C. Seneca said in a letter to the tribe's Foreign Relations Committee, which handles political contributions. Other lawmakers “expressed tremendous hostility to our treaty rights and to our immunity from state excise taxes being collected in our territories," Seneca said in the letter.

Get the Story:
Senecas fight tax with cash in elections (The Buffalo News 10/31)

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New York tribes vow fight over tobacco taxation (10/28)
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