Actor Sam Waterston is the front man for an expansive effort to overhaul New York’s campaign-finance laws in a video being distributed by progressive groups and labor organizations.

In a YouTube video, Waterston, currently staring in the HBO drama “The Newsroom” delivers his pitch on changing the state’s sky-high contribution limits and campaign loopholes. The video is being blasted out to more than one million email addresses today.

“Fair Elections. We don’t have them in America and we don’t have them in New York. Today in our broken system, political candidates raise huge contributions from a few wealthy donors.

“You can bet those fat cat CEOs, millionaire lobbyists and multi-billion dollar corporations have their own interests in mind. Middle-class working Americans’ interests? Not so much.

“You can change that. Here in New York, Governor Cuomo has taken the lead to pass public financing for elections. Instead of accepting a handful of huge donations from the 1%, candidates would raise a large number of small contributions from every day Americans.”

Waterston urges viewers to see where their local state lawmaker stands on the issue by going to website, fairelectionsny.

Cuomo has said he wants campaign-finance reform, but the effort went nowhere in the Republican-controlled state Senate.

The Republican conference argues that a public financing system is too expensive and that taxpayers shouldn’t foot the bill for political campaigns (the state Conservative Party, which the GOP conference needs in many of its elections, is also vehemently opposed to publicly financed campaigns).

It’s possible he could pass the measure that includes public financing of campaigns in a December special session, though Cuomo would probably have to entice lawmakers with a legislative pay raise and other sweeteners.

The video out today is very similar to the celebrity-fueled effort to pass same-sex marriage. During that effort, actors, athletes, and other bold-faced names appeared in videos in support of the measure, which was ultimately successful.

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