Mayoral race frontrunner Andrew Cuomo secured more than $1.5 million in public matching funds on Monday, but was denied another $622,000 due to concerns his campaign may have engaged in “impermissible” coordination with a super PAC boosting his run for City Hall.
Cuomo, who’s polling as the favorite to win June’s Democratic mayoral primary, first applied for some $2.5 million in public matching funds last month. The Campaign Finance Board blocked the ex-governor from receiving any of that on April 15 due to paperwork errors in his applications.
Cuomo’s campaign said after April’s decision it was promptly correcting the paperwork and expecting the full payout at the board’s next meeting.
The board’s members gathered for that meeting in Manhattan on Monday morning where they delivered the split verdict for Cuomo.
While awarding him $1.509 million in the taxpayer-funded matching cash, Richard Davis, one of the board’s member, said the CFB was withholding $622,056 from him because Fix the City, a pro-Cuomo super PAC, spent that amount on a May 4 television ad hyping his mayoral run.
By law, super PACs cannot coordinate in any way with the candidates they support, and Davis said the board has “reason to believe” the PAC’s May 4 ad “was not independent of the Cuomo campaign” in terms of how its messaging was crafted.
In the eyes of the board, Fix the City’s $622,056 expenditure thereby constituted an improper in-kind contribution to Cuomo that should be subtracted from the total amount of matching funds he has become eligible for.
“The board’s investigation into this matter is ongoing, and we will continue to evaluate the issue of improper coordination,” Davis added.
The ruling comes after Politico reported earlier this month that Cuomo’s campaign has engaged in a tactic known as “redboxing,” whereby its website includes a section listing off ideas for ads about the ex-governor’s mayoral candidacy.
In his prepared board meeting remarks, Davis noted CFB rules prohibit candidates from making “strategic information or data” publicly available “in a manner which the candidate knew or should have known” could be used by a super PAC. The CFB strengthened its own rules on redboxing just last fall to make the prohibition on coordination between PACs and candidates stricter.
Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi said the ex-gov’s legal team cleared the website entry before it went live and noted some other local politicians, including mayoral hopeful Scott Stringer and city comptroller candidate Justin Brannan, have had similar pages on their campaign websites.
“We look forward to making that clear when we respond to the board’s preliminary ruling and receive the full matching funds to which the campaign is entitled,” Azzopardi said. “In the meantime our campaign’s momentum continues unabated: Today we receive $1.5 million on top of the over $3.5 million we have raised in 71 days and are gratified to have the broadest coalition of supporters, and lead in every poll with voters in every borough, gender, race and ethnicity.”
A spokeswoman for Fix the City didn’t immediately return a request for comment on the CFB ruling.
Cuomo, who resigned as governor in 2021 amid sexual misconduct accusations he denies, has benefitted greatly from the PAC, which was launched by his longtime political confidant Steve Cohen.
The PAC has already raised more than $7 million and spent more than $3 million of that on ads portraying Cuomo as a battle-tested leader who’s a perfect fit to take charge of a city that his team argues is in “crisis” under Mayor Adams’ leadership. That’s in addition to the millions of dollars Cuomo’s own campaign has raised in both public and private cash.
Unlike campaigns, PACs do not have contribution and spending caps,
Brooklyn state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, one of the other candidates in June’s mayoral primary, filed a complaint earlier this month with the CFB about the ex-gov’s redboxing activities.
Responding to the CFB’s Monday ruling, Myrie said, “The Campaign Finance Board just confirmed what we’ve known all along: Andrew Cuomo is for sale. He’s spent decades bending laws, shutting down ethics investigations and exploiting every loophole to serve himself — and now he’s doing it again.”
