Andrew Cuomo’s entry into the Democratic mayoral primary should be matched with his entry into the city Campaign Finance Board’s matching fund program, pun intended. Since its inception in 1989, every serious contender for mayor has been a participant, with one exception (more on that later). The benefit to New Yorkers are candidates who are not betrothed to special interests and the players have a level playing field (again, with that one exception).
Cuomo’s nascent campaign says it will be joining the 8-1 matching funds, which is good. That must also be the same choice should City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams throw her hat in. All the other City Hall candidates have already signed up.
The program is structured to maximize the clout of small-dollar donors. A contribution of $20 from a New York City resident becomes a match of $160. Only amounts up to $250 are matchable (at $2,000).
Overall, the most any person can give is $2,100 (and just $400 if a contributor has business dealings with the city government, which can’t be matched). Compare that when Cuomo was running for governor and the ridiculous “cap” was $69,700 for contributions. Cuomo collected tens of millions in such large chunks and his state campaign account war chest still has millions.
But he’s not using a cent of that cash in the race. It would be logistically near impossible, as each donor from years ago would have to be contacted and asked if their dollars could be reoriented and then apply a max of $2,100 to be transferred over. Instead he’ll have to start at zero.
The other mayoral contenders have been running for years and have been collecting money, giving them a financial edge over Cuomo, but he has universal name recognition, so if New Yorkers want him back in elected office, here’s their chance to chip in a few bucks. The same goes for Speaker Adams. It was their own choice to wait until now to start campaigning.
Cuomo’s allies are forming a super PAC to boost his run, as have supporters of others in the past. But the main focus should be on each candidate’s own campaign. Under the CFB program they are all limited to spending $7,932,000 for the June 24 ranked-choice primary. How they each manage their resources over the next few months is one measure of how they would manage at City Hall.
The exception we mentioned above about the sole major candidate to skip the matching funds is Mike Bloomberg, currently the world’s 15th richest person worth $103.4 billion. In the three instances that he successfully ran for mayor, 2001, 2005 and 2009, he just wrote a bigger check time, $74 million, $85 million and $108 million.
Bloomberg’s argument was that he took no money from any contributor (indeed his campaign would return any money sent in) so there was no possibility of anyone buying access or influence. Very true and there was never any issue of corruption, which is what the CFB was created to combat.
However, Bloomberg’s three campaigns did have tremendous financial advantages over his rivals. But such a lopsided money imbalance won’t be the case this year and we expect Cuomo and everyone in the contest will have enough to get their message out to voters and may the best candidate prevail.
