Queens Assemblymember Zohran Mamdani has been reaping the spoils of his blowout Democratic primary victory, records filed Tuesday show, raking in a huge wave of campaign donations and securing another $1 million in public matching funds for the general election.
His chief rivals for the general election, meanwhile, had more fraught post-primary experiences.
Mayor Eric Adams, who skipped the primary in the wake of a federal criminal indictment and its extraordinary cancellation by President Donald Trump’s Justice Department, lost out on his continued plea for public dollars from the Campaign Finance Board as an independent candidate with just 16 weeks until the final showdown on Nov. 4.
And the Democrat Mamdani soundly defeated, former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, also got no matching funds because he didn’t ask for any. Cuomo stopped raising funds in May after maxing out on the nearly $8 million primary spending cap. After he lost to Mamdani by 12 points on June 24, he went for weeks not clarifying whether he intended to run in November on a third-party line he’d set up.
On Monday Cuomo jumped back into the race in a 90-second video announcement, and on Tuesday his spokesman, Rich Azzopardi, said he planned to begin fundraising again immediately.
Mamdani saw a tsunami of donations in the weeks after his decisive win over Cuomo to become the Democratic nominee. In a city where Republicans and Independents make up 17% of registered voters, the primary win puts him in the driver’s seat to capture City Hall this fall.
Between June 10 and July 11 — which includes the first few weeks after his primary victory — Mamdani raised more than $852,000, more than during any prior reporting period tallied by the Campaign Finance Board. His fundraising began catching fire back in the spring when his social media postings began attracting attention and triggering waves of mostly small donations needed to attract public subsidies.
Mamdani’s June to July haul is his biggest score to date. It included 69 donations of $2,100, the maximum allowed in the public financing system, totaling more than $144,000. Mamdani has made a point of highlighting the extraordinary number of small donations he’s received and criticizing Cuomo for the tens of millions of dollars in outside money wealthy donors have spent promoting him.
The Campaign Finance Board program provides $8 for every $1 donated to a candidate by a New York City resident, up to the first $250.
The $1 million in matching funds the board awarded Mamdani Tuesday brought his tally to date to $8.1 million, making him the biggest recipient of public funds of any mayoral candidate this election.
Adams, on the other hand, has so far come up empty in his pursuit of public funds.
As expected, Adams struck out at a campaign board hearing Tuesday, with the board denying his matching funds request after again finding that his campaign is still failing to adequately respond to the agency’s requests for documentation explaining dozens of suspected illegal donations and unreported fundraisers.
The board had awarded $10 million in public funds to Adams during the 2021 election, but starting in December balked at awarding him any for his re-election bid.
The board cited allegations that Adams solicited and accepted illegal straw donations in his quest to scare up public funds outlined in the federal indictment filed against the mayor last fall. In April the Trump Justice Department got the case dismissed in a bid to gain the mayor’s cooperation in its immigration deportation initiative.
Adams sued the Campaign Finance Board, arguing that the dismissal of the charges made the board’s denial of his request moot.
On Friday a federal judge tossed the mayor’s lawsuit, criticizing the board’s citing of the now-defunct indictment but agreeing with its argument that Adams has repeatedly blown off the board’s requests for documentation of suspect contributions. In demanding that the suit be tossed last week, lawyers for the CFB said the agency’s staff would recommend continuing to deny Adams’ public funds.
The most recent request demanded documents by last Friday, but the Adams campaign requested yet another extension — this time to Aug. 1.
On Tuesday CFB Chairman Frederick Schaffer stated, “The Board’s investigation of the Adams campaign is ongoing, including into whether there is reason to believe the campaign violated the law.”