Campaign Finance Board stiffs Adams, Cuomo while – Latest News
It’s arduous to inform which is more pathetic: this yr’s crop of mayoral candidates, or the town’s system for electing one of them.
On Tuesday, the Campaign Finance Board withheld practically $3 million in public matching funds from the town’s main mayoral wannabe, ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
It gave essentially the most money, $3.8 million, to radical socialist Zohran Mamdani, who’s far behind within the polls.
Why maintain up Cuomo’s funds?
The board cites a “high percentage (20% or more) of documentation errors for contributions” and his failure to file a “personal financial disclosure.”
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Yes, the ex-gov’s marketing campaign is a mess: In latest days, it issued additionally a housing plan crammed with typos and garbled wording that appeared AI-generated, and it misspelled the names of union leaders in an announcement of their endorsements.
All including to Cuomo’s horrific file as gov “killing grannies and pinching fannies,” because the late great Bob McManus as soon as put it.
(Not to say Cuomo’s grim legacy, from “congestion” tolls to signing all these “criminal justice reforms” into law.)
Maybe the misplaced funds is karma for the $5 million Cuomo “earned” for his staff-written e book on COVID “leadership.”
Or the $60 mill in taxpayer funds to cowl his legal payments.
Still, regardless of Cuomo’s healthy lead within the polls (a reflection on the terrible alternate options), he will get zilch in public funds, at the very least for now.
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Mayor Eric Adams will get stiffed, too, with the CFB citing expenses in opposition to him that had been already dropped.
It gained’t even think about matching funds until Adams appeals, which he’s to date didn’t do.
Nor has Hizzoner filed his personal disclosure assertion.
That leaves Mamdani — at 33, well-known largely for heckling border czar Tom Homan, for insisting socialism actually does work and for deeply despising Israel — because the runaway winner within the matching-funds sweepstakes.
The Democratic Socialists of America candidate has raked in $6.7 million, far more than second-place Brad Lander (who additionally has DSA ties).
Talk about irony.
An anti-capitalist Israel-hater operating within the capital of capitalism and home to more Jews than every other metropolis squeezing more from taxpayers than mainstream wannabes like Cuomo and Adams.
He’s already put socialism in motion: Our money will get to pay for his marketing campaign.
It’s all half of Gotham’s screwy public-campaign-finance system that’s already value taxpayers $14 million-plus this yr in 8-to-1 matching funds, with unelected board members arbitrarily deciding who will get what.
In 2013, the board equally nixed public money for John Lui’s mayoral bid, shutting down his marketing campaign and paving the best way for the nightmare of Bill de Blasio’s victory.
These are the grim outcomes of a system that was supposedly to offer the town level-playing-field democracy.
Maybe the public will sometime get a probability to tug out of this travesty, and let the politicians determine how to fund their own campaigns.
