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The July Mayoral Money Race


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Mayor de Blasio (Edwin J. Torres/ Mayoral Photography Office)


Election season is in full swing, with barely two months to go till the September primary election, and mayoral contenders are busy on the campaign trail, reaching out to voters, building name recognition and, perhaps most importantly, raising campaign funds. The latest campaign finance disclosures filed on Monday show Mayor Bill de Blasio is still in the lead in fundraising, but a few of his opponents are beginning to pick up steam and have posted significant fundraising numbers of their own.

De Blasio, a first-term Democrat, has racked up a massive campaign warchest, far outpacing his rivals on both sides of the aisle. The mayor now has nearly $2.6 million at his disposal after raising about $4.9 million and spending about $2.2 million over the course of the campaign. De blasio, drawing large donations from wealthy donors, unions and the real estate industry, pulled in $414,123 in the latest filing period covering the two-month period from May 12 through July 11, and spent nearly $400,000 in the same time. The haul was lower than the previous filing period in which the mayor raised about $670,000.

The mayor is also a participant in the Campaign Finance Board’s public matching funds program, which matches small dollar campaign contributions up to $175 at a 6-to-1 ratio. De Blasio has repeatedly emphasized the number of small donations -- nearly 10,000 totalling about $392,000 -- that his campaign has received as a sign of the groundswell support for his reelection. Prior to the latest filing, De Blasio had already met the threshold for the maximum matching funds that he can spend in the primary election. He indicated earlier this week that he would gladly accept a matching funds payment for his campaign. “I believe in the program,” he said at an event in Queens. “I'm going to follow its rules, and its rules stipulate that we qualify for those resources, so I'm certainly going to pursue that.”

The public funds program is intended to boost participation in city elections and give a fighting chance to first-time candidates and those without access to deep-pocketed donors, rather than incumbents. The program will likely prove to be a key factor for de Blasio’s opponents, chiefly his Republican rival, State Assemblymember Nicole Malliotakis, who became the party’s presumptive nominee for mayor after millionaire real estate executive Paul Massey dropped out of the race.

Malliotakis, who only entered the fray in April, raised nearly $250,000 in her latest filing. With a late start to the race, she has only managed to raise a total of $344,421, with about a quarter of it from outside the city, and has spent about $69,000, leaving her with just over $275,000 in cash on hand. Of her total fundraising, just over $101,000 came from donations of $175 or less, which would qualify for more than $600,000 in matching funds. For Malliotakis to receive those public funds, however, she will first have to raise at least $250,000 from small donors in the city.

Notably, Malliotakis received maxed-out donations of $4950 each from Robert and Rebekah Mercer, billionaire GOP donors that backed Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and are investors in right-wing media outlet Breitbart. The de Blasio campaign used the couple’s donations as fodder for a fundraising pitch this week, employing their now-standard tactic of tying Malliotakis to a Republican president that is wildly unpopular in the city. Malliotakis, who voted for Trump last November, has in turn sought to distance herself from the President and is striving to ensure the race is a referendum on de Blasio’s mayoralty.

There are numerous other candidates in the race, some more prominent than others. Although de Blasio is expected to sail comfortably to reelection, he will first have to face challengers in the September primary. Former City Council Member Sal Albanese, who also ran for mayor in 2013, is among those running as a Democrat. Albanese raised just over $45,173 in the last two months, including $2,500 from the Correction Officers Benevolent Association and $3,000 from the FIREPAC, a firefighter union’s political action committee. He has raised about $124,000 and spent about $51,000, leaving $72,515 in his campaign account. Albanese has focused his campaign on criticizing the mayor’s management of the city and highlighting the allegations of pay-to-play that have plagued City Hall. A key issue for him has been the city’s ailing subway system, which he spotlights almost daily on Twitter, and he has promised that he will be the “mass transit mayor” of the city.

Fellow underdog Democrat and long-time police reform activist Bob Gangi brought in just $6,420 in the last two months. He has raised more than $62,000, most of it from personal loans, and has spent just over $56,000. Gangi’s campaign has largely focused on criminal justice issues, on which he believes de Blasio's record has been a less than satisfactory. He has vowed to end broken windows policing and wants to make the NYPD more accountable.

Both Gangi and Albanese are hoping to be included in the CFB’s official Democratic primary debates, which require each candidate to raise and spend at least $174,225 in order to qualify.

Independent candidates have also made a splash in the race. Perhaps the most noteworthy is Bo Dietl, the outspoken, unfiltered private detective and former NYPD officer who was forced to run as an independent after failing to submit the necessary paperwork to run as a Democrat. He also courted a GOP nomination bid only to be thwarted by Republican county leaders who refused to give him a waiver that would have allowed him to run on their party line.

Dietl nearly matched Malliotakis’ fundraising during the last filing period, raking in $244,751. He has raised $809,022 for the entirety of the campaign, lending himself another $100,000, and has spent about $524,000. He has $367,116 in cash on hand.

Also in the race is businessman Roque “Rocky” De La Fuente, a California native who attempted a run for the presidency last year as a Democrat. De La Fuente moved to the city three months ago to run as a Republican mayoral candidate. He has lent his campaign $600,000 and has only raised $28,329 from donors in total. He has about $213,000 remaining in his campaign account.

Longshot candidate Michael Tolkin, a young tech entrepreneur who is not currently registered with a party but is running as a Democrat, also made news earlier this week when he filed a $5.2 million in-kind contribution to his own campaign. As Gotham Gazette reported on Tuesday, Tolkin intends to roll out “a bunch of content and programming that will be self evident,” which will account for the contribution. He reached that figure through start-up valuation methods, he said.

The primary election for Mayor will take place on September 12 and the general election is on November 7.

Related: Longshot Mayoral Hopeful Outraises & Outspends Opponents, Technically

 

Malliotakis Files Records Request for Mayor's Travel Expenses


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Assemblymember Nicole Malliotakis (photo: Felipe De La Hoz/Gotham Gazette)


As Mayor Bill de Blasio spent his third day in Queens for his week-long City Hall in Your Borough initiative, presumptive Republican mayoral nominee Assemblymember Nicole Malliotakis showed up at his Manhattan workplace to reprimand the mayor for a lack of transparency for his numerous trips out of the city.

“I believe it's important that when we ask the mayor how much has it cost the taxpayers for various trips around the United States, or around the world, that he give the public that answer,” she told reporters from the steps of City Hall. Seeking those answers herself, after a brief news conference, Malliotakis hand-delivered to the mayor’s office a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request for information on the mayor’s travel expenses from 21 trips he has made in the last three-and-a-half years.

Malliotakis’ move was prompted by the NYPD’s recent refusal to release cost estimates for police protection provided to the mayor and three of his aides on a three-day trip to Germany two weeks ago. De Blasio travelled to Hamburg, a trip that was announced at the last minute, to participate in “events surrounding the G20 Summit,” a gathering of world leaders in which the mayor of New York has no official role. Instead, he spoke at a protest rally – its organizers invited him and paid for his travel – and other political events. The New York press, which wasn’t informed of his trip in advance, was left behind.

During any national or international trip that the mayor takes, he is trailed by staff members and an NYPD security detail. De Blasio’s excursions have often earned him criticism from political opponents and from New Yorkers who believe the trips distract from his duties at home. His latest jaunt to Germany was considered particularly ill-timed, coming just a day after the killing of NYPD officer (posthumously promoted to detective) Miosotis Familia at the hands of a career criminal in the Bronx. Malliotakis said it was “shocking that [the trip] was the day after an NYPD officer was assassinated on our streets.”

“Instead of being here to console the members the members of the NYPD and mourn with the family members, or attend the ceremony for 524 new police officers... our mayor was on the next flight to Hamburg,” said Malliotakis, referring to a swearing-in ceremony for new officers that took place on July 9.

While the mayor and his aides had their travel and lodging expenses covered by the rally organizers in Hamburg, the costs to move and house his security detail were paid for with public dollars. Gotham Gazette reported last week that the mayor did not intend to release details of the trip’s cost, and the NYPD has refused to do so based on long-standing department policy regarding protection of dignitaries.

At a news conference last week, the mayor directed the Gotham Gazette to ask the NYPD about the estimate of the cost. When informed that the NYPD would not and indeed never did so, the mayor demurred, saying, “I want consistency with whatever their practice has been.”

[Read: De Blasio, NYPD Won’t Release Taxpayer Cost for Germany Trip]

Malliotakis contrasted de Blasio’s reluctance to be fully transparent with his prior positions as public advocate. In that role, de Blasio often criticized city agencies for refusing to comply with FOIL requests and was particularly derisive towards the NYPD for its lack of public disclosure.

The Assemblymember also referenced several of the issues that she has made a centerpiece of her campaign for mayor, saying she wouldn’t mind the mayor’s travel as much if “the traffic was flowing, the transit was moving, the homeless were being taken care of.”

Asked by Gotham Gazette if she would limit her travel only to essential trips if elected mayor, Malliotakis was noncommittal, saying “I understand that the Mayor of the City of New York has international attention and appeal and it is important to have some type of diplomatic relations” but that mayoral travel should “have some type of relation to your role if you're taking staff and you're taking security.”

Malliotakis’ FOIL request doesn’t deal only with the contentious Hamburg trip, but with a total of 21 domestic and international trips that the mayor has taken which Malliotakis claimed “do not necessarily seem related to his position as mayor.” They included trips to Chicago, several European cities, and his ill-advised trip to Iowa during the presidential primary race in April 2015.

Responding to the NYPD’s stated security concerns in providing too much information about mayoral travel, Malliotakis said she was “only asking for the amount that it's costing taxpayers, we're not asking for the specific number of employees, the number of security personnel needed to travel with the mayor for security reasons.”

Monica Klein, a spokesperson for the mayor’s reelection campaign, said in an email that “this is about a 3-day trip mainly over a weekend that followed all previous NYPD security protocols of past travel for this mayor and others,” and accused Malliotakis of wanting to “force attention away from her support for President Trump, her donations from huge Trump supporters, and her votes against marriage equality and the minimum wage.” Tying Malliotakis to the controversial president has been a consistent strategy of de Blasio’s campaign.

Klein also drew attention to the Malliotakis’ own travel in office as an Assembly member, which included trips to China, Greece, and Hawaii. A spokesperson for Malliotakis previously told the New York Daily News that those trips were off-session and did not utilize public funds.

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by Felipe De La Hoz, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.

Longshot Mayoral Hopeful Outraises & Outspends Opponents, Technically


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Michael Tolkin (center) at a Reform Party forum (photo: Tolkinformayor.com)


Michael Tolkin, a 32-year-old tech entrepreneur who is among over a dozen long-shot candidates running to unseat New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, appears to have outspent every other contender in the race, including the mayor, with a $5 million in-kind contribution to his own campaign.

An in-kind contribution is one in which goods or services instead of cash are given to a campaign, and in this case the entire contribution is also listed as an expenditure towards “campaign literature and assets,” according to the latest filings with the New York City Campaign Finance Board (CFB). As such, they require an estimate of the goods’ or services’ worth.

Mayor de Blasio himself has so far raised over $4.7 million in cash, with only $570 worth of in-kind contributions, and spent over $2.2 million of it. GOP contender Assemblymember Nicole Malliotakis, who represents parts of Brooklyn and Staten Island, has raised just over $340,000, with $5,117 in in-kind contributions, and spent over $69,000.

Tolkin, who is seeking the Democratic nomination, explained in a phone interview that the contribution would manifest in the coming weeks through “a bunch of content and programming that will be self evident” and which would leverage existing assets he controls. Tolkin, a New York native and graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, has launched several startups and also advises companies based in New York, such as virtual-room showcase website Rooms.com, which he founded.

He referenced one of the potential projects that would form part of his purported $5 million expenditure, a “human rights council” that he would convene in New York. He declined to provide further details about the spending.

Asked how this would relate to his campaign for mayor, Tolkin said that the programs would help promote his candidacy as well as a “better vision for New York.” He also said that he expected some of the programs to be revenue-generating, and that the revenue would be put back into the program to help develop that vision once he is elected mayor. Tolkin’s website describes his campaign as “non-ideological and apolitical,” and outlines an agenda centered on applying design and technology concepts to city governance; a campaign video refers to protecting small businesses, investing in emerging industries, and upgrading subway infrastructure, among other items.

Tolkin was similarly cryptic about the eye-popping value of his contribution, saying simply that he comes from the “startup world” and that the $5 million is a “ballpark” figure based on startup-type valuation models. Essentially, the contribution estimate appears to be based on the revenue that he expects his upcoming projects to generate.

“I’ve never heard of a campaign asset generating revenue,” said Matt Sollars, a spokesperson for the CFB, though he could not recall any specific prohibition against that. At this point, the figures on file with the agency are self-reported, and have not been audited by the CFB.

Sarah Steiner, an attorney specializing in election law, said that she had never heard of anyone making an in-kind contribution of the type Tolkin was making to himself, but that might be the point; she said Tolkin’s supposed campaign initiatives could be a preview of the programs he’d want to promote as mayor.

As for the scheme’s legality, Steiner said that as long as the programs were run with “his own money, and he’s not a campaign finance [public matching funds system] participant, and as long as he’s doing this as his campaign, he’s not breaking any campaign finance laws.” In terms of the presumptive revenue from the programs, those would generally be acceptable, depending on what was done with them.

“If you thought of it as, ‘We’re going to buy a silk screen machine, we’re going to print t-shirts, we’re going to sell them, and it’s going to create revenue,’ that would be okay,” she said.

A potential advantage of Tolkin’s massive contribution is that he may be able to qualify for the CFB’s official debates ahead of the September 12 primary election. Since Tolkin is not participating in the city’s public matching funds program, he would have to raise and spend at least $175,000 to qualify for the debates, a threshold that many of the candidates have struggled to meet. Even an in-kind contribution to himself might count towards this threshold.

Steiner had her doubts about that argument, saying that the threshold was “$175,000 in real money.” Debate organizers could decide to count it “but I don’t think the system is intended for that threshold to be met by Silicon Valley valuation techniques for apps, basically,” she said. The Democratic primary debates are scheduled for August 23 and September 6.

In any case, Tolkin appears to have more immediate issues: a city Board of Elections document on “campaign enrollment issues” reviewed by Gotham Gazette says that Tolkin is “not enrolled in the identified party on the petition,” the Democratic party. When presented with a copy of the document, Tolkin said in a text message, “That's incorrect and currently being resolved.” Calls to a BOE spokesperson went unanswered.

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by Felipe De La Hoz, Gotham Gazette
     

Read more by this writer.



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