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The Money Picture in the Queens DA Race, One Month to Primary Day


queens da seven

(l-r)Tiffany Cabán, Melinda Katz, Rory Lancman, Greg Lasak, Betty Lugo, Mina Malik, & Jose Nieves


Candidates running for the Democratic nomination for Queens District Attorney have filed their first pre-election campaign finance disclosures since January, showing their fundraising and expenditure from the last four months with just under a month to go until the all-important primary.

There are seven Democrats competing in the June 25 primary to replace the late Queens DA Richard Brown, who passed away earlier this month. Brown had already announced his intention to resign, prompting the first competitive primary for the seat in nearly 30 years. The candidates include former prosecutors and those without any courtroom experience at all, well-funded politicians with big money donors and first-time candidates with grassroots support.

Presumptive favorite Queens Borough President Melinda Katz outraised her opponents, bringing in just over $560,151 and spending $512,224 over the last four months. Though Katz closed out the fundraising period with $907,000 in the bank -- in part owing to large transfers that she made from separate state and city fundraising accounts -- she owes $306,000 in unpaid bills, mostly to Red Horse Strategies, a consulting firm, making her actual balance as of the filing closer to $600,000. She has received about 300 donations from individuals for her DA campaign.

Council Member Rory Lancman raised $246,158 in the same period and spent $655,371. He had $529,116 left in cash on hand (Lancman also transferred funds from separate accounts late last year and in January) as of the filing. Lancman reported just 101 individual donors to his campaign.

Gregory Lasak, a former state Supreme Court judge and long-time prosecutor in the Queens DA office, was the most prolific spender among all the candidates. He raised $445,314 in the period but spent $747,849 since January, leaving him with $380,571 in cash on hand. He spent massively on digital and television ads, polling, and campaign mailers. Lasak has received donations from nearly 600 individuals.

Public defender Tiffany Cabán has emerged as the insurgent progressive in the race and has picked up several prominent endorsements in the last few days, including from Congressional Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Cabán reported raising a relatively impressive $256,673 from many more individual donors than her competitors, and showed a comparatively small expenditure.

The filing shows her campaign has spent about $105,317 on the borough-wide race, leaving her with $151,356 with just a month to go. A spokesperson for Cabán indicated that the campaign is driven by volunteers and running a bare-bones grassroots effort, bolstered by well over 2,000 individual donations, and that there are no outstanding bills to be paid other than the spokesperson’s own invoice coming in the next few days. The numbers also don’t reflect the expected ‘AOC bump’ that the campaign anticipates given the star-congressional representative, whose district spans parts of Queens and the Bronx, has now sent multiple emails asking for donations for Cabán and the endorsement news itself likely generated significant interest in the race and Cabán.

An analysis of Caban's fundraising by THE CITY, however, shows that several donors gave many times in small amounts, inflating the number of individual contributors the campaign claimed -- the actual number is 1,822, still well above the field. But THE CITY also showed that most of Caban's money is coming from outside Queens, in part showing her status as a progressive rising star, but raising questions about the actual depth of her support in the borough she needs to win, though she still has more in-borough donors than all of the other candidates have donors.

Mina Malik, a Harvard professor and former prosecutor, was a late entrant to the race but she has raised $608,644 and spent $543,748 already, with $64,896 left in her campaign account as of the filing. She does, however, have $210,000 in liabilities, all of which were personal loans she and her husband made to the campaign. Malik reported more than 350 individual donors.

Jose Nieves, an army veteran who formerly worked in the state Attorney General’s office, raised $69,647 over the disclosure period and spent about $76,438, leaving him just $5,339 in cash on hand.

Betty Lugo, a former Nassau County assistant district attorney, raised about $97,627, spent $76,562, and has a balance of $21,064 as of the filing.

The final weeks of the primary campaign are expected to see a blitz of spending from candidates, to the extent they can afford it, with fundraising throughout. It's unclear to what extent candidates will purchase targeted television airtime, which can be the most expensive form of advertising, as they try to reach all corners of the vasy borough of Queens. The winner of the Democratic primary on June 25 is widely expected to cruise to victory in the general election given how heavily blue Queens is, though it is unclear how the general election may play out, especially with an extended timeline after the primary was moved from September to June starting this year.

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by Samar Khurshid, senior reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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Ben Max & Joey Fox contributed to this story.

Note: this article has been updated with information based on the analysis by THE CITY.

With 500 Candidates Expected for 2021 Election Cycle, Campaign Finance Board Starts Early Outreach


running

(photo: Benjamin Kanter/Mayor's Office)


The city’s Campaign Finance Board is gearing up for what is likely to be the biggest and most competitive municipal election in its 30-year history. In 2021, 35 of the City Council’s 51 incumbents, as well as the mayor, comptroller, and all five borough presidents, will be ineligible for reelection due to term-limits, providing an inviting playing field for dozens upon dozens of candidates to seek elected office, whether for the first time or in pursuit of a promotion.

Some candidates have already filed with the Board to indicate which office they are seeking, while others have made their intentions known, and many more will declare in the coming months. With party primaries now scheduled for June of any election year for city or state contests, the 2021 city election cycle will likely be in full swing in 2020.

The CFB, responsible for administering New York City’s campaign finance program, is planning a “5 Borough Tour” of candidate trainings this summer to prepare potential candidates for the rigor of the city’s system and the fundraising, spending, and disclosures. Most candidates will also participate in the public matching program, which will ultimately involve many millions of dollars in public funds the board will distribute starting in December 2020.

The Campaign Finance Board anticipates up to or even beyond 500 campaigns will register in New York City for the 2021 cycle based on turnout from similar elections in previous years. To meet the high demand and ensure each campaign receives its legally required trainings, the CFB plans to hold over 250 training sessions over the next year and a half, both at its offices in downtown Manhattan and throughout the five boroughs.

Thousands of individuals may need to be trained, as candidates, campaign treasurers, and other staff are brought up to speed on the rules regulating campaigning, fundraising, spending, and participating in the matching funds program.

"The CFB's matching funds program helps more candidates run for city office, so we want to expand the pool of potential candidates by making our trainings accessible to more New Yorkers," said Amy Loprest, Executive Director of the CFB, said in a statement announcing the new effort, which will begin in June.

The CFB is partnering with public libraries in each borough to provide a venue for the upcoming satellite trainings, in addition to the regular sessions held at the Board’s Manhattan offices.

The five-borough tour will include a new training course geared specifically toward first-time candidates, with information intended to orient them to the demands of waging a campaign in New York City, where they will be subject to strict fundraising and disclosure obligations.

Unlike other trainings related to compliance rules and navigating the CFB’s online portal, which campaigns are mandated by law to attend, the new courses are not required but are strongly encouraged by the CFB, which wants to lay as much groundwork as possible for a smooth election cycle, which also includes a variety of new donation limits, matching rates, and other specifications passed by voters during a 2018 ballot referendum.

The city may be facing a perfect storm of potential stresses on campaign finance administrators in 2021, including the high number of officeholders who are term-limited from pursuing reelection.

Open seats tend to be far more competitive than races with incumbents, typically comprising more candidates and resulting in narrower margins of victory. As intended, the public matching system also appears to encourage more candidates to run.

In 2001, an election year similar to 2021, 37 City Council seats, all citywide offices, and four out of five borough presidencies were open due to new term limits imposed and upheld by voters in successive ballot referenda in the early- and mid-nineties. That year 443 candidates filed petitions to run for those offices, and 353 of them participated in the matching funds program.

Somewhat similar dynamics played out two city election cycles ago, when, after the one-time term-limit extension pushed through under Mayor Michael Bloomberg and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, in 2013 a majority of the City Council faced term limits, as did Bloomberg and most of the borough presidents. The public advocate and comptroller at the time -- Bill de Blasio and John Liu, respectively -- also left their posts to run for mayor, creating additional “open seats.”

In Brooklyn, the borough that will see the most City Council turnover in 2021, 12 out of 16 Council seats will be open because of term limits. Also opening up: 10 out of 14 seats in Queens, two out of three seats on Staten Island, five out of eight seats in the Bronx, and six out of 10 seats in Manhattan. Some of the openings for City Council, Queens Borough President, and other seats could change if there are special elections before the 2021 election hits, potentially introducing new incumbents seeking reelection.

The ballot referendum passed last year expands the public matching funds program from a 6-to-1 match of qualifying contributions to an 8-to-1 match, while it also lowered individual contribution limits. Candidates participating in the CFB program in 2021 will have the option of raising money either under the 6-to-1 rules or the new 8-to-1 rules (in subsequent elections they will only have the option of the 8-to-1 matching system). The referendum also encourages candidates for citywide offices, who tend to rely on larger contributions, to participate in the public matching program by increasing the amount that can be matched in a single donation.

The Campaign Finance Board advocated for those changes before the 2018 Charter Revision Commission, empanelled by the mayor, that put the referendum on the ballot. The reforms are intended to “make running for office more accessible for all New Yorkers” by providing more support for newcomers who may not have access to the same networks of well-heeled donors and political allies that more established politicians have, Matt Solars, director of public relations at the CFB, told Gotham Gazette.

The new landscape in 2021 means the CFB will have to reach more potential candidates and, eventually, pay out more money.

“We estimated that the increases to the maximum public funds payments would lead to about a 30 percent increase” over the cost for the public matching program in 2013, Sollars said. The Board paid out $38.2 million in matching funds to 149 participating candidates that cycle. And the increase could be even higher as the Board expects the new rules to encourage more people to get into local races (it’s also yet to be seen if more challenges to incumbents are waged given the current political climate).

The Board has not yet determined exactly how much it estimates the public matches and operational costs of the program will be for the 2021 cycle.

To reach potential candidates the CFB will rely on its public library partnerships to publicize the trainings and is identifying community-based organizations to collaborate on this and other efforts of NYC Votes, which leads the board’s voter engagement campaigns.

The first event of the five borough tour will take place in Queens on June 8 (at Queens Central Library), followed by June 22 in Brooklyn (Eastern Parkway Library), July 20 at Bronx Library Center, August 3 on Staten Island (at Richmondtown Library; and September 14 in Manhattan (at Schomburg Center).

“From the voter’s perspective, 2021 may seem like a long way off, but for a candidate who may have a goal of running for office and being elected in 2021, it’s right around the corner,” Sollars said. “Our program is really strong and powerful but it also requires a lot of the candidates and they need to know those requirements.”

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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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Effort Launched to Elect LGBTQ Members to City Council


 

ritchietorres ch230

 (photo: @RitchieTorres)


On the steps of City Hall Wednesday afternoon, a coalition of LGBTQ rights advocates and current and former City Council members announced the launch of an initiative to elect queer candidates to the Council in 2021, when 35 seats will be open because of term limits.

There are currently five members of the 51-member City Council who identify as LGBT, all of whom are a part of the body’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Caucus, and all of whom are not elligible for reelection to the Council: Speaker Corey Johnson and Council Members Danny Dromm, Ritchie Torres, Jimmy Van Bramer, and Carlos Menchaca.

The effort launched Wednesday, dubbed “LGBTQ in 2021,” is intended to ensure that the outgoing cohort of Council members from the queer community is replaced by another, larger, and more diverse group of LGBTQ electeds.

“We want to make sure that we elect lesbians to the City Council, we want to ensure that we elect transgender women to the City Council, we want to ensure we elect LGBT people of color to the City Council,” Speaker Johnson, who is openly gay and HIV positive, said to cheers from the audience assembled.

A number of other Council members were also present at the press conference, including Dromm and Torres of the LGBT Caucus, as well as former Council Members Tom Duane, who was the first openly gay person elected to the City Council, and Elizabeth Crowley, who has helped spearhead the “21 in ‘21” initiative to elect more women to the City Council, which was the inspiration for the project announced Monday. The City Council currently has 12 women out of its 51 members.

In the next City Council election in 2021, at least 35 of the body’s 51 seats will be open, meaning no incumbent will be running.

Whereas incumbents enjoy incredibly high reelection rates, races for open seats tend to be vastly more competitive, often comprising more candidates and resulting in narrower margins of victory. Initiatives like LGBTQ in 2021 and 21 in ‘21 are harnessing the opportunities of open seats at the same time that they are meant to combat any loss in representation that may result.

Coming out is “the deepest political thing anyone can do. And that goes for people who are out in legislative bodies. There is no substitute for a seat at the table,” Duane said at the press conference. “We have elected people here in New York City, but we have many more people that we need to get elected to the City Council.”

The coalition, which also includes LGBTQ Democratic political clubs like the Stonewall Demorats and advocacy groups like New York Transgender Advocacy Group and Queer-Amisú, plans to recruit and support queer candidates to run for City Council through training, mentorship, and networking resources. At the moment, LGBTQ in 2021 has a social media presence but an informal operational structure as its members determine its direction. It is currently focused on City Council elections, but may expand its mission in the future.

“It’s only been ten years since Queens has had openly gay elected officials,” Dromm reminded the crowd, after acknowledging Duane and other predecessors as rolemodels for him. “And of course we began to see the Council expand in terms of the numbers of openly LGBT people who were in it.”

“Invisibility is our biggest enemy,” Dromm added. “We had no role models in those days.”

Members of the coalition have drawn lessons from their personal experiences and those of activists in a number of overlapping and intersecting causes -- namely the struggle for LGBTQ rights in New York and nationally, but also the Civil Rights Movement and movements for gender equity.

Melissa Sklarz, a transgender activist, 2018 Assembly candidate from Queens, and former president of the Stonewall Democrats, spoke after Dromm. “I don’t think invisibility is a problem. It’s fear! ‘I can’t run for office, Melissa, I don’t know what to do.’ We’ve got a solution for that. We know what to do. We’ve been involved, we have passion, and vision, and experience, and intelligence. We will help you.”

Torres, a Bronx Democrat planning to run for Congress in the 2020 election, emphasized the active nature of this type of recruitment and mentorship operation. “Progress doesn’t happen by accident. We have to organize for it, we have to fight for it, we have to recruit candidates, raise funds, knock on doors, and win elections,” Torres said. (Sklarz later told reporters that LGBTQ in 2021 does not have plans to raise money for candidates, but intends to educate them on how to create a campaign, and can assist with staffing and grassroots efforts in their neighborhoods.)

Along with the aforementioned groups, the coalition includes Jim Owles Liberal Democratic Club, Lesbian Gay Democratic Club of Queens, Lambda Independent Democrats of Brooklyn, NYC Pride and Power, and LGBT Democrats of Color.

“One of the epiphanies of the Civil Rights Movement is the realization that progress is not inevitable even when it has the aura of inevitability,” Torres observed. “We had more LGBT members of the City Council two years ago than we do today. Or when it comes to gender inequality...we had more women in the City Council in the 1990s than we do today.”

Despite overall progress made in LGBTQ representation in New York City elected office, members of the coalition pointed to significant shortcomings in the political landscape and barriers that still need to be overcome.

Ivy Frias of the New York Transgender Advocacy Group wondered why “only one letter of the LGBT community is represented here in the City Council,” referring to the fact that the City Council’s current queer membership are all gay men. “I think it’s time, as a queer, nonbinary, Dominican person, to tell you guys that it’s time to be here,” Frias said, adding later, “the LGBT community is beautifully diverse and intersectional.”

Sklarz also identified barriers. When asked whether she intends to run for City Council after her unsuccessful bid for the Assembly last year, she told Gotham Gazette, “Where I live is a difficult Council race. Neighborhood is everything. So however big my visage may be in the LGBT community, it’s very difficult in my neighborhood to run for City Council.” The 22nd Council District in Queens, where Sklarz lives, has been represented by Costa Constantinides since 2014 and has never had an openly queer Council member. Constantinides is term-limited and likely to run for Queens Borough President.

Those dynamics at the neighborhood level can play out in the Council itself. “There continues to be places in New York City where even vicious homophobes can be and have been elected to the City Council,” Torres told the crowd. “The homophobic antics of [City Council Member] Ruben Diaz Sr. is a cautionary tale of what happens when we, as a community, take for granted the inevitability of progress.” (Diaz Sr., who was recently punished by the Council for his latest homophobic remarks, is seeking the same congressional seat as Torres.)

“If you think someone’s going to come and save the day for you, then you’re naive. We’re not going take that chance,” Sklarz said to applause. “LGBT people are going to come together, we are going to create a moment, we are going to take care of our own, and make sure something happens.”

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by Ethan Geringer-Sameth, reporter, Gotham Gazette
     

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