Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo was denied nearly $3 million in public matching funds on Tuesday by the city’s Campaign Finance Board, an unexpected setback that will limit his campaign’s war chest for about a month.
The CFB informed the Cuomo campaign last week that the donations it collected using a third-party database were missing a required field, Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi said in a statement. He said the campaign “had to remedy this technical matter” and will submit the proper documentation to the CFB within a one-week grace period, and expects to get its full matching funds payout when the board makes its next awards on May 12.
There were signs of trouble over the weekend, when Cuomo’s campaign sent an email to its entire distribution list asking donors to supply “certain documentation” to ensure their donations qualified for the matching funds program — which multiplies donations from city residents up to $250 with an 8-to-1 match.
“THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT,” read the email. “We need you to complete the form included in this additional email, TODAY IF AT ALL POSSIBLE.”
The matching funds denial is the latest misstep that chips away at Cuomo’s carefully crafted image as a meticulous manager — one that has helped him establish a commanding lead in polls of the June 24 Democratic primary. Over the weekend, Cuomo released a 29-page housing plan — only for the news outlet Hell Gate to point out that portions of it were garbled and seemingly written with the help of the AI software ChatGPT.
The CFB itself did not publicly address the reasons for Cuomo’s matching-funds denial, and Azzopardi did not say what information the campaign had failed to collect.
“Since the last filing deadline on March 13, the campaign has amassed an additional $1 million, totaling over $2.5 million raised from over 4,100 individuals who believe New York City is in crisis and know that Andrew Cuomo is the only candidate with the experience and proven record necessary to address it,” Azzopardi said.
Other candidates received public funds with no issues on Tuesday: Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani was awarded $3,832,987, Comptroller Brad Lander received $861,831, former Comptroller Scott Stringer got $696,942, State Sen. Zellnor Myrie received $527,147, and attorney Jim Walden, running as an independent, got $1,903,504. (Mayor Eric Adams, also running as an independent, remains locked out of the program after a December CFB decision based on allegations that he had defrauded the program by soliciting straw donations.)
Cuomo’s campaign boasted in March of having raised $1.5 million in less than two weeks since he entered the mayor’s race, a number that would rise to $4.2 million with matching funds. Those donors included real estate and business bigwigs such as RXR CEO Scott Rechler, Two Trees Management principal Jed Walentas, and Brown Harris Stevens CEO Bess Freedman.
Cuomo will still benefit from plenty of campaign spending. A separate state-level super PAC run by his allies has raised $4.9 million and faces no restrictions on how it can spend it — although Cuomo himself is legally barred from coordinating with the PAC. Donors to that PAC, called Fix The City, include businessman Barry Diller, transportation firm Halmar International and Rechler (who each gave $250,000), Walmart heiress Alice Walton, (who gave $100,000), billionaire Ken Langone, and musician Billy Joel (who both gave $50,000).
