Andrew Cuomo’s mayoral campaign may have improperly coordinated with an outside super PAC spending heavily on his behalf, according to the city’s campaign finance regulators, who announced Monday that they would withhold $622,000 in public money from the ex-governor’s campaign while they investigated the issue.
The announcement sullied what was otherwise a positive day for the mayoral front-runner. Cuomo’s campaign received a payout of $1,509,185 in public matching funds — a long-awaited cash infusion that Cuomo had to wait an extra month to receive due to a separate paperwork snafu in April. The setback, which follows a number of other campaign missteps, undercuts Cuomo’s carefully crafted image as a competent executive.
The $1.5 million payout is well short of the $2.7 million Cuomo’s campaign had expected to get. Campaign Finance Board officials explained that they had “reason to believe” Cuomo’s campaign improperly coordinated with the legally independent PAC by creating a webpage signaling the talking points that should be included in the PAC’s messaging, a common practice known as “redboxing” that the CFB has taken extra steps to discourage.
The $622,059 docked from Cuomo’s payout is the amount that Fix the City spent on a television ad that depicted Cuomo as a get-things-done leader using language that resembled the phrasing on the campaign website.
“The board has reason to believe Fix the City’s $622,056 expenditure for an ad distributed May 4, 2025 was not independent of the Cuomo campaign,” CFB board member Richard Davis said during a Monday meeting. “Expenditures coordinated with a campaign are considered in-kind contributions that undercut New York City’s strict spending and contribution limits.”
Cuomo campaign spokesman Rich Azzopardi emphasized that the board’s ruling was preliminary and said the campaign would make its case that it abided by all rules. He also noted that fellow mayoral candidate Scott Stringer and comptroller candidate Justin Brannan had similar pages on their websites.
“Our campaign has operated in full compliance with the campaign finance laws and rules, and everything on our website was reviewed and approved by our legal team in advance of publication,” Azzopardi said. “We look forward to making that clear when we respond to the board’s preliminary ruling and [receive] the full matching funds to which the campaign is entitled.”
Liz Benjamin, a spokeswoman for Fix the City, said in a statement that “the work undertaken by Fix the City, a fully independent expenditure committee, has taken place lawfully and without the insight or influence of any prohibited outside entities.”
The PAC shared another statement by Bill Knapp, a longtime ad maker working for Fix the City, who said he “filmed, scripted, and produced ads released to date by Fix the City in support of Andrew Cuomo’s mayoral candidacy, and did so independently, using publicly available information about the candidate and his policy proposals.”
The CFB had formally warned all candidates last week against redboxing, and a rival candidate, state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, wrote the board to formally request an investigation.
The $622,000 withheld will also count against the Cuomo campaign for the $7.9 million spending limit that governs all candidates in the June 24 primary. Davis said the CFB’s investigation is ongoing.
Fix the City had raised roughly $7 million through last week — more than any individual campaign, thanks to the lack of donation or spending limits for the state-level PAC. Billionaires Bill Ackman, Barry Diller and William Lauder have each cut $250,000 checks, as have real estate developer Scott Rechler and the firm Two Trees Management.
Cuomo’s campaign, meanwhile, has now raised more than $3.5 million in private donations, Azzopardi said Monday. Combined with the matching funds payout, that would bring Cuomo’s own war chest to more than $5 million, putting him near the top of the field for the Democratic primary.
