Mapping New York City’s Mayoral Campaign Money

Andrew Yang, who is widely regarded as a frontrunner in the crowded primary race for New York City mayor, has raised money from more New Yorkers than any other leading Democratic candidate, according to campaign finance documents released on Friday.

Some candidates, like Kathryn Garcia and Shaun Donovan, have also struggled to attract substantial numbers of individual donors. Ms. Garcia, Mayor Bill de Blasio’s former sanitation commissioner, has had some success in parts of Staten Island and in her home neighborhood of Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Among the major Democratic candidates, Mr. Donovan has received donations from the fewest New Yorkers, but that may not limit his ability to reach voters. New Start N.Y.C., the super PAC supporting Mr. Donovan’s candidacy, has already spent more than $5 million on advertisements this year, according to data from AdImpact, an advertising analytics firm.

Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller and a longtime figure in New York City politics, has picked up donations from across the five boroughs. He has fared especially well on Manhattan’s Upper West Side — a neighborhood he once represented in the New York State Assembly.

Total money raised highlights differing strategies

While the number of individual donors is a useful indicator for the scale and location of a candidate’s supporters, it isn’t enough on its own to guarantee victory in a race where polls show many New York voters remain undecided less than a month before the June 22 primary. The amount of money that candidates are able to raise will become critical as they compete to woo voters through advertisements and outreach.

That’s the strategy Mr. McGuire hopes will elevate his polling numbers from among the lowest of the eight leading Democratic candidates. So far he has raised $11.7 million, much of which came from individual donors giving an average of more than $1,100 each.

Mr. McGuire’s large average donation size is due in part to his decision to forgo the city’s matching funds program. As a result, each of his donors can contribute up to $5,100, instead of the $2,000 limit imposed by the program. Mr. Donovan is in an older version of the program, which means he also has higher contribution limits but receives less money in matching public funds.

Mr. McGuire’s elite donor base is a stark contrast to Ms. Morales’s fund-raising strategy. Though Ms. Morales has the second-most donors in the race, the average amount she received per person was $71, reflecting her campaign’s focus on improving the conditions of poor and working class residents.

Mr. Adams and Mr. Stringer, both prominent figures in the New York political landscape who have been fund-raising for this race since 2018, have each collected more than $9 million.

Outside donors boost Mr. Yang and Ms. Wiley

Though they won’t be able to cast a vote in the primary, individual donors from outside the five boroughs have poured more than $9 million into the race for mayor of New York City.

Mr. Yang became a political celebrity during his unsuccessful run for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020. His national name recognition has helped him garner huge amounts of financial support from across the country — more of his donors live outside the city than in it.

Some of Mr. Yang’s outside supporters may see the mayoral race as a smaller scale referendum on his signature policies from the presidential primary, like providing a universal basic income. He has proposed a modified version of that plan for New York — $2,000 per year for about 500,000 of the city’s poorest residents.

Ms. Wiley, who was a prominent MSNBC legal analyst prior to her run for mayor, has also attracted a large share of donors from outside the city.

For both Ms. Wiley and Mr. Yang, the bulk of their outside donors live in cities and suburbs in the Northeast corridor. But each has also found support in more distant metros, like Los Angeles, Chicago and the Bay Area.

So far, all of the candidates in the mayoral race have collected a combined $4 million more in total contributions than at the same time in the 2013 primaries despite coronavirus restrictions precluding traditional methods of face-to-face campaigning.

“We’ve been facing a historic volume of transactions from campaign submissions,” said Matthew Sollars, a spokesman for the New York City Campaign Finance Board. “The volume of contributions that candidates are collecting is just enormous.”

Source: Elections - nytimes.com