During the most recent reporting period, Mayor Adams’ reelection campaign got about $250,000 in gifts. This was a lot less than some of his opponents, but Adams’ team played down the drop by saying it was because of a break in fundraising in the fall of 2024.
Adams’ lawyer Vito Pitta announced the haul for the most recent time on Wednesday morning, before the full filing for the campaign was due.
Pitta didn’t go into specifics about how much cash Adams’ campaign has on hand or how much it may have spent in the last seven days, from October 8 to this Friday.
He did say that Adams started raising money again in the middle of December, which is when the $250,000 came in.
Adams stopped raising money for his 2025 campaign in the middle of October when his team told him he had enough private money to spend up to $7.9 million, including public matching funds.
But on December 16, the Campaign Finance Board wouldn’t give Adams equal funds because they were worried about his federal corruption charge. Adams has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him, which say he took illegal campaign money and bribes, mostly from people working for the Turkish government, in exchange for political benefits.
Adams’ campaign is likely to file an appeal with the CFB, but Pitta said in a statement Wednesday that Adams will keep raising money in the months to come in case the matching fund rejection stands.
Pitta said, “We expect that number to grow a lot in the near future and are in a good position to have the most money to spend.”
The Democratic primary for mayor is set for June 24, and Adams will be up against a large group of candidates.
In a sign that the mayor may be getting ready for an election cycle without matching funds, he asked cryptocurrency leaders to give $3,850 each to a fundraiser for his reelection campaign in Puerto Rico in December. Candidates who choose not to participate in the matching funds program can accept up to $3,850 in individual gifts. Candidates who do participate in the program are limited to $2,100 in donations.
Adams began raising money for his reelection soon after taking office in January 2022. As of the end of the last reporting period on October 7, he had raised about $4.1 million in private funds for his 2025 campaign and had $3.1 million on hand.
During the most recent fundraising time, some of the candidates running against Adams for mayor this year raised more money than he did.
Assembler Zohran Mamdani of Queens is one of them. He is a democratic socialist who raised $642,339 from 6,502 individual donors after starting his mayoral campaign on October 22. His campaign says this makes him qualified for about $2.4 million in public matching funds.
In the most recent window, Jim Walden, an independent candidate for mayor, raised almost as much money, $630,000. Yet, he hasn’t done enough to get public matching funds.
All candidates for mayor in 2025 must turn in full funding reports by Wednesday. This includes Comptroller Brad Lander, former Comptroller Scott Stringer, Brooklyn state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, and Queens Assemblywoman Jessica Ramos. In this filing, Stringer, Lander, and Myrie all say they have done what they need to do to get public matching funds.
Wednesday also brings the due date for an updated financial report for Adams’ legal defense trust, which he uses to pay for the lawyer fees he racked up in his corruption case.
Pitta wouldn’t say much about the trust’s most recent file, other than to say that Adams hasn’t been actively raising money for the fund in the past few months.
When the last report was turned in in the middle of October, the trust was already short on cash because of rising legal fees and fewer gifts. It was then that Pitta said the trust thought more gifts would come in because “interest is strong.”
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