The board first denied Adams the matching funds in December 2024, citing quite a few compliance points, together with his federal corruption indictment accusing him of taking bribes and unlawful marketing campaign money from Turkish authorities operatives.
After President Trump’s Division of Justice secured a controversial dismissal of Adams’ indictment in early April, his marketing campaign filed a proper petition final week urging the board to rethink its denial of funds.
The CFB has cited the identical reasoning in reaffirming its Adams resolution at a number of board conferences earlier this yr. Adams has mentioned he did nothing fallacious.
“Because the candidate is not on the primary election ballot, the next opportunity for the campaign to demonstrate its eligibility for public matching funds is the July 15, 2025, payment date,” Gallagher wrote.
Within the interim, Gallagher wrote the CFB “welcomes the campaign to provide any and all documentation and/or explanations to demonstrate to the board that there is no reason to believe that the candidate, in the course of public funds program participation, engaged in conduct detrimental to the public funds program that is in violation of federal, state and/or city law.”
A spokesman for Adams’ reelection marketing campaign didn’t instantly return a request for remark Wednesday. Beneath the legislation, Adams’ marketing campaign may sue to attempt to overturn the CFB’s continued denial now that the reconsideration petition has been rejected.
Shortly after the dismissal of his indictment, Adams dropped out of June’s Democratic major and introduced he’d as a substitute search reelection as an unbiased candidate in November’s basic election. Trump’s DOJ sought the dismissal saying it wanted Adams to help within the president’s “mass deportation” efforts, leaving many to say he’s beholden to Trump’s agenda. Adams denies there’s a quid professional quo.
The board barring Adams from even making an attempt to problem the matching funds denial till July 15 may pose a problem for him.
As an unbiased candidate, Adams is already going through a really slender path to reelection within the closely Democratic metropolis. He’s contending with file low approval scores and has much less marketing campaign money available than a number of of the candidates within the Democratic major, who’ve already obtained tens of millions of {dollars} in public matching funds.
Ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who’s polling as the favourite to win the mayoral major, was additionally denied matching funds in April as a result of a paperwork error, however his crew says he expects to get tens of millions of {dollars} within the public money later this month.
The matching funds program makes use of public money to match any donation mayoral candidates obtain from a metropolis resident at an 8:1 ratio as much as $250. That calculation can present for a important money infusion, as mayoral hopefuls want tens of millions of {dollars} to employees their campaigns, pay for advertisements and in any other case get their messaging out.
Initially Revealed: Might 7, 2025 at 4:56 PM EDT
