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Citi Field ad strikes out on date for NYC Primary Day
By
Brigid Bergin
Published May 28, 2025
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Jared Paul
By
Brigid Bergin
Published May 28, 2025
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This column originally appeared in The Politics Brief, our weekly newsletter on the people, power and policies that shape New Yorkers' lives.
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Attention Mets fans: Primary Day in New York City is June 24 — not June 23.
You could be forgiven for getting your dates confused, since the wrong day was displayed on an electronic billboard at Citi Field during at least four baseball games.
The city’s Campaign Finance Board was responsible for the error. The agency oversees local campaigns and also has a voter outreach arm known as NYC Votes.
Timothy Hunter, a spokesperson for NYC Votes, said officials learned of the error after Gothamist alerted them to it Tuesday morning. He said the agency reached out to the stadium to correct the error immediately — which is a good thing since the Mets hosted the Chicago White Sox again Tuesday night (Mets won 6-4).
“NYC Votes is committed to sharing trustworthy election information with all New Yorkers,” Hunter said. “We take seriously any errors in our marketing and outreach materials and immediately corrected the stadium banner error after learning about it today.”
The screwball move looks even worse because a separate NYC Votes ad displaying the correct date ran on a different Citi Field e-billboard. A photo from Monday’s game captures the absurdity, with two NYC Votes ads near each other reminding voters about Primary Day — with two different dates.
June 23 is, in fact, the only day you CANNOT vote, since it is the day after polls close for early voting, which starts June 14. Polls reopen for Primary Day, which — to reiterate — is June 24.
NYC Votes acknowledged that the information was displayed incorrectly from May 23 to May 26. That includes a three-game series against super-slugger Shohei Ohtani and the Los Angeles Dodgers. (The Mets won that series, by the way).
Assuming the ad only ran incorrectly at Citi Field on those dates, at least 160,000 people could have seen the wrong election information. That’s a conservative estimate, relying on Monday’s attendance at a game against the lowly White Sox.
Among those in attendance for one of those games was Meg Cramer, a Mets fan from Queens and — full disclosure — a former producer at WNYC.
“It was just such a dumb mistake,” Cramer said. “It's only the most important piece of information in the ad, right? It's like, what is the day that you can vote?”
NYC Votes currently has a $10 million contract with Fenton Communications LLC for “Multi-Channel Media Buying & Creative Services,” according to CheckbookNYC, a city contract tracker.
Jennifer Hahn, a spokesperson for Fenton, said the firm is proud of its partnership with the Campaign Finance Board and NYC Votes to educate millions of eligible voters in the city.
“The mistake you referenced has been corrected, and we are focused on continuing this vital awareness campaign,” Hahn said.
She said accurate voter information will be served up through various channels including on WNYC’s airwaves, Univision, and through sponsored ice cream trucks across all five boroughs.
NYC Votes is mailing old-school postcards to more than 3 million voters with primary election information. NYC Votes’ spokesperson said it also has a total of 250 digital ads that have reached more than 12 million devices.
Hopefully all of those ads contain the correct primary election date: June 24.
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Brigid Bergin
Brigid Bergin is an award-winning senior reporter on the People and Power desk. She is fiercely committed to telling stories that help people engage and support democracy. In 2022, she hosted a live, ten-week call-in politics show ahead of the midterm elections called The People's Guide to Power. Brigid's reporting in 2017 included some of the first coverage of a political newcomer now known as AOC. In 2016, she broke the news of a voter purge in Brooklyn just days before New York’s presidential primary, triggering city, state and federal investigations. Brigid also guest hosts The Brian Lehrer Show and All Of It. She graduated from the University at Albany and the CUNY Newmark School of Journalism. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal 917-723-4719.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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