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Cuomo campaign risks fresh penalty after pro-Cuomo PAC doubles down on $1.3 million in ads
By
Brigid Bergin
Published May 13, 2025
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CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images
By
Brigid Bergin
Published May 13, 2025
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The billionaire-backed political action committee supporting Andrew Cuomo for mayor made a $675,000 ad buy last week for the same commercial that earned his campaign a six-figure penalty — which they could soon see doubled.
A new disclosure filing on behalf of Fix the City, an independent expenditure group that’s raised more than $8 million through unrestricted donations from titans of real estate, finance and technology, spent $675,000 on an ad buy last Friday, May 9. That purchase came a week after a buy of more than $622,000 for the same ad.
On Monday, the New York City Campaign Finance Board penalized Cuomo $622,056 — the exact amount Fix the City spent on the May 2 ad. A member of the board said Monday that they believed the Cuomo campaign had improperly coordinated with the PAC before the ad’s release, in a practice known as “redboxing” that is illegal under New York City campaign finance law.
Good government experts told Gothamist that the campaign should face another penalty for the second ad buy.
“ If the Campaign Finance Board is being consistent and logical, they'll dock the Cuomo campaign $675,000 in applied-for matching funds,” said John Kaehny, head of the government watchdog nonprofit Reinvent Albany.
A spokesperson for the Campaign Finance Board declined to comment on Tuesday. But at Monday’s meeting, board member Richard Davis explained that the board “has reason to believe Fix the City's $622,056 expenditure for an ad distributed on May 4th, 2025 was not independent of the Cuomo campaign.”
Rich Azzopardi, a spokesperson for the Cuomo campaign, declined to comment.
Under their rules, the board can determine that an outside group’s spending was not independent if they used information that a candidate “knew or should have known” the group would employ. The city adopted new rules last year that make campaigns that engage in redboxing liable for the amount the outside group spent.
Kaehny said the City Council should increase the penalties for coordinating with a super PAC — to 15 times the amount of the coordinated expenditure.
The average donation to Fix the City is nearly $69,000 as of the latest filing, which is more than 18 times the $3,700 maximum an individual donor can give to a candidate’s campaign committee, even if they have opted out of the matching funds program.
A spokesperson for Fix the City said the group was adhering to the law.
“Fix the City is mindful of the CFB’s preliminary position and will proceed — as always — in a manner that is both consistent with the law and makes the case that more than ever, Andrew Cuomo is the mayor for this moment,” Liz Benjamin, a spokesperson for Fix the City, said in a statement.
Ahead of Monday's meeting, state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, one of Cuomo’s opponents in the race, filed a complaint accusing his campaign of using a portion of its website to communicate key messages and strategy with independent groups supporting the campaign.
Davis said the board’s investigation was ongoing. He noted that the $622,000 docked from Cuomo’s matching funds would be counted as an in-kind donation that would also count towards the $8 million spending limit for the June primary.
Fix the City committee received its largest single contribution to date last Thursday. DoorDash, the online food delivery company, made a $1 million dollar donation to the group, which was first reported by Politico New York. Other Fix the City supporters include real estate titans Barry Diller and Peter Fine, who each donated $250,000; Trump-supporting hedge fund manager Bill Ackman and Hess Corporation CEO John Hess, who also donated $250,000 each.
City Comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander, who sponsored the law that requires independent expenditure groups to file disclosure statements, sought to spotlight Fix the City’s most recent donation from DoorDash by holding a press conference Tuesday joined by a deliverista, who Lander said faced a potential loss of minimum pay and workplace protections if Cuomo was elected mayor. The company has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars lobbying against the minimum wage and other protections for delivery workers in the city.
Lander urged the Campaign Finance Board to take a closer look at whether there was ongoing coordination between Fix the City and the Cuomo campaign.
“ I do think the Campaign Finance Board could investigate whether Andrew Cuomo should be denied matching funds entirely,” said Lander, “If they tell him you're not allowed to coordinate and he persists in coordinating, then they might have to go back and look at whether it shouldn't just be the cost of the one ad.”
This story has been updated to clarify the timeline of the investigation into the Cuomo campaign.
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Politics
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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