Mayor Eric Adams of New York, already accused of federal crimes related to his 2021 campaign fund-raising, can expect more scrutiny when fund-raising figures from his 2025 re-election bid are released on Friday.
The new numbers, expected to be published by the city’s Campaign Finance Board, will be the first made public since Mr. Adams was indicted last month on corruption charges.
Among the crimes he is accused of committing is conspiring with foreign nationals to illegally funnel money into his 2021 campaign through American citizens — so-called straw donors. The indictment also details instances in which prosecutors said Mr. Adams’s campaign encouraged businessmen to circumvent contribution limits by having their employees make donations and then reimbursing them.
On his way to raising nearly $9 million and becoming mayor, Mr. Adams took advantage of the city’s generous program to match small-dollar donations, which unlocked an additional $10 million in taxpayer money. But because of the straw donors, some of those funds were ill-gotten, the indictment said.
With Mr. Adams 2025 campaign set to claim more taxpayer money later this year, here is what to know about the city’s matching funds program.
What is the matching funds program?
New York City’s matching funds program was adopted in 1988 amid successive corruption scandals and calls for political reform.
Mayor Edward I. Koch, in collaboration with City Council Speaker Peter Vallone, led the effort, hoping it would encourage political newcomers to challenge incumbents by offering public funds to those who agreed to limit campaign contributions and spending. The program was designed to amplify the voices of small donors and curb the influence of those with deeper pockets.
Initially offering a one-to-one dollar match, it has since grown into a program that awards candidates $8 for every dollar up to $250 donated by a city resident. That means candidates who receive a single $250 donation can claim an additional $2,000 in public funds for their campaign coffers.
The program has changed the way candidates solicit contributions, and it has encouraged average New Yorkers to participate in politics, according to campaign experts and studies. But it has also sometimes been taken advantage of by candidates seeking to game the system.
What does this have to do with Eric Adams?
The 2021 election was the first mayoral race to offer the 8-to-1 public match, up from 6-to-1 in prior races. It also reduced the donor contribution limit to $2,100 from $4,950.
Mr. Adams raised more than $8.9 million for his 2021 mayoral campaign and received more than $10 million in matching public funds, surpassing all other citywide candidates that year.
The indictment unsealed late last month outlined multiple instances in which prosecutors said Mr. Adams’s campaign tried to illegally exploit the matching funds program through straw donor schemes.
On April 2, 2021, prosecutors said, Mr. Adams explained the matching funds program and solicited contributions from a Brooklyn businessman who owns a construction company while the two were at dinner with a Turkish official.
A month later, the businessman held a fund-raiser for Mr. Adams and gave $1,250 apiece to 10 of his employees to donate to Mr. Adams’s campaign. The campaign then requested matching funds for eight of those straw donations, generating an extra $16,000, prosecutors said.
In total, the fund-raising event put on by the businessman — whose description matches that of Erden Arkan, the owner of a firm called KSK Construction — raised more than $69,000 from 84 donors. The campaign then used those donations to seek an additional $63,760 in matching funds, the indictment said.
In another instance described in the indictment, a businessman of Uzbek descent who wanted to subvert the donation limits received instructions from Mr. Adams’s campaign to break his $10,000 contribution into five separate donations of $2,000 each and route four of them through his employees. The businessman did so, reimbursing his employees, and the campaign requested matching funds for the donations to unlock an extra $10,000, prosecutors said.
Has his fund-raising drawn attention before?
Long before he was indicted, Mr. Adams’s 2021 fund-raising practices were the subject of intense scrutiny from law enforcement and the Campaign Finance Board.
In July of last year, the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, indicted a former Police Department deputy inspector and longtime friend of Mr. Adams, Dwayne Montgomery, along with the owners of a Queens construction firm and others, and accused them of using straw donors to fraudulently obtain tens of thousands of dollars in matching funds for the mayor’s 2021 campaign.
Their alleged tactics mirrored those described in the federal indictment of Mr. Adams. Four of the defendants, who have pleaded guilty, used the names of construction company employees without their knowledge to make several $250 donations, aiming to generate as much as $2,000 in public funds for each of the contributions.
And auditors have flagged still more irregularities in Mr. Adams’s fund-raising.
In a 900-page draft audit of his 2021 mayoral campaign, the Campaign Finance Board chronicled numerous missing payments, questionable donations and a potential misallocation of as much as $2.3 million in taxpayer money.
The auditors identified 54 donations from people who either never gave the money or were reimbursed by others for their contributions. Those donations amounted to $24,500, which generated nearly $50,000 in matching taxpayer money, according to an analysis by The New York Times.
The board also asked the campaign to disclose who paid for 158 of Mr. Adams’s fund-raisers, including one hosted by Lian Wu Shao, whose family oversees the New World Mall in downtown Flushing, Queens. The mall was searched by the F.B.I. in February as part of a separate investigation by the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York.
The audit is still in draft form, and Mr. Adams’s campaign still has an opportunity to respond to the questions raised by the board.
Internal communications obtained by The Times show that the Campaign Finance Board has granted the mayor four extensions to give him more time to respond.
Most recently, on Aug. 30, the mayor’s campaign requested a 90-day extension, citing the investigation by the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York that would lead to Mr. Adams’s indictment on Sept. 25.
How might this affect the mayor’s 2025 campaign?
It was unclear what actions, if any, the Campaign Finance Board might take against the mayor’s campaign. The board’s penalty guidelines state that in “the most egregious circumstances,” staff may recommend a maximum fine of $10,000 per violation. If the campaign is found to be “in breach” of the certification that candidates must sign attesting that they have complied with campaign finance rules, the board would require the return of all public funds received.
In the indictment, federal prosecutors said that Mr. Adams solicited and accepted straw donations for both his 2021 campaign and his 2025 re-election campaign.
For instance, in September 2023, the campaign arranged a fund-raiser for foreign donors and disguised it as a meeting to discuss sustainability issues, with a PowerPoint presentation and a cost of $5,000 to attend, the prosecutors said.
Whether that might affect Mr. Adams’s future requests for matching funds remains to be seen. His 2025 mayoral campaign has already raised more than $4 million and claimed another $4 million in taxpayer money, according to campaign records filed in July. But none of the matching funds will be disbursed until December.
The Campaign Finance Board did not respond to questions about whether it will vote to withhold the matching funds, as it did with the former comptroller and mayoral candidate John Liu after a straw-donor scandal led to the imprisonment of two of his campaign workers.
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