Here’s the latest First Read: Campaign Confidential – bringing you the nitty-gritty on New York's 2023 campaigns, the dirt on 2024 and the juiciest gossip for 2025.

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Like a classic Friday news dump, the latest campaign finance filings for New York City Council candidates were due the day leading into Memorial Day weekend. Maybe fitting for a relatively sleepy year in city elections? Just don’t tell that to the candidates and treasurers, or the political obsessives who’ve been digging into the numbers over the past few days. Here are five things to know about city candidates’ money game.

Salaam is going big

No candidate reported spending more money than Yusef Salaam (other than Speaker Adrienne Adams, who doesn’t even have a competitive race), who’s running in the open District 9 seat in Harlem. He’s a first-time candidate facing two proven winners in Assembly Members Al Taylor and Inez Dickens, who are expected to get outside help from super PACs (more on that below). So Salaam is spending big on mailers, petitioning, fundraising and a whole suite of campaign consultants. Of course, much of that $216,000 hasn’t actually been paid out yet – Salaam’s campaign is deeply in debt. But the team expects public matching funds to bring them back into the black, or close to it, on Friday.

Read what else you should know, including why super PACs may have more influence this year.

The amount of New York City likely voters who “haven’t heard enough” to have an opinion about City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, according to a Data for Progress poll out Wednesday. Of those that do, 15% feel favorable and 16% unfavorable, which are not swell numbers. But what does she care? Adams hasn’t shown any interest in running for higher office, and her real constituency isn’t city voters, but the 50 other council members, plus the 1,000 or so people that either work for her or do frequent business with the council. And the council as a whole had +20 favorability.

Voters looking for more information about New York City Council Member Ari Kagan on AriKagan.com would have been in for a surprise: photos of sex acts and links to pornography videos. It seems the URL that used to host Kagan’s personal website was taken over by a spammy website linking, in Chinese characters, to porn, plus ads for livestreams of chess matches. The Internet Archive, which saves webpages, suggests that AriKagan.com was a porn site for the past two years, from May 2021 until May 12, 2023, when the domain expired. It’s now a dead link. But from 2012 to 2019, that was Kagan’s personal website linking to his work as both a journalist and a Democratic district leader.

But Kagan, who defected to the Republican Party last year and is now running for reelection in a substantially redrawn District 43 in southern Brooklyn against Council Member Justin Brannan, apparently didn’t check his old site often. “Wow. No, I didn’t know about that. That’s news to me,” he told City & State.

The timing and the content suggests this was a revenue opportunity for someone, not a political hit – an opponent might have redirected to their own website, or an attack ad – but Kagan’s mind went straight to political tampering. “I’m not surprised, because in every election I ran, every time, there was some anonymous stuff,” he said, referencing robocalls during his 2013 council campaign calling him a “a KGB agent.”

Kagan still doesn’t have a website, even with the GOP primary weeks away. But the campaign bought a domain and started working on it. “I believe it will be AriKagan.nyc,” he said. “Definitely not AriKagan.com.”

Start spreading the news – Mayor Eric Adams is hosting a Broadway show campaign fundraiser at “New York, New York” on June 16. And his 2025 reelection campaign is getting close to maxing out, hitting the limit of what a mayoral bid can spend, once public matching funds are factored in, said Frank Carone, Adams’ chief of staff turned presumptive campaign chair. Of course, the campaign claimed that last summer too, before their impressive, but nowhere near max out report went up. So Carone is giving himself some space, “maybe instead of a home run we’ll hit a double,” he told City & State. A source said Adams himself has been calling around to get people in the theater.

Despite middling reviews, seats aren’t cheap. A digital flyer showed the campaign asking for the maximum contribution of $2,100 for priority seating, $1,500 for mezzanine seating and $1,000 for the balcony. The musical itself, meanwhile, is hawking balcony seats for $49 each. 

Adams has boosted the show before, co-naming a street for the show’s composer and lyricist, who wrote the iconic “Theme from ‘New York, New York’” for the 1977 movie. Fundraising at a Broadway show will “bring attention to the arts and how important they are to the revitalization of the business and tourism,” Carone said. It could also get all the money set before Adams even has an opponent. “The idea is to just move this from his mind, a distraction,” Carone said, “and when the campaign starts, put the focus on substantive issues.”

PR maven Ken Sunshine is one of the night’s co-chairs, who praised Adams’ support of Broadway and other entertainment coming out of the pandemic. “Where do you think your tax dollars come from?” he said. “It’s arts, culture.”

American Bridge 21st Century, the opposition research arm of the national Democratic Party, has now sent out at least four fundraising emails to its massive list boosting Anna Kaplan as the candidate who will defeat Rep. George Santos in the 3rd Congressional District. The emails are written in the candidate’s voice – e.g. “Today, I’m announcing my intention to run for Congress to replace him” – which got City & State wondering why this super PAC endorsed Kaplan so early in a crowded primary that might end up as a special election instead.

The answer: they didn’t. “We haven’t endorsed her campaign, the only thing we endorse is Republicans are bad and we want to beat them,” said Alex DeLuca, vice president of communications for American Bridge. “She’s not writing the email, she’s not approving the emails,” DeLuca said. It’s an all too common form of fundraising subterfuge – Barack Obama isn’t writing those emails to you either – and apparently Kaplan’s name and story as a Jewish refugee from Iran tested well. Generally, super PACs can’t coordinate with campaigns, but there are certain rules when it comes to fundraising, rather than spending, and American Bridge seems to be following them when it links would-be donors to an ActBlue page where they can split a contribution between Kaplan’s campaign and the PAC. 

Kaplan’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment. American Bridge normally stays out of House races, but it found a good target in Santos, and the PAC got some press by filing an ethics complaint early in the Santos saga. Said DeLuca: “American Bridge is anti-Santos, we are not necessarily pro-Kaplan.”

District Council 37 endorsed a slate of Democratic New York City Council candidates, including Susan Lee over Christopher Marte in District 1, Isis McIntosh Green over Darlene Mealy in District 41, and Chris Banks over Charles Barron in District 42. The union is also sitting out of the two open seats, Districts 9 and 43 … Transport Workers Union Local 100 endorsed a slate of Democratic City Council incumbents, including Justin Brannan in District 47 and Melinda Katz for Queens district attorney, and notably declined to endorse TWU member Mealy … the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union endorsed McIntosh Green and Tony Avella in District 19 … the District Council of Carpenters also endorsed McIntosh Green … Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison endorsed Salaam … the Asian American Advisory Council of USA endorsed Avella.

Former Republican mayoral candidate Curtis Sliwa has been using his pseudo-celebrity status to help gather signatures for City Council candidates hoping to run on third party lines: Ruslan Shamal on the Safe Streets SI line in District 49 on Staten Island and Kelly Klingman in District 22 in Queens on the Animal Welfare ballot line. He has also been working with Brian Robinson in District 4 in Manhattan and George Havranek in District 13 in the Bronx, where the pair are soon starting a Ronald Reagan Republican Club in Throggs Neck. So Sliwa has fundraised for the Republican, but he’s covering his bases, also endorsing Democratic challenger Irene Estrada in District 13.

City Council District 29 in Central Queens, including the neighborhoods of Forest Hills, Kew Gardens and Richmond Hill

Incumbent: Lynn Schulman (D)

2020 census demographics: 31% white, 28% Asian, 24% Hispanic, 6% Black

2021 Democratic primary election results (first round): Schulman: 23%, Aleda Gagarin: 19%, David Aronov: 14%, Donghui Zang: 11%, Avi Cyperstein: 11%, Edwin Wong: 8%, Douglas Shapiro: 7%, Eliseo Dorion Labayen: 4%, Sheryl Ann Fetik: 3%

2021 general election results: Schulman (Democratic): 61%, Michael Conigliaro (Republican, Save Our City, Conservative): 39%

Who’s running: Schulman (D), Ethan Felder (D), Sukhi Singh (D), Danniel Maio (R, C)

Labor lawyer Ethan Felder got 31% of the vote trying to unseat Assembly Member Andrew Hevesi last year. Now he’s trying again, targeting City Council Member Lynn Schulman, who’s taking the challenge seriously. Most outsiders aren’t though – Felder doesn’t seem to have any prominent endorsers. Felder’s allies note that he has received more local donations than Schulman, which seems true, but not by a lot – and she’s got far more campaign cash, and more donations overall, thanks in part to her decades as a political staffer before taking office. Also running is Sukhi Singh, a software developer who’s active in the Sikh community. The South Asian community in Richmond Hill continued to be split after redistricting last year, however, keeping it difficult for a candidate of his background to compete. On the Republican side is perennial candidate Danniel Maio, running on a platform of being “Mad as Hell.”

Thanks for reading City & State New York’s Campaign Confidential newsletter, where City Hall Bureau Chief Jeff Coltin is covering the biggest races in New York, from the City Council to district attorneys, and looking ahead to the 2024 elections.

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