The future of New York City will in many ways begin to take shape in the June primary, when more than 30 New York City council seats and the race for mayor will be largely decided. As we saw with the recent special election of the 24th Council District in Queens, super PACs -- which can spend unlimited money on messaging to support a candidate -- could play a major role.
Gabe Tobias, a political strategist who helped catapult Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to victory in 2018, is now the director of the recently formed progressive PAC called Our City, which is aimed at supporting upwards of 15 Council candidates. Our City is now vetting more than 350 candidates to determine who best fits their values, and looks to raise a total of $5 million in support of candidates.
“There's just too much riding on what happens in June,” Tobias told Gothamist. "Because there's so much money coming in against the progressive vision [...] we need to have some resources on our side. So I think the first step in that is getting ourselves to a city that reflects the needs of working people, working Black and brown communities."
In the special election for the 24th Council District earlier this month, progressive Democrat Moumita Ahmed became the first target of Common Sense, a super PAC (also known as independent expenditure committees) that ran attack ads in the days before Ahmed lost to self-proclaimed centrist Democrat James Gennaro. According to filings, Common Sense pumped $200,000 into the race—five times more than the total money spent by a super PAC when the seat was vacant in 2013—that ultimately saw Gennaro win.
Common Sense — whose main funder so far is billionaire Stephen Ross, a major fundraiser for former President Donald Trump and chair of the massive Related Companies, which is behind Hudson Yards — is now reportedly committing even more money to New York City Council races.
Coming from two ends of the political spectrum, Common Sense and Our City's interest in the Council races showcase the legislative body’s power in steering the visions of multi-million dollar rezoning proposals while locking up bills in committee or voting them down altogether. As the city remains in economic turmoil wrought by the pandemic, crafting a vision for recovery has remained front and center, with two divergent viewpoints: the business community vying for greater public-private partnerships (Ray McGuire, a mayoral candidate, is supportive of it) and progressive groups seeking to ensure that the working class is remembered for their efforts during the pandemic.
“I think for a lot of people that we've been talking to, they see us as a response in a lot of ways to someone like Stephen Ross or James Dolan, trying to craft the city in a way that benefits them themselves financially,” Tobias said. Like Ross, Dolan, the owner of Madison Square Garden, has also formed a PAC that donated to several Council candidates. This comes after law firm Cozen O'Connor used a PAC to donate thousands to incumbent Council members; the firm's lobbying arm regularly meets with Council members on real estate matters
In Ahmed's case, she suspects Common Sense targeted her because her interests conflicted with the developers' bottom line and threatened their status quo. Ahmed believes that Common Sense will apply this method to other viable candidates in other Council races who may work against their interests.
“I think what they're afraid of is that we might actually start holding developers accountable. And so they, I believe, used my race, as an experiment to figure out what strategy works best to stop people like me,” Ahmed told Gothamist. “It's really just about the wealthy protecting their wealth and their interests.”
In a statement to Gothamist, John Gallagher, a spokesperson for Common Sense, said “there are more [independent expenditures] than ever because NYC is in crisis and the future of New York City literally hangs in the balance and a small number of voters usually decide the governance of the City.”
Billionaire developer Stephen Ross at the opening of Vessel, the interactive climbable sculpture at Hudson Yards that was closed earlier this year due to a number of suicides.
Since Gennaro’s D24 special election victory over Ahmed, even more super PACs have been contributing to elections, including in the special election contests in the 11th, 15th, and 31st Council Districts. Records with the city Campaign Finance Board (CFB) show New Yorkers for a Balanced Albany has spent $8,792 on advertisements supporting John Sanchez, a candidate for the 15th Council District. In the 31st Council District race, Selvena Brooks-Powers has benefited from a super PAC dubbed Laborers Building a Better New York, which spent $9,292 on mailers on her behalf. The Empire State 32BJ SEIU PAC also spent $10,328 on mailers for Brooks-Powers.
The spending comes as the CFB has implemented its generous 8-to-1 matching funds program that stretches small-dollar donations even further, challenging the strength behind super PACs and perhaps forcing them to commit even more dollars.
“I think it's gonna be altogether the most expensive election in New York City history,” Doug Muzzio, a political science professor at Baruch College, said.
Muzzio’s colleague, David Birdsell, dean at the Baruch College Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, argues that with so many candidates running, super PACs—which can only spend money in support of a candidate and not directly donate to them—can frame their messaging in a myriad of ways while not taking a “direct shot at the candidate” and “lasso[ing] support from people whose first preference might be somebody else.”
The increased cash flow we're seeing could also be promulgated by the implementation of ranked-choice voting (RCV), which, in theory, sees candidates encouraging a more collegial atmosphere. The super PACs, doing the dirty work on behalf of candidates, increased in some states following the implementation of RCV.
That was certainly the case in Maine in 2018, the year the ranked-choice voting system applied to the 2018 gubernatorial primaries. According to a report by the Maine Policy Institute, a non-partisan policy think tank, a total of $207,000 was spent on unsavory attack ads. This compares to zero dollars super PACs spent on attack ads on candidates for the 2006, 2010, and 2014 gubernatorial candidates.
The attacks were squarely set on Adam Cote, a Maine Democrat who ran against Janet Mills for the governor’s seat. Instead of Mills attacking him directly, a third-party super PAC named Maine Women Together spent $192,000 to take him on. Mills ultimately went on to win the gubernatorial race.
“We might see more civil candidate campaigns, but we're not seeing more civil politics in general, because you're still gonna see those negative [campaigns],” said Nick Murray, a policy analyst for the Maine Policy Institute.
Ranked-choice voting was also adopted in San Francisco, in 2004, with an increase in super PACs following suit, according to Jason McDaniel, an associate professor of political science at San Francisco State University. But McDaniel argues that while super PACs have increased following the implementation of RCV, the Citizens United ruling and the rise of more newcomer candidates challenging the status quo should not go ignored.
"Our politics is more intense now in a lot of different ways,” McDaniel said, pointing to progressive Democrats in New York dissatisfied with their legislative leaders, inspiring greater organizing behind progressive candidates. "I would say, specifically in New York because the progressive groups have been organizing voters and presenting and running candidates, and having success with candidates like [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] that this kind of organizing has got momentum, making the elections more competitive. And that's why the money gets spent.”
McDaniel added that should an election in a city with ranked-choice voting lack a clear front-runner, super PAC spending will increase.
While the CFB maintains some of the strongest transparency rules for super PACs in the country, Ahmed said that unless there are caps to spending, we will not see the positives promised by ranked-choice voting.
“As long as there's money in politics, billionaires will find a way to influence elections,” Ahmed said. “And if that means they're spending more money than they did in the past, they will do so. They have all the money in the world. This is what happens when we let inequality go rampant.”
Listen to David Cruz and Brigid Bergin discuss big endorsements and big money in the mayoral and council races on the Brian Lehrer Show:
