The penalty for Andrew Cuomo came as his top rival, Zohran Mamdani, received the Working Families Party’s top endorsement in the New York City mayoral race.
The penalty for Andrew Cuomo came as his top rival, Zohran Mamdani, received the Working Families Party’s top endorsement in the New York City mayoral race.
The penalty for Andrew Cuomo came as his top rival, Zohran Mamdani, received the Working Families Party’s top endorsement in the New York City mayoral race.
Andrew M. Cuomo was denied another $675,000 in public matching funds on Friday, as the New York City Campaign Finance Board said it continued to believe his mayoral campaign had illicitly coordinated with a super PAC.
The penalty was yet another avoidable setback for Mr. Cuomo. He has now been penalized nearly $1.3 million in total, a significant loss of public funds that could have been spent in the final weeks before the June 24 Democratic primary.
The sanction came hours before the Working Families Party chose Mr. Cuomo’s leading rival, Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, as its top choice among its slate of ranked candidates, followed by Brad Lander, the city comptroller; Adrienne Adams, the speaker of the City Council; Zellnor Myrie, a state senator from Brooklyn; and Jessica Ramos a state senator from Queens.
The party is urging its followers to list the candidates as their five choices on their ranked-choice primary ballots, a strategy designed to block Mr. Cuomo from winning.
“When we unite together, we can defeat Cuomo and elect a mayor who fights for us, not the rich and well-connected,” Ana María Archila and Jasmine Gripper, co-directors of the New York Working Families Party, said in a statement.
“The polls and fund-raising numbers tell a clear story about who is best poised to defeat Cuomo,” they added. “That candidate is Zohran.”