In the weeks between July 12 and Aug. 23, nearly a third of the more than 6,000 contributions to both Eric Adams and Curtis Sliwa came from donors outside the five boroughs.
Erica Sherman/Brooklyn BP’s Office, Sliwa for NYC Mayor
Mayoral candidates Eric Adams, left, and Curtis Sliwa, right.Democrat Eric Adams raised more than $2 million for his mayoral campaign between mid-July and late August, city campaign finance records show, more than 10 times what his chief rival, Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee for mayor, pulled in over the same period.
Around 40 percent—$840,043—of Adams’ $2,185,440 in campaign donations take in the six-week period was contributed by benefactors as far away as Nashville, Tenn., Austin, Texas, Seattle and even Puerto Rico.
These include contributions from Gordon Winters, an Amazon operations executive in Washington state, $2,000 from Modell’s Sporting Goods President and CEO Mitchell Modell, who lives in Miami Beach, FL, and $4,000 from Washington D.C.-based NewsCorp executive Antoinette Bush. Jill Iscol, longtime Hillary Clinton adviser and her husband, Ken, who live in Massachusetts, according to the records, also gave $2,000 to Adams. The Iscols are the parents of former Democratic candidate for comptroller, Zach Iscol, who gave $2,000 to Adams in August, too.
CHEAT SHEET:
- Nearly a third (or 1,924) of donations to Adams’ and Sliwa’s mayoral campaigns between July 12 and Aug. 23 were donations from outside NYC
- Eric Adams campaign recently received big out-of-state donations from Amazon and NewsCorp executives
- Top-dollar donors to the Sliwa campaign include former investment banker Henry Buhl, former NY-17 opponent Josh Eisen and his wife, Shani David, and Laurie Harrison of Dallas, Texas, daughter of the onetime richest woman in America
Close to 1,000 of the more than 3,000 donations Adams’ campaign reported in this disclosure cycle came from outside the city, according to the City Limits analysis. Donations from Queens accounted for the next highest share of contributions, then Brooklyn and Manhattan.
More than 20 percent, or about 670 of these donations, the largest share, were $250. Around 16 percent—just under 540—were for $2,000, the second largest share.
| Eric Adams mayoral campaign contributions (July 12—Aug. 23) | ||
| BOROUGH | NUMBER OF DONATIONS | PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL |
| Brooklyn | 593 | 18.1% |
| Manhattan | 497 | 15.1% |
| Queens | 943 | 28.7% |
| Staten Island | 94 | 2.9% |
| Bronx | 163 | 5.0% |
| Outside New York City | 994 | 30.2% |
| Total | 3284 | |
Sliwa pulled in around $197,978 in the recent disclosure cycle. Most of his haul came from contributors who donated $100 or $250.
Throughout his 2021 campaign, Sliwa has raised a total of $787,125. The Republican nominee has received more contributions from donors outside New York City than from within it, followed by those from Queens and Manhattan.
About 3,450 of the total donations to Sliwa’s mayoral campaign came from outside the city, including roughly $45,594 contributed in the weeks between July 12 and Aug. 23.
| Curtis Sliwa mayoral campaign contributions (July 12—Aug. 23) | ||
| BOROUGH | NUMBER OF DONATIONS | PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL |
| Brooklyn | 483 | 16.1% |
| Manhattan | 422 | 14.1% |
| Queens | 656 | 21.9% |
| Staten Island | 346 | 11.6% |
| Bronx | 155 | 5.2% |
| Outside New York City | 930 | 31.1% |
| Total | 2992 | |
Top-dollar donors to the Sliwa campaign include former investment banker Henry Buhl, former NY-17 opponent Josh Eisen and his wife, Shani David, and Laurie Harrison of Dallas, Texas, daughter of the one-time richest woman in America.
Among Adams’ most generous donors so far, since he began fundraising in 2018: an investor from Iroquois Capital Management, a real estate partner at the firm Goldberg Weprin Finkel Goldstein LLP, former hedge fund manager and “NYC is dead forever” author James Altucher and his wife, Robyn, the owner of Atlantis Management Group, which develops gas stations in the northeast, and management consultants from a North Carolina tax firm.
Lots of money has streamed into the race from donors outside New York City, according to a City Limits analysis of recently released campaign finance data.
In the weeks between July 12 and Aug. 23, nearly a third of the more than 6,000 contributions to both Adams—the likely winner of the November race because of the city’s overwhelmingly Democratic enrollment—and Sliwa, of the Guardian Angels, came from donors outside the five boroughs.
On Thursday, the city Campaign Finance Board issued more than $4.5 million in public funds to both Adams’ and Sliwa’s general election campaigns. According to the CFB, each dollar given by a New York City resident to a candidate enrolled in the city’s matching funds program is matched by the board up to $250 with up to $8 in public money, for a max of $2,000 in public dollars for each contributor.
Sliwa raked in more than $2.6 million in matching funds through June 11, the CFB announced on Thursday. In the same period, Adams’ campaign earned $1.9 million in matching money.
Editor’s note: A previous version of this story included a line stating that Adams’ campaign received donations of $5,000 or more. While true, those donations were received prior to a law change that lowered the contribution limit for the 2021 election to $2,000, and donations exceeding that amount have since been refunded to comply with the $2,000 contribution maximum. Thanks to the NYC Campaign Finance Board for pointing out the error.
