Two leading candidates in the 2025 NYC mayor’s race — former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and city Comptroller Brad Lander — both say they have reached the city’s $8.3 million spending cap when including public matching funds with a little over four weeks until the Democratic primary.
Cuomo’s campaign says it raked in nearly $4 million in private donations since launching on March 1, according to numbers his campaign released ahead of Friday’s CFB disclosure deadline for the latest filing period.
The former governor, who resigned in 2021 amid nearly a dozen accusations of sexual harassment that he denies, is the front-runner in the polls and has won the backing of many institutional Democrats and influential groups. The current mayor, Eric Adams, is a non-factor in the Democratic primary after opting to run as an independent in the November general election instead.
Cuomo’s campaign says that with $1.5 million in public matching funds it already received from the CFB earlier this month combined with another $2.8 million it expects to be awarded on May 30, it will hit the board’s $8.3 million fundraising limit.
“We are truly overwhelmed by the outpouring of support,” said Bill Mulrow, Cuomo’s campaign chairman, in a statement. “In just 80 days, New Yorkers from every borough have come together to help us build a campaign with the broadest and most diverse coalition of support.”
While Cuomo’s campaign announced its own haul, its latest numbers, along with those of most other major candidates, had not been updated on the CFB website as of this posting. Candidates will be updating their filings with the CFB through Tuesday morning, according to a board spokesperson.
Queens Assembly Member Zohran Mamdani, who is polling in second place to Cuomo, was the first candidate to max out their fundraising earlier in the spring.
However, there is no guarantee that Cuomo’s campaign will unlock the full amount of public dollars that it anticipates, especially following previous missteps it made around the city’s matching funds system. In April, the CFB denied Cuomo any public funds due to widespread errors with the paperwork it submitted and earlier this month the board withheld over $600,000 in additional funds over a preliminary finding of illegal coordination between the campaign and a super PAC supporting it.
The super PAC backing Cuomo, known as “Fix the City,” has already raised over $8 million — the most of any outside expenditure backing a candidate in a city election.
Lander, who has been moving between third and fourth place in the polls, announced earlier this week that he has also reached the $8.3 million spending limit. However, Lander’s campaign did not immediately provide further details on how much he raised in the most recent filing period and the breakdown between private and public funds.
“We’ve raised the maximum that you’re allowed to spend under New York City’s best in the nation public finance system,” Lander told reporters during a Tuesday news conference. “It’s a sign of great grassroots support…This guarantees that we’ll have all the resources that we need to communicate my message of a safer, more affordable and better run city for all New Yorkers.”
Cuomo, Mamdani, Lander, and state Sen. Zellnor Myrie have already deployed their war chests to hit the airwaves with TV ads.
The campaign for City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams, another candidate near the front of the pack, announced on Wednesday that it expects to for the first time unlock matching funds with its latest round of fundraising. The revelation came after Mamdani made the unprecedented move of encouraging his own supporters to donate to the speaker just a day before the fundraising deadline.
“This milestone is a testament to the grassroots energy behind Adrienne‘s campaign,” Adrienne Adams’ spokesperson Lupe Todd-Medina said in a statement. “It reflects what so many New Yorkers already know; she is a leader with the strength, vision, and values to meet this moment. Every dollar matched fuels a movement powered by people, not politics. She’s not in this race for herself – she’s in it for us.”
Myrie’s campaign says it raised over $900,000 in private donations since launching about a year ago, roughly $115,000 of which it brought in over the past two months. It has received $2.7 million in matching funds so far and expects to unlock another $800,000, bringing its total haul to $4.4 million.