State finance reports for the special election were filed 32 days and 11 days before election day, showing what campaigns have raised and spent. The 11-day pre-special election reports were made public this morning. Here’s a very quick review:
Alice Cancel raised $501 in the past three weeks — for a total of $4,316 raised and $3,736 cash on hand.
- By far her largest contribution has been $3,000 from United Service Workers United.
- Other contributions have been small ($100 or less) mostly from addresses down Madison, Monroe, and Cherry Streets where Cancel lives.
Link to Cancel’s state finance reports.
Lester Chang raised $37,230 in the past three weeks — for a total of $46,400 raised and $27,822 cash on hand.
- Chang raised about $16,000 from small businesses outside the assembly district.
- Individual contributions range from $5 to $2,000, mostly from zip codes outside the district.
Link to Chang’s state finance reports.
Yuh-Line Niou raised $40,791 in the past three weeks — for a total of $162,185 raised and $134,716 cash on hand.
- Approximately 25% of Niou’s contributors in the past three weeks live in the district.
- Niou has had a large amount of financial support from unions.
Link to Niou’s state finance reports.
The disparity between Cancel and Niou in particular is astounding to me — Niou has raised 37 times what Cancel has. Niou has enough on hand for a robust get-out-the-vote operation and mail, especially considering her support from unions like SEIU, UFT, and HTC that will likely spend their own PAC money on mail this week.
But don’t count Cancel out. Despite anemic fundraising under her own name, the Democratic nominee is likely to see her campaign run by the NYS DACC (Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee), which as of January (the committee’s last state finance report) had $1.2 million cash on hand, including hundreds of thousands of dollars from unions now supporting Niou.