Controversy Brewing in CD 4 Council Race as Rachel Storch Opts Out of Matching Funds

Petitions, matching funds: The race for the District 4 City Council seat just got a little testy as Rachel Storch, one of six vying for the Dem party nomination in the upcoming primary, decided to opt out of the 8-to-1 campaign matching funds from the City. That erases the spending cap for the race and means none of her rivals now have to abide by it either.

The issue that has emerged most strongly in this very civilized, very collaborative race is the matching funds issue. Storch’s dropping out of the funds seems to have catapulted that to the forefront as the dominant issue in the campaign.

The six CD 4 candidates are Storch, Ben Wetzler, Virginia Maloney, Lukas Florczak, Faith Bondy, and Vanessa Aronson.

So how does a candidate qualify for matching funds? First, a candidate must be running for a municipal office, including City Council. Second, a candidate must meet a fundraising threshold by collecting a minimum number of $10-or-more contributions from the area they seek to represent. City Council candidates must have 75 contributors from their district and raise a minimum amount of qualifying contributions from NYC residents (only the matchable portion of the contributions counts toward this threshold). In addition, the Campaign Finance Board must meet other requirements for participation.

Here’s Storch’s statement on her opting out: “I strongly support and recognize the critical role that the public matching-funds program has in creating a more equitable path for candidates to run for office. In this extremely competitive primary, I am relying on a broad network of friends and supporters to fund my campaign. We brought in more than 900 contributions to date, two­-thirds of which have come from donors within New York City, more than any other candidate in the race. . . . “

Reactions from the other candidates?

Ben Wetzler: Wetzler worked with the Fair Elections Campaign when he was a Democratic District Leader. At the time, he felt that the most important benefit of public matching funds was how they empowered small, local donors: With the City’s 8-to-1 match, five neighbors giving $25 to the candidate have more impact than a special-interest group giving the maximum, ensuring that grassroots candidates cannot be significantly outspent by their better-connected competitors.

According to Ben, since the CD 4 spending cap has been lifted, the benefits of the program have less to do with the money it provides and more to do with the candidates’ time. And over the last few months, he says, he has had to cancel or delay events with voters so as to focus his energy and that of his team on raising funds. Without a hard cap, candidates become “cloistered,” he said, and lose sight of the hyper-local failures of City government—like trash on the sidewalks, the rough pavement, that one intersection where it’s particularly hard to see if a car is coming—and start thinking exclusively in terms of dollars and cents.

Vanessa Aronson’s reaction to Storch’s move appeared in City & State, a site covering NYC and NYS politics. It read, in part, “Ultimately, it will be up to the people of New York to determine whether they want elections that are unmarred by excessive campaign spending. We can’t reward candidates for flouting a program that has proven essential to free and fair elections.”

Virginia Maloney’s edited statement: “The City’s matching-funds program is a model program to empower everyday New Yorkers who give at smaller dollar levels to have the same impact in politics that deep-pocketed special-interest groups and high-dollar donors have had for far too long.” Referring to Storch, she said, “I’m a proud participant of the matching program and will not let this one non-participant distract me from making the city I was born and raised in safer and more affordable for all New Yorkers.”

Faith Bondy’s edited statement: “Team Bondy is proud to be participating in the public matching-funds program and to have successfully raised the maximum permitted under the program,” and that “we remain humbled by the campaign’s grassroots support.”

Candidate Lukas Florczak, who was not eligible for matching funds, was asked to comment, but had not responded by presstime.

The City Council District 4 goes from East 14th Street and stretches north to include Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village, Turtle Bay, Murray Hill, Kips Bay, the eastern part of Times Square, and a stretch of the UES to East 93rd Street.