Let Me Translate This

The New Work Campaign Finance Board just said, "You are a corrupt mother f%$#er," in response to reports of the Eric Adams mayoral campaign having defrauded them in the last cycle.

There is a good chance that they will be denying him matching funds this cycle:

Mayor Eric Adams will know as soon as Dec. 16 if his reelection bid will qualify for millions of dollars in public matching funds as the Campaign Finance Board votes on the first tranche of payments for the 2025 contest.

At a City Council hearing on Wednesday, CFB executive director Paul Ryan testified that a candidate could be denied funding overall months ahead of the election, depending on questions about that particular campaign.

“There will be some judgment calls made by the board when making public funding determinations,” Ryan told Council members on the governmental operations committee — declining to mention Adams specifically.

The CFB will approve the first of eight payouts of matching funds for the 2025 elections by Dec. 16, he noted.

Since 1989, the nonpartisan city agency has administered taxpayer money to candidates running for municipal office (mayor, comptroller, public advocate, borough president and City Council) who qualify. The CFB upped the matching funds from $6-to-$1 to $8-to-$1 for the 2021 campaign on the first $250 of each donation from New York City residents, following a 2018 ballot referendum.

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But Councilmember Lincoln Restler, a Democrat from Brooklyn, still pushed on why the board would give Adams more money when so many questions linger about his past campaign — and a federal indictment that alleges he obtained $10 million in 2021 matching funds fraudulently.

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The Adams campaign repeatedly ignored red flags raised by the CFB during the 2021 campaign about suspicious donations — and secured the record haul of public funding, THE CITY has reported.

Adams’ indictment in September, following the prosecution of former Lt. Gov. Brian Benjamin in connection with his 2021 comptroller bid, put the CFB on notice about accusations candidates gamed the public financing system and placed the board under heightened scrutiny when it comes to payouts for the 2025 election cycle.

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Had the Campaign Finance Board known about the allegedly illegal contributions, the Adams campaign could have been found ineligible to receive portions of the $10 million — or removed from the program entirely. 

Adams is very much a "Law and order" candidate, so his corruption comes as no surprise.

The more that a candidate pontificates about law and order the more corrupt they tend to be.