There are exactly four weeks until primary day for the 92nd Assembly District (92AD) when incumbent Tom Abinanti will face off against county legislator Mary Jane Shimsky. With campaign financial disclosures recently released, I'm going to take my usual look into the money involved in this campaign.
First a summary of the campaigns' financial positions:
Abinanti started this campaign cycle (which I'm measuring from November 1, 2021) with more than $63K in his campaign account. To launch her challenge, Shimsky transferred $25,600 from her county legislature campaign account and received family loans with $1,500 outstanding. Through late May, Abinanti has out-raised Shimsky by $16,585 and has spent $15,546 more, leaving Abinanti still with a sizable $37,135 cash advantage heading into the campaign's final month.
Good for Tom, right? Not so fast. The spending numbers, when examined more closely, may suggest that the campaign is heading in a direction not so favorable to the incumbent. Abinanti has raised $75,833 since November 1, 2021, broken down between $23,135 contributed by 66 individuals, with the remaining $52,748 coming from variety of PACS, corporations, law firms and similar entities. Of this amount coming from individuals, only 36 donors (contributing $6,200) actually live within the 92AD. Put differently, of Tom's cash haul since November, only 8.2% has been contributed by potential voters. Those in-district donors are split nearly evenly between Mount Pleasant and much larger Greenburgh (about 18 donors each).
In contrast, Shimsky has reversed Abinanti's corporate/PAC v. individual contributor ratio. Shimsky has received $48,248 from individual contributors and $11,000 from a mix of other campaign funds, law firms, and just a few PACs. Shimsky's donors include 149 itemized individuals (typically donating $100 or more cumulatively) plus an unidentified number of small contributors who have given $1,330. Shimsky's individual donors include 80 itemized in-district residents (plus likely several more small amount donors). Nearly all (74) of these 80 donors live in the Town of Greenburgh.
Who are the big donors to the campaign?
By far the biggest contributor is Lawpac of New York (trial lawyers?) which has given Abinanti $9,400. His next biggest donor is an individual living in South Williamsburg in Brooklyn who has donated $5000 cumulatively. Other $4000+ donors to Abinanti this cycle are the New York Hotel Trades Council ($4,700) the Stars and Stripes PAC ($4000 - building industry) and the DANY PAC ($4000 - disability advocates). In addition to the Brooklyn donor, Abinanti has a donor of $2,500, 2,000, and three giving $1,000. Only one these large donors resides in 92AD.
Shimsky's largest donor is an individual from Hastings who has given $4,700. Shimsky also has received from $1000 to $2000 from nine individuals (seven of whom live in district). Shimsky's biggest non-individual donors are the Cricket Club of Westchester ($1000), Kearney Group Corp. ($1000 - a "domestic transportation corp.) and David Vinjamuri's (failed) campaign account ($1000).
Additional "indirect" funding:
1. Democratic Party funds: The Greenburgh Democratic Town Committee is backing Shimsky. At its March 24, 2022 meeting, the Executive Committee voted to spend up to $20,000 for endorsed primary candidates facing opponents, specifically identifying Shimsky and Mondaire Jones (no longer relevant). It is unclear how much, if any, of this $20,000 has been spent to support Shimsky's campaign so far. Presumably, the Greenburgh Democratic Town Committee will pay for mailings or other promotional material (lawn signs or brochures) on Shimsky's behalf. The Mount Pleasant Town Democratic Committee, which backs Abinanti, has voted to allocate $2,500 toward his campaign (per the Mount Pleasant Democrats facebook page).
2. State Funding: A recurring complaint in every campaign where a challenger takes on an incumbent is the incumbent's ability to use state funding awarded to his office for constituent communication indirectly for campaign purposes. While such constituent mailers are a legitimate activity by any officeholder, challenged incumbents frequently wait to spend their office mailing budget until late in a campaign cycle to make sure that every constituent home receives several reminders of incumbent's name, face and achievements in their mail. State rules, however, impose a black-out period on such mailers thirty days before a primary. Greenburgh residents have certainly received a number of mailers from Abinanti's office in the past few weeks (I received my most recent Abinanti office mailing yesterday - presumably the last such mailing before the black-out period).
What does the incumbent's mailing advantage mean financially? We can make some guesses. There are 50,298 registered Democrats in the 92AD (under existing borders) which suggests about 25,000 households that a Democratic primary candidate would want to reach. On average, a post card mailer costs about .50 cents, or $12,500 to reach those 92AD Democratic households. Greenburgh residents have reported receiving somewhere from 6 to 8 Abinanti office mailers during the campaign. A challenger would have to raise and spend, cumulatively, from $75,000 to $100,000 to match the advantage that Abinanti has gained through the privileges of incumbency.
UPDATE 6/2: Courtesy of https://seethroughny.net/expenditures we can see that in 2020 (a primary year) Abinanti expensed $77,045 in "bulk mail" and in off-year 2021 he expensed $66,820 for bulk mail. I do not know if there are timing restrictions on allocation of the mail budget (e.g., possibly an assemblymember facing a challenger might backload his bulk mailings in the prior year and advance them in the primary year, allowing spending upwards of $150,000 on bulk mailing timed for the election cycle). I have also learned that county legislators are allowed one bulk mail per year to their constituents which, possibly, could amount to two bulk mailings during an election cycle (i.e, one mailing late in 2021 and one more before the 2022 primary). I cannot find the county legislature mailing black out rules. It should be noted, however, that Shimsky's county legislative district #12 includes only 40% of 92AD Democrats.
Note: for full disclosure, the author has contributed a small amount and has canvassed for the Shimsky campaign.
