Former Gov. Andrew Cuomo still has nearly a whopping $8 million in his campaign war chest — but he may have trouble spending it on a potential City Hall bid.
That’s because the funds are in his old state campaign account, and campaign finance rules would make it particularly difficult for him to transfer the money out for his rumored mayoral campaign in the Big Apple.
State Attorney General Letitia James — another heavyweight possible mayoral contender — has the same issue, although with significantly less cash up for grabs.
“I don’t think those war chests are a big advantage,” said John Kaehny, executive director of the watchdog group Reinvent Albany, to The Post.
“The war chests are going to be expensive and time-consuming to turn into money that they can spend in the city races,” he said.
In order to transfer the cash, the campaign needs to get the original donor to sign off on the move, which naturally would involve time and resources to do that outreach.
In the event that embattled Mayor Eric Adams resigns, triggering a special election, the candidates would be on an even quicker timeframe to make that happen to free up enough cash to spend on staffers, ads and polls.
Cuomo, who is believed to have been considering a mayoral bid for months, resigned as governor during a sex-harassment scandal in 2021 — with a massive $18 million in campaign cash on hand. The pol has denied the allegations against him.
While his war-chest figure has fluctuated as he spends and is reimbursed by the state for legal expenses, he had just under $8 million in the bank as of July.
The Post was first to report that Dem higher-ups are looking to James as a possible foil to Cuomo, should he get into the race. The AG famously issued an investigative report in 2021 that concluded he sexually harassed 11 women, findings that Cuomo slammed as a “sham.”
Publicly, James has shirked off questions about her interest in the mayoral race and has yet to call on Adams to resign.
The attorney general, who is running for reelection in her position in 2026, has roughly $890,000 campaign cash on hand.
Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi, asked about the situation by The Post, said in a statement, “This is all premature, but Gov. Cuomo is a proud Queens boy who loves this city and wants to do everything in his power to help it succeed.”
Meanwhile Kaehny noted that a special election, even without James or Cuomo on the ballot, would give a lot of power to well-funded and politically keen special-interest groups such as unions and the real-estate lobby because candidates wouldn’t have much time to raise cash on their own from lots of sources.
“Those forces, I think, are going to be more powerful,” he said.
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