Ferrer Staff Clamors for Contributors

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The New York Sun

Earlier this week, the Democratic nominee, Fernando Ferrer, held a “low dollar” fund-raiser at a lounge in the garment district called Stitch, with tickets going for as little as $50 each.


His staff is working the phones, holding private lunches, and inviting potential contributors to coffees in a feverish effort to raise enough money to go head-to-head with Mayor Bloomberg, a billionaire whose fund-raising operation simply consists of the candidate’s writing checks to his campaign from his personal bank account.


With new Campaign Finance Board regulations, Mr. Ferrer is eligible for a match of $6 in public funds for every dollar he raises privately. The match – an increase from the 5-to-1 on the books for the 2001 mayoral race – applies only to the first $250 of each contribution and to donations from New York City residents.


But depending on what Mr. Ferrer raises and on what Mr. Bloomberg spends, there is a chance that voters will see more money thrown at this campaign in the coming weeks than at any general election in city history. In 2001, Mr. Bloomberg reportedly spent $75 million and his Democratic opponent, Mark Green, who beat out Mr. Ferrer in a runoff election, spent roughly $16 million total on his primary and general elections.


A Quinnipiac University poll released yesterday, the first of the general election, showed that 52% of likely voters said they would back Mr. Bloomberg if the election were held today, compared to 38% who said they would support Mr. Ferrer. The poll, which was conducted between September 14 and 19, surveyed 774 likely voters. The margin of error was plus or minus 3 1/2 percentage points and roughly 9% of those surveyed said they were undecided.


“This is our first look at likely voters – as opposed to those who are registered – and at the start of the general election campaign, it looks like a Bloomberg blowout,” the director of the Polling Institute at Quinnipiac, Maurice Carroll, said in a statement.


Democrats are trying to improve their standing in heavily Democratic New York City by portraying Mr. Bloomberg as a close friend of the Bush administration. Yesterday, the state Democratic committee sent a man wearing a President Bush mask to a campaign appearance where Mr. Bloomberg was being endorsed by several theater and entertainment unions.


In recent days, Mr. Bloomberg has distanced himself from Mr. Bush’s positions and policies, first coming out against the president’s Supreme Court nominee and then flouting the president’s position on how much to pay workers charged with rebuilding the hurricane devastated New Orleans region.


Mr. Ferrer’s finance chairman, Leo Hindery, said the campaign was not going to be financially competitive with Mr. Bloomberg’s, but that it was making inroads with supporters. He said the campaign was making “hundreds” of calls a day and plowing through lists of people who contributed to Mr. Ferrer’s rivals in the Democratic primary.


On Friday, Mr. Ferrer will file his first financial disclosure statement of the general election, providing a glimpse into how the fund-raising operation has been going since he won the primary and moved into general election fundraising less than a week ago.


An assistant professor of political science at Pace University, Christopher Malone, said that if Mr. Bloomberg is willing to spend $75 million or more, Mr. Ferrer “has to get somewhere in the $20 million range.” Mr. Malone said he thought that goal was “doable” for Mr. Ferrer, especially because the lack of congressional elections or a presidential race this year means that regular political donors aren’t tapped out.


Though other political analysts have also mentioned $20 million as a target range for Mr. Ferrer, Mr. Hindery predicted the campaign would spend at most $15 million total on the general and the primary, for which it spent $4.5 million. That sum includes the public matching funds. He said $20 million was “not even close to an accurate statement.”


The campaign, he said, has already received contributions from donors responding to e-mails sent last week by Senator Kerry, Senator Edwards, and the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Howard Dean, who called on Democrats in other parts of the country and state to help Mr. Ferrer.


Mr. Ferrer’s campaign manager, Nick Baldick, said that while the campaign was gladly accepting donations from contributors all over the country, the “key question is what percentage of the donations are going to be matchable.”


The campaign rolled out two new commercials yesterday – one in Spanish, the other in English. Mr. Baldick would not say how much airtime the campaign bought, but said it planned on adding more commercials to the rotation in the coming weeks.


The New York Sun

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