Purporting To Save Taxpayer Money By Self-Financing, Chain Has Cost City More In Matching Funds

When Heidi Harrison Chain announced in July that she would opt out of the Campaign Finance Board’s matching funds program, she framed her decision in altruistic terms.

She had her own resources, and was simply trying to preserve city money during tight fiscal times.

“The city is struggling,” Chain said at the time. “To me it was a choice between seniors getting services or money being used for politics, and the choice was clear.”

Yet as Chain’s opponents in the race to replace Melinda Katz have been eagerly noting, by pouring so much of her own money into the campaign—and Chain so far has spent over $152,000, more than anyone other than Michael Bloomberg—she triggered a provision of the CFB program that gives opponents an additional $95,000 in public funds. That equals $7,000 more than she would have received had she joined the program and received matching funds for raising the maximum amount from others.

Under CFB rules, if a non-participant in the program raises or spends more than $80,501, matching funds are paid out to the other candidates at a “bonus” rate of 7.14 public dollars per match-able dollar raised, rather than the usual rate of 6 to 1. Chain has far exceeded that threshold by raising over $206,000 (including her own donations to the campaign) thus far.              

At a Times Ledger candidate debate two weeks ago, three of Chain’s Democratic opponents, Albert Cohen, Michael Cohen, and Karen Koslowitz, asked Chain in succession to explain the actual reason she had opted out of the program.

Chain refused to budge from her original reasoning.

“Did I want somebody to take campaign literature,” Chain asked rhetorically, “or have somebody get food?”

When pressed in an interview, Chain acknowledged that at the time she opted out of matching funds, she knew of the CFB trigger which ultimately resulted in giving her opponents extra money.

“I was aware of the way the rule is written,” Chain said.

But she argued that simply because her opponents got more taxpayer money because of her spending does not mean they have to use it.

“It doesn’t mean that anyone else is then forced to spend any more or less of that money,” Chain said.

Chain also suggested that the trigger rule should be amended for future elections.

Chain does not have wealth approaching the city’s $16 billion mayor. An attorney at the New York City Department of Finance, Chain makes $95,000 a year, according to public records, while her husband, Herbert Chain, is an accountant at Deloitte and Touche, according to campaign finance records.

During the campaign, Chain’s money has given her some advantages, like being able to open a campaign office on Queens Boulevard all the way back in May. And Chain has produced a series of large, glossy campaign mailers with the messages targeted to specific neighborhoods in the district.

Chain’s opponents in the race say her money advantage has been neutralized to some degree, however, because Chain has spent an unusual amount of her funds on consultants and lawyers.

This has included paying thousands of dollars each to C&M Consulting, Progressive Strategies Group, John J Patterson Consulting, the law firm Kantor, Davidoff, Wolfe, Mandelker, Twomey and Gallanty and the law firm Genova, Burns and Verona. She has bought a voter list from Prime New York. She has paid Sheinkopf Ltd. to produce some of her mailers.

This included a recent controversy over a mailer in which Chain was pictured with six police officers and which also featured an NYPD shield. Deputy Police Commissioner Paul Browne blasted Chain, telling the Daily News that the use of the police logo was “inappropriate and done without or knowledge or involvement.”

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