05/28/2026
Most of the time when a politician sends you an email or a text that says, “Donate now! Deadline approaching! 12x match!” it’s totally made up. Just some buzzwords strung together to trick you into giving. There is no deadline, there are no matching funds — just pressure tactics to get you to give them money.
And it’s even worse when it’s from politicians on the other side of the country and you have no idea how you got on their list. (My personal rule is that I only donate to candidates who have set foot in my town!)
But to be honest with you, in this case, I have a real deadline. And the matching funds are real, too! Let me explain:
As you probably know, NYS has a matching funds program for state offices, which includes assembly candidates. Every small-dollar donation is matched up to 12:1 if the donor lives inside the district. So for me, that means all my donors who live in Utica, Rome, Floyd, Marcy, Deerfield, or Whitestown.
Every couple weeks, my campaign submits our list of small-dollar donors from the 119th Assembly District to the State Board of Elections. The State BoE does their research and verifies that each donation is eligible for matching funds — that the donor has given $250 or less, lives in the district, is a citizen, and is not a lobbyist. That verification work takes some time, so 2-3 weeks after my campaign submits our donors, we get our matching funds from the state. There is always a delay because they do a thorough job.
This small-dollar program is how I’m powering my campaign. I don’t call people from NYC and ask them for $3000 or $6000 checks; instead I run my campaign on donations of $250 or less from folks around the neighborhood. A $50 donation turns into $600 in matching funds; a $250 donation turns into $2300. As long as folks keep donating these small amounts, I can run my entire campaign this way.
The next date to submit donations for matching funds is June 1st. I’ll receive my matching funds for that batch around when early voting starts. But the matching funds for donations later in June won’t arrive until after June 23rd - after primary day.
So while donations I receive in June will eventually be matched, that money will come too late to be used for our campaign operations before the primary is over. That makes June 1st a real deadline for matching funds.
That means that if you’ve been on the fence about giving — or if you have already donated and could give a bit more — now is the time. A donation of any amount from $5 to $250 makes a huge difference in closing out this campaign strongly.
I’ve always said that the decision to run for this seat was made much easier knowing I had the support of so many people throughout the community. Now we’re closing in on the end of primary season and we just need one more push.
Link to contribute is in the comments below.
Thank you again for all your kindness and support!
