Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. — who’s taken on a highly anticipated investigation of Donald Trump — has raised just over $4,000 toward an uncertain bid for reelection, campaign records filed Tuesday show.
The three-term incumbent trails eight opponents, raising just $2,022 in the last fund-raising period, according to the most recent filings on the state Board of Elections’ website.
The official line from Vance’s campaign is that he still hasn’t decided whether to run. Meanwhile, the probe into Trump’s financial dealings before he moved into the Oval Office is escalating — and could result in criminal charges against the outgoing president.
Vance’s office successfully fought before the Supreme Court in October to demand the president’s personal and corporate tax returns. He vowed to hold off on enforcing the subpoenas, which he first served on the president’s former accounting firm, Mazars, in 2019, while Trump appeals to the Supreme Court.
Whether or not Vance can bank on his incumbency and the investigation to win reelection, the crowded field of candidates vying for his job has vastly outpaced him in raising money.
“DA Vance has not actively been fund-raising,” Vance’s campaign spokeswoman Stephanie Baez said.
Tali Farhadian Weinstein, former general counsel to Brooklyn DA Eric Gonzalez, leads the progressive pack, having raised more than $2.2 million toward her bid for Manhattan DA, filings show.
Civil rights lawyer and former federal prosecutor Alvin Bragg reported $578,475 in contributions from the most recent filing period. His campaign reported a closing balance of more than $1 million.
New York State Assemblyman Dan Quart (D-Manhattan) took in $211,703 in the last filing period, and Vance’s former employees Diana Florence and Lucy Lang raised $370,765 and $716,000, respectively.
Former Legal Aid public defender Eliza Orlins’ campaign touted the most robust support among grassroots supporters. She raised more than $267,000 in the latest filing period — and showed a total of $600,000 in the bank.
Defense attorney and former prosecutor under longtime Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau, Liz Crotty, raised $279,047 in the last period.
Civil rights attorney Tahanie Aboushi reported more than $345,000 in contributions from the last period and a robust $160,143 from January alone.
Nearly all of the candidates are running on progressive platforms that promise to transform the Manhattan DA’s office and lower incarceration rates by refusing to prosecute low-level offenses like drug possession, sex work and other nonviolent crimes.
The winner is poised to inherit the record backlog caused by the almost yearlong COVID-19 pandemic. The Manhattan DA has brought only a handful of defendants to trial as the court system struggles to find a way to safely seat jurors and grand jurors.
