Foldenauer hopes to ride anti-Chin vote Nov. 7 BY LINCOLN ANDERSON
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ven if Margaret Chin prevails in the First Council District primary election, voters who didn’t support her — meaning a majority of the district’s Democrats — will get another chance to unseat her in two months. The candidates who finished third and fourth in Tuesday’s primary are rejecting the “spoiler” label should Chin be certified as the winner. And one of them said he’s raring to take on Chin in the Nov. 7 general election as he runs on the Liberal Party line. As of press time, Chin held a slim, 200-vote lead over Christopher Marte, who was not conceding. In unofficial results, Aaron Foldenauer and Dashia Imperiale took 6 percent and 4 percent of the vote, respectively. Meanwhile Chin registered just shy of 46 percent of the vote to Marte’s 44 percent. The Villager asked both Imperiale and Foldenauer about being branded as spoilers. “I was in this race to fight for the people who make this city run, not the people who run this city,” Imperiale responded. “We’re going to continue to fight against greedy, unscrupulous developers and landlords. We’ll hold our elected officials’ feet to the fire.” Foldenauer said, “The claim that any candidate spoiled this election is nonsense. My anticorruption message resonated with voters. I turned out hundreds of people who wouldn’t have otherwise [voted]. “The ‘spoiler’ tag is a tool of the political establishment to discourage good citizens from running,” said Foldenauer, who is a litigator. “In addition, I took away thousands of votes from Margaret Chin, given my effective attacks on her record and the three legal complaints that I filed against
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PHOTO BY TEQUILA MINSKY
Aaron Foldenauer spoke next to an empt y chair left for Margaret Chin at The Villager’s debate for City Council District 1 Democratic candidates t wo weeks ago after Chin ducked the event. Maybe he will now get another chance to debate her face to face in the race for the Nov. 7 general election.
her,” he added. “These three pending investigations continue to cast a pall over Margaret Chin’s future. “The results from primary night set up a head-tohead matchup between me and Margaret Chin in the general election,” he continued. “I’ve been endorsed by the Liberal Party of New York, and I’m on their ballot line in November. Anyone who cares about the future of Lower Manhattan should donate to my campaign today as I unlock a war chest via public matching funds to defeat Margaret Chin in November.”
Foldenauer said he would have fared better in the primary election had he had access to public matching funds — as both Chin and Marte did. “I have saved all of my matching funds to use in my head-to-head battle against Chin,” Foldenauer said. “Margaret Chin has exhausted her matching funds and would have to do fundraising all over again, a tough task to accomplish in a short period of time, given her poor performance yesterday.” Foldenauer didn’t qualify for matching funds because he didn’t meet the bar of raising contributions of at least $10 from at least 75 people living in the district. Under the city’s campaign-finance law, any donation $175 or less from a city resident is matched by the city six times over. So a $100 donation is matched with $600 from the city. To qualify, a candidate must also raise at least $5,000 in matchable dollars. “I’ve already done that,” Foldenauer said. “I’ve raised over $9,000 in matchable dollars. “Once I reach the 75-donor threshold, that $9,000 would be worth $54,000 in matching funds. And I’m eligible for more as more matching dollars come in. “As I consolidate the anti-Chin vote, I expect to easily meet this threshold in the general election, which will unlock matching funds with respect to all the money I’ve raised so far. Do the math and you’ll see that I come out on top!” But hardcore Marte supporters shrugged off the idea. Sean Sweeney of the Downtown Independent Democrats said he had warned Foldenauer he would split the non-Asian vote in the primary. “The numbers and demographics don’t lie,” Sweeney said. “In his arrogance, he refused to believe me. I would much rather have Margaret Chin for four more years than this jerk.”
September 14, 2017
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