Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo may be violating New York City campaign finance rules that prohibit candidates from coordinating political strategy and spending with the super PACs supporting them.
The issue is potentially serious for Mr. Cuomo, the Democratic front-runner for mayor. If found in violation of the rules, he could face stiff penalties and potentially lose out on millions of dollars in public matching funds.
At issue is a practice commonly known as red-boxing, in which candidates post strategic information in a public, if obscure, location where big money groups supporting them can see it. Doing so allows the two sides to get around rules prohibiting them from directly communicating.
Mr. Cuomo appears to have done just that when he launched an innocuous-looking page on his campaign website in late April. While it was labeled a “message for voters,” the page reads much more like detailed spending instructions for Fix the City, a super PAC created to raise and spend huge sums on his behalf, or other groups.
The almost 600-word message cites recent polling data and includes pre-edited video clips of Mr. Cuomo that could be dropped into ads. It also lists four steps that will be “critical for success,” including an ad telling Jewish voters about Mr. Cuomo’s record on antisemitism, door-to-door canvassing in Black and Latino neighborhoods and the need for “less traditional” media to reach to voters between 40 and 55.
While the practice remains legal on the federal level, New York City quietly adopted rules late last year taking direct aim at red-boxing — a term that refers to the frequent use of red-bordered boxes to highlight the instructions. City regulators have warned that the practice may effectively undermine the strict limits on fund-raising and spending by campaigns.
It was not immediately clear if the city is scrutinizing Mr. Cuomo’s tactics. But the New York City Campaign Finance Board, the body responsible for enforcement, blasted out a warning on Monday reminding all city campaigns about the new rules, according to a copy of the email obtained by The New York Times.
“Red-boxing is the publication by campaigns of strategic information or other data to communicate with outside parties that make election-related expenditures,” the board wrote. “If the CFB determines that expenditures made by outside parties utilized red-boxed information, both the campaign and spender would be subject to penalties.”
A spokesman for the board declined to comment on whether the message was connected to Mr. Cuomo’s campaign or Fix the City.
A spokesman for Mr. Cuomo did not immediately comment.
Liz Benjamin, a spokeswoman for Fix the City, stressed that the super PAC was independent and “operates within the rules and takes its obligations seriously.”
Fix the City, which is being run by a longtime Cuomo loyalist who was once his right-hand man, has already raised more than $6 million from real estate developers and other wealthy interests to support Mr. Cuomo’s mayoral ambitions. It hopes to collect more than double that by the time the campaign is through, potentially dwarfing the spending limits imposed on individual campaigns.
The super PAC has already spent about $2.5 million on television and digital advertising to support Mr. Cuomo.
After the board’s Monday email, one of Mr. Cuomo’s opponents for mayor, State Senator Zellnor Myrie, wrote to the Campaign Finance Board to formally request an investigation into potential coordination.
The letter cited ads by Fix the City that closely mirror Mr. Cuomo’s broad campaign message and information in his red box related to abortion rights, the Covid pandemic and standing up to President Trump.
“These kinds of coordination practices between campaigns and outside spending groups provide an illegal unfair advantage to coordinating campaigns by evading the program’s expenditure limits, in-kind contribution limits and corporate contribution restrictions,” Maya Handa, Mr. Myrie’s campaign manager, wrote in a letter to the board.
The mere existence of red-box messaging is not enough under city rules to warrant a penalty, however. The campaign finance board has to find evidence that the super PAC actually acted on or used specific information included in the red box.
In the case of Fix the City, each advertisement was released before Mr. Cuomo posted the detailed instructions on or around April 26 — making them unlikely to prompt a penalty.
In a separate matter, the campaign finance board denied Mr. Cuomo millions of dollars in matching funds last month because the paperwork submitted by his campaign was incomplete. He could still be awarded the funds.
