NYC Council candidate Yusef Salaam’s campaign spending raises questions

City Council hopeful Yusef Salaam’s campaign may have spent more money last year than permissible under the law, raising the prospect that he could face fines once his race wraps up, according to a review of his campaign finance disclosures.

A spokesman for Salaam’s campaign, though, told the Daily News on Friday that the city Campaign Finance Board has informed his team that they are “under the spending cap” for 2022.

Still, the Salaam spokesman acknowledged that, ultimately, “the CFB will determine whether or not we are within the applicable rules — which we are within.”

Finance board rep Tim Hunter declined to comment on any correspondence between the board and Salaam, who’s in the running for Harlem’s open 9th Council District seat, facing off against Assembly members Inez Dickens and Al Taylor in Tuesday’s Democratic primary.

The race is considered one of the most competitive in Tuesday’s election cycle. The district is currently represented by democratic socialist Councilwoman Kristin Richardson Jordan. But she abruptly announced last month that she would not run for reelection, leaving Salaam, Dickens and Taylor, all three of whom are moderate Democrats, as the only contenders left.

Salaam, a criminal justice advocate who was wrongfully convicted and later exonerated as part of the 1989 “Central Park Five” rape case, has spent more than any other candidate in this year’s Council election cycle, shelling out $230,447, according to his latest filing.

At issue regarding his campaign’s spending is CFB’s “out-year” cap that restricted candidates in this year’s Council elections from spending or racking up liabilities that exceeded $55,000 in 2022.

In his first campaign finance filing from January, Salaam listed $92,510 in spending and liabilities for 2022 — $37,510 above the cap. Nearly all those expenses did not appear on that campaign filing until Salaam’s campaign amended it in May, records show.

Under CFB rules, candidates can face fines for late disclosures of expenses. Exceeding a spending cap can also result in hefty fines.

Marty Connor, a former Manhattan state senator who has worked as a campaign finance compliance lawyer for political candidates for decades, said after reviewing Salaam’s filings that it looks like he could at minimum face late disclosure fines.

“It looks like he may be in for a painful post-election audit situation where he has to pay fines,” said Connor.

Salaam’s spokesman said there’s a legitimate explanation for why it looks like too much 2022 spending was belatedly reported.

A majority of the 2022 spending is liabilities incurred from contracts with two political consulting firms, Downfield and Back Chamber Consulting, as well as salary for Salaam campaign manager Jordan Wright, the spokesman said.

The campaign did not report the liabilities until this May because “many of our vendors didn’t provide invoices to us” until then, according to the spokesman. He said the contracts actually span both 2022 and 2023 — meaning that the full amount shouldn’t be counted only toward last year’s cap.

The reason the campaign reported the liabilities only on the 2022 side of the ledger was because “it was vital for us to figure out a way to report incurred expenses even if it’s by showing the contracts,” the spokesman said.”

Sofia Quintanar, a spokeswoman for Dickens’ campaign, said she doesn’t buy the Salaam campaign’s explanation and called his filings questionable.

“It is against the rules to fail to report expenditures outside of the time period in which they were incurred. Mr. Salaam only recently reported expenditures allegedly incurred last year in the May 26 filing instead of the January 15 filing,” Quintanar said. “He is either feigning incompetence, or worse, he is intentionally violating the rules and considers the fines associated with the violations just the cost of doing business in New York City.”