An original analysis of campaign finance receipts by NewYork16.org gets beneath the surface of the two candidates’ roughly equal fundraising totals.
Campaign finance reports showing all contributions through December 31, 2023 were filed with the the Federal Election Commission (“FEC”) on January 31st. The FEC reports Bowman as having raised a total of $ 1,372,678 and his Democratic primary challenger, Latimer, having raised just slightly more at $ 1,429,879.
While the two candidates’ total receipts are on par, a look at the details shows significant differences in how each campaign raises funds.
The Latimer campaign was put in the hot seat when, the day after the FEC reports were filed, the national publication The Intercept published an article claiming that “AIPAC is the largest donor, by far, to Jamaal Bowman’s primary challenger.” The Intercept accused Latimer of receiving 42%, or over $ 600,000, of his receipts from AIPAC. In the aftermath of The Intercept article, the Latimer campaign apparently felt compelled to reassure voters that their candidate wasn’t going to be unduly influenced by the pro-Israel lobby.
Latimer responded, pointing out that his burgeoning contributions from AIPAC are, in fact, from local residents. NewYork16.org’s independent look at the FEC reports showed that, indeed, the numerous “AIPAC” contributions in Latimer’s receipts1 are merely local constituents who “earmarked” their individual contributions by making them through AIPAC’s website, although not all are ordinary middle-class people: there were a great many maximum-sized contributions of $ 6,600.2 Latimer’s FEC filing contains page after page of such $ 6,600 contributions. Bowman’s FEC filing has several pages full of $ 6,600 contributions too, but not nearly as many as Latimer. Latimer also noted, accurately, that while his campaign has predominantly raised money from people living in Westchester and the Bronx, the Bowman campaign relies on a more geographically distributed, national donor base.
NewYork16.org conducted a detailed analysis of the two campaign’s FEC filings to determine average contribution sizes.
Bowman achieved many more unique, itemized contributions than Latimer did. We identified 2,418 itemized individual contributions for Bowman, but only 922 for Latimer. Latimer relied heavily on donors who were able to contribute large amounts. We found that the average size of an itemized individual contribution to Latimer’s campaign (rounded to the nearest dollar) was $ 1,483, whereas the average for Bowman’s campaign was one-fourth the size, at $ 370.
The FEC also allows candidates to report donations less than $ 200 as “unitemized individual contributions.” These donations are reported as aggregate figures instead of broken down in granular donation-by-donation reports. Latimer’s unitemized individual contributions were $ 51,240, while Bowman’s unitemized individual contributions were $ 340,266. As with our analysis of the itemized contributions, the unitemized totals suggest that Bowman found support from a larger number of people who donated in more modest amounts.
In summary: while we found Latimer’s claim that his contributions, including the AIPAC-earmarked contributions, are mostly from local residents to be accurate, there is an important gloss on those facts. Latimer is relying heavily on people who can donate in large amounts, while Bowman’s donor base, while more geographically distributed, is both more numerous and – inferring from what people felt able to donate – more representative of the District (and the country) in economic terms.
Per the 2022 American Community Survey, median household income in Westchester County is $ 108,144, and median household income in Bronx County is $ 45,517.
- We did not independently verify The Intercept‘s 42%-of-total-contributions figure, but found it plausible. ↩︎
- Broken down, consistent with FEC contribution limits, as one $ 3,300 contribution for the primary election, and one $ 3,300 contribution for the general election, per individual. ↩︎
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