By MICHAEL SCHENKLER

Here we go.

Last week we counted the money raised by the candidates for Queens City Council seats.

This week we take a look at the Queens Borough President and Citywide races: Mayor, Public Advocate and Comptroller. We’ll review the money raised by the contenders and present the rules concerning matching funds.

As we go to press, the Mayor is suing the Campaign Finance Board, challenging the generous four-to-one matching ratio set by law. The law provides that the City match up to $250 per NYC contributor to a maximum of: Mayor=$2,877,050; Pub. Adv. & Compt.= $1,798,500; Beep = $647,350; Council = $75,350.

And that is for each candidate, for each election — Primary and General. Wow!

Under the rules, Mayoral candidates can only spend a mere $10.7 million for Primary and General combined. Public Advocate & Comptroller $6.8 million; Beep $2.5 million and each of the more than one hundred Council candidates in the city are limited to $338,000 if they participate in the CFB’s matching program.

They gotta follow the rules and rake in the dough. There are presently 165 candidates in NYC enrolled in the matching program for 2001. Others have up until June to join.

The political consultants, political printers, newspapers, fundrais-ers, t.v. stations, cable, phone banks, etc. are in ecstacy.

And now, Rudy has to attempt to spoil things. It seems the original law provided for a generous 4-1 match to discourage candidates from accepting corporate contributions. Corporate contributions have since been outlawed. Thus, the Mayor reasons, the match should be 1-1 not 4-1. And he has taken the matter to court.

The Council Speaker, Peter Vallone, promises to introduce a bill next week that would make the mayor’s lawsuit moot. He would enact the four-to-one limits without reference to corporate contributions (since they are already illegal). Good government groups have been impressed by the large number of new candidates attracted into the Council races and therefore support such Council legislation.

Those of us that print and take ads from candidates say, "right on!"

With all of that out of the way, you wanna know who has raised how much, so far?

Here you go. All numbers are as of the January 29 CFB website update. We offer the net contribution figure, as well as the number of contributors, to give you a measure of how broad-based the candidate’s support is.

Leffler started first; then Gresser. Pheffer, Kozlowitz and Marshall are playing catchup. They won’t catch Gresser. She’s the only candidate likely to spend the maximum allowed. Marshall, who had the hope of taking this race as the only black candidate in a field of whites, has not shown well financially.

Queens County boss, Tom Manton will have to pick his candidate choosing among three Democratic District Leaders (Pheffer, Kozlowitz and Marshall) and the frontrunner, his friend Gresser. Desiring not to alienate the black district leaders, and not wanting to pick a loser, Manton might just sit this one out.

Gresser, leading; Pheffer, needs some fire; Marshall, needs big dough; Leffler, needs some friends; Kozlowitz, needs a job.

In the Mayoral melee:

Whoa, Alan! A fast and impressive showing for the Comptroller from Forest Hills. But unlike the Beep race, look for all four of the Dems to raise and spend the maximum. Hevesi’s biggest problem is that Council Speaker Vallone is also from Queens. Manton can only be with one of the two of them. Based on whispers, it’s Hevesi. Based on past relationships, it’s Vallone. Both Manhattan’s Mark Green and the Bronx’s Freddy Ferrer are still serious players. Right now, we’re picking a guy from Queens.

Likely Republican candidate, media mogul Michael Bloomberg has not filed with the CFB and will likely be this election’s John Corzine, self-funding the race, in order to lose to the Dem winner.

In the Public Advocate race:

The first three are from Manhattan; the fourth from Brooklyn. The money says it’s Gottbaum or Stringer. We agree. Betsy’s husband Victor, a labor leader from an era past, might be the edge in this close one.

Both Berman and Thompson are from Brooklyn. Thompson is the only black candidate for any citywide office, but is just too out-monied to be competitive.

What comes out of all of this, is the outrageously high cost of running for office. Money matters without matching funds. Money matters with matching funds. And the source of that money is folks who want to influence the process.

Corporate contributions, PACs, individuals – it doesn’t really matter – the big money comes from the same source: the developers, the lobbyists, the folks doing business with the City.

It’s the same old story. We don’t have a solution, but we do know the problem: money is the root of all evil! And politics, it’s just another evil.

It was a homecoming of sorts.

Mike Nussbaum calls me Monday night as he and Dale are leaving Kenneth Cole’s Fifth Avenue store and the welcome home party for Andrew Cuomo and his wife Kerry Kennedy Cuomo.

Mike goes way back with the Cuomos – to when Mario was running and Andrew was a Queens teenager.

Now Andrew is married to a Kennedy, brother-in-law to Kenneth Cole and yup, running for Governor.

Cole’s Rockerfeller Center store was a last minute replacement to the posh digs of Denise Rich – the ex-wife of recently pardoned Marc Rich.

You’ve read or heard the reports about the packed celeb-filled crowd. Andrew apparently will have little problem raising the big cash needed for a primary against NYS Comptroller Carl McCall and if victorious, a fall campaign against GOP Governor George Pataki – the man who dethroned his father.

One theme, according to Mike, that ran throughout the evening was brought home by Andrew’s new cousin Caroline Kennedy Schlosberg – you remember her. She reached back into history and said that it was time for her generation to take up the mantle of their fathers. She applauded public service – a Kennedy and Cuomo legacy.

The kickoff speaker was Martin Luther King III, who spoke of Andrew’s accomplishments as Secretary of HUD.

The most potent moment according to Mike, was when Kerry told of her visit to their twin daughters’ kindergarten class to speak about Martin Luther King. When she began her presentation, one of the twins stood up and said "mommy let me do it." The five-year-old, said Kerry, told the class why they celebrated MLK day: so blacks and whites can go to school together, eat in the same restaurant, and live on the same block. She then told her classmates that her grandpa helped Dr. King, and that her father will continue to help.

It didn’t hurt the Cuomo effort that he had King’s son in his corner or that the Kennedy legacy was everywhere in that room.

There were lots of other heavyweights there, too. But what Mike came away with was the image conjured up by JFK’s innaugural speech: A torch has been passed to a new generation – and Andrew was picking up that torch.

Andrew is a liberal in the old sense of the word – the sense in which we children of the sixties take pride.

However, he believes that government must get smaller but better.; be compassionate yet fiscally responsible; and be aware of the need to lift people out of the poverty pockets that still exist in our State.

Finally, to this writer, his biggest task seems to be to explain to his fellow New York Democrats why they should not give the Democratic gubernatorial nomination to the first black man to rise to Statewide office and have the Governor’s Mansion in his sight, Comptroller Carl McCall.

It’s going to be interesting. Election 2002 has just begun.

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Mike Nussbaum contributed to this column

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Michael Schenkler can be reached at: MSchenkler@QueensTribune.com

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