Brian Lear on WNYC, now our regular Wednesday appearance on the show by our City Hall reporter Elizabeth Kim, who we used to call our lead Eric Adams reporter.

But now at's campaign season,

she talks mostly about the mayoral race, as well as updating us on the actions of the mayor

in office. And today, Liz has brought a guest star with her, none other than WNYC Senior Politics

Reporter Bridget Bergen because of some developments in the mayor's race that Bridget has

been reporting on. So happy Wednesday, Liz, as I say every week. And Bridget, thanks for joining

the party today. Happy Wednesday, Brian. I love a party. Bridget, let's get right to your reporting

on a big fine placed on the Cuomo campaign by the city's campaign finance board more than a $600,000

fine. What did the Cuomo campaign do? Yeah, Brian. So this is connected to an ad that was

issued by an independent expenditure group called Fix the City.

And the campaign finance board put out a warning to campaigns last week saying,

you know, reminding them that campaigns and these independent expenditure groups can't be coordinating.

In federal campaigns, it is not uncommon for candidates to have a portion

of their website that is often identified with a red box, with messaging that should a, you know,

a group like this, a super PAC or some other independent expenditure group want to use, they will understand what the

message that candidate is trying to send to voters. Well, there was a portion of Andrew Cuomo's

campaign website. It was very small. It said message to voters. It had some information about

the types of voters they're trying to reach, the messages they'd like to use. And the campaign finance board in their announcement on Monday said that they had reason to believe

that this ad that fixed the city issued was not done independently of the campaign.

And from their perspective, the definition of, you know, what would allow them to determine something

was independent is if the group used information that the campaign made available and knew

or should have known would have been used by a group like this. And so that $622,000 fine that was then docked from the Cuoma campaign itself

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