Campaign Expenditures - Albany’s 2025 Mayoral primary

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As a follow up to our 2025 Albany Democratic Primary Mayoral Campaign Contributions story, we analyzed the campaign expenditures by each of the four Democratic primary candidates: Dorcey Applyrs, Daniel Cerutti, Corey Ellis, and Carolyn McLaughlin. 

All data reported in this story reflects expenditures made between January 1st, 2024 through Tuesday, June 24th, 2025 which was the date of the primary.  Our goal was to see where each of the candidates deployed their resources, and, to a lesser extent, explain how that may have impacted the results of the primary.  

All data used in this analysis was obtained from NYS board of elections website. 

The table below lists contributions and expenditures for each of the candidates between Jan 2024 through June 24th, 2025.  The Cerutti campaign expenditures were 97% of the total contributions they had received in this period.  The Applyrs, Ellis, and McLaughlin campaigns exceeded expenditures relative to the campaign contributions they received over this same period by 115%, 402%, and 152%, respectively.

To better look at expenditures, we split all items under “Expense Code” into four groups: Advertising & Media, Consulting & Strategy, Fundraising & Donations, and Operations & Overhead. 

Advertising & Media, which includes:

• Television Ads
• Radio Ads
• Online Ads
• Campaign Mailings
• Campaign Literature
• Lawn Signs

Consulting & Strategy, which includes:

• Campaign Consultant
• Polling Costs

Fundraising & Donations, which includes:

• Fundraising
• Non-Political Donations
• Political Contributions
• Meals

Operations & Overhead, which includes:

• Office
• Bank Fees
• Postage
• Reimbursement
• Petition Expenses
• Professional Services

The results of this grouping are shown in the figure above. Observations on the data include:

1. Cerutti outspent the other candidates in Advertising & Media and Operations & Overhead, spending $103k (31%) and $134k (42%), respectively. 
2. In Advertising & Media and Operations & Overhead, Applyrs spent $40k and $60k less, which also translated to a smaller percentage of her total expenditures, 20% and 24% respectively.
3. The Applyrs campaign outspent Cerutii in both Consulting & Strategy and Fundraising & Donation, spending $103k (35%) and $30k (10%), respectively. 
4. The bulk of the Ellis campaign expenditures were used on Operations & Overhead ($46k, or 59%) and Advertising & Media ($16k, or 20%). 
5. McLaughlin divided her expenditures between Advertising & Media ($41k, or 49%) and Operations & Overhead ($39k, or 47%).

We then examined all spending by expense code for each of the four groups. Our primary goals were 1) to identify where (organizations and people) the campaigns spent their money, 2) to determine if spending hinted (to some degree) at the primary results and 3) to denote the expenditures within and outside of Albany.  For this last point, in the tables below we use either a Gray or Blue background, indicating outside of Albany but still within NY or outside of NY, respectively. 

For Advertising & Media, Consulting & Strategy, and Operations & Overhead we elected to only list a few of the larger items under each category rather than every expenditure to better streamline the discussion herein and discussion that might extend beyond this story. We do note some of the smaller expenditures that fall under Fundraising & Donations, especially to those also seeking elected positions because these expenditures might signal endorsements, strategic cooperation, or shared values between candidates, to name a few.