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Two East Side Dem Council Races Have Total of Over $2 Million in Campaign War Chests

The Democratic primary in the District 4 City Council race has six candidates who have amassed nearly $1.5 million in their collective war chests. And farther uptown, in the District 5 primary, incumbent Julie Menin dwarfs them all with over a half million in her war chest.

| 13 May 2025 | 03:20
    Julie Menin, the incumbent in City Council District 5, has emerged as the reigning Queen of Fundraisers on the Upper East Side with over $533,607 raised for her primary race so far. She is not accepting public matching funds. The competitive District 4 race has six candidates with nearly $1.5 million in their respective war chests.
    Julie Menin, the incumbent in City Council District 5, has emerged as the reigning Queen of Fundraisers on the Upper East Side with over $533,607 raised for her primary race so far. She is not accepting public matching funds. The competitive District 4 race has six candidates with nearly $1.5 million in their respective war chests. ( Photo: Julie Menin campaign)

There is some big money being spent in the District 4 and District 5 Democratic primary council races on the Upper East Side, with campaign coffers between the two races topping $2 million.

The race for the East Side District 4 race, to succeed term-limited Keith Powers [who is running for borough president], is one that Crain’s New York Business has called a “costly and competitive race.”

Two of the candidates in the Democratic primary for the District 4 seat are setting the pace in fundraising with over $300,000 in their war chests: Rachel Storch and Virginia Maloney.

Storch, the chief operating officer of the Fifth Avenue Synagogue and a former elected official in Missouri, rankled some of her opponents when she opted out of the matching funds program. She has raised $369,416. She had a slight lead in fundraising dollars over Maloney, an executive at Meta and the daughter of former Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney. Maloney has $302,102 in her campaign coffers, including $109,568 in private donations and $192,534 in matching funds.

Vanessa Aronson has also had a strong fundraising season, with $74,614 raised privately and matching funds of $192,534 for a total of $267,534.

The next two are fairly close in funds raised: Faith Bondy has raised $59,331 in private donations and $190,410 in matching funds for $249,741 total. Ben Wetzler has raised $64,175 in private donations and received $192,534 in matching funds.

Lukas Florczak has raised only $5,387 and has not qualified for matching funds.

But District 4 is not the only race with a candidate relying entirely on private funds: Julie Menin, the incumbent in District 5, is not taking matching funds since she is contemplating a run for City Council speaker. At the moment, she is the reigning Queen of Fundraisers with a war chest of $533,607 although that is not all going to her campaign. As Ben Kallos, her predecessor in the UES seat who has endorsed her reelection points out: “As a candidate for Speaker, Menin cannot participate in the public matching system as the majority of her funds are being spent supporting other council members.”

Her only rival in the primary race is political newcomer Colin Thompson whose web site describes him as an educator. He is opting out of matching funds and has raised $128,153 in private funds, according to the campaign finance board.

And to correct the record: Thompson does not live on Roosevelt Island as we said in a past column. He lives on the Upper East Side with his partner, who is an ICU nurse at Bellevue. Thompson also lists membership in the Park Avenue United Methodist Church.

Oyez oyez–Judicial Maven Extraordinaire Alan Flacks is the first to tell me that the 2025 NY County Democratic Party Judicial Convention is scheduled for Aug. 11 at SVU (School of Visual Design) on West 23rd Street. Presently, there are three open NY County Supreme Court seats to be filled and four top contenders–Judy Kim, Suzanne Adams, Shahabuddeen Ally, Jim Clynes. The list keeps growing. To be continued. So stay tuned.

Food bazaar/bizarre—East 86th Street, once known as Germantown, hasn’t been that for a long, long time. Even when it was no longer called Germantown, the busy crosstown street was home to ethnic and other formal and informal restaurants and food shops. Today’s East 86th commercial district’s an amalgam of food-related businesses—between Lex and 2nd, there’s Fairway, Papaya King, Hummus & Pita, Mimi’s Pizza, Shake Shack, Wonder, Swigger’s, Baked by Melissa. I may have missed a food stop or two. On the more formal food side, there’s Maz Mezcal and Sandro’s, the new Keuka Wine between 1st and York. And on York, the perennial favorite Mansion restaurant. And let me not overlook the fruit and vegetable vendors and the sometimes Auntie Anne’s food truck.

Anchoring the very commercial part of the crosstown street—from Lex to 1st—like bookends are two newly opened 24/7 mini-marts: Lexington Market at the corner of Lex on the west side above the subway entrance, and the Family Grocery and Deli just west of 1st Avenue, in the storefront alongside where Gristedes supermarket once was. When online East Side Feed reported the opening of the Family Grocery and Deli, celebrating their opening all festooned with balloons, they described it as a bodega. I went inside. No resident cat. Is it still a bodega?

Family Grocery and Deli has been called a bodega. I went inside. No resident cat. Is it still a bodega?