More than two-thirds of contributors living in New York City gave $175 or less, and more than 90 percent of the total money raised in campaigns came from individual donors, not political action committees or unions. (Last year, for donations up to $175, candidates received $6 in matching funds for every $1 they took in.)
Taken together, the 2013 elections, the board said, were “by some measures, the most wide-open” since the program began.
Two candidates defeated wealthy men who paid for their own campaigns in primary elections, the report noted. Joseph J. Lhota won the Republican nomination for mayor despite being outspent three-to-one by John A. Catsimatidis, the billionaire owner of the Gristedes grocery store chain.