Fundraising blowback for Juan Anon

 

 Queens Chronicle

Beleaguered Assemblymember Juan Ardila (D-Maspeth) closed out the latest campaign finance filing period last week with less than $12,000 cash on hand, state records show. While an increase from last July, when he had $934.22 in cash on hand and had raised just $2,000 from one donor last February, his poor performance relative to his primary opponents, who have tens of thousands of dollars available, suggests his reelection bid may be feeling the effects of two women’s sexual assault allegations against him.

The end of the latest filing period provides Queens residents with the clearest financial picture of the race for Assembly District 37 thus far, and is the first since Ardila officially filed for reelection in November.

Ardila was accused of sexually assaulting two women at a 2015 party, allegations first reported by the Chronicle last March. Ardila denied the women’s accounts, and did not heed calls from many of his colleagues, as well as Gov. Hochul, for his resignation. Instead, he hired a lawyer to independently investigate the allegations and craft a report.

Ardila did not respond to the Chronicle’s requests for comment for this story by press time Wednesday.

In addition to becoming a pariah among many of his peers in Western Queens and in Albany as a result of the allegations, Ardila lost quite a bit of the financial support that had propelled him to victory in the 2022 Democratic primary, most notably from the Working Families Party and the Courage to Change PAC, a political action committee formed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-Bronx, Queens) designed to support progressive candidates. Both groups rescinded their endorsements of Ardila in March, and neither has donated money to him in his reelection bid. In 2022, the WFP gave his campaign $43,665 — the most of all of Ardila’s donors — while the Courage to Change PAC gave $4,700.

Since then, Ardila, who had only been in office some two and a half months when the accusations became public, has struggled to raise money for his re-election bid. State campaign finance records show Ardila finished the cycle with $11,844.32 cash on hand, thanks in part to a $2,000 loan he gave himself right before the filing deadline and a $1,500 contribution he made to his own campaign. Together, the two account for $3,500 in his account, or about 30 percent. His largest donation (not counting from himself) is $1,000 from a Sunnyside-based veterinary clinic.