The first New York City election of 2021, a special election for a City Council seat in eastern Queens that in another era would have occurred below the radar, instead attracted heavy-hitting donors from outside the district who may have tipped the scales in a race that garnered fewer than 6,000 votes, and undercut the intended effect of ranked-choice voting.

Common Sense NYC, Inc., an independent expenditure committee, spent $221,000 in the race, according to the New York City Campaign Finance Board. Almost half the money went to radio ads, web ads, hoodies, and phone calls in support of the more centrist, establishment candidate, James Gennaro, who held the Council seat from 2002 to 2013.

Another $95,000 was spent on negative ads against his most viable opponent, Moumita Ahmed, a community organizer who started a mutual aid network during the ongoing pandemic. One mailer shows her hugging a Bernie Sanders doll—she was endorsed by the Vermont Senator—while another shows a tweet that says “Boycott Israel” with a graphic image attached. Ahmed did not send that tweet from 2015 but responded to it with this comment: “My every heartbeat is for the children of Palestine.”

Ahmed told Gothamist/WNYC that she saw the efforts by Common Sense NYC as part of a strategy to instill fear and division among neighbors in District 24, an area that has a majority of Asian and Latino residents as well as a large Jewish community. Ahmed is a member of the fast-growing Bangladeshi population. Between 2000 and 2010, the Asian population grew 30% while the white population shrunk.

“They exploited people's fear of the other to divide us when in reality the policies my campaign put out were inclusive of everybody,” she said.

The group also bought a radio ad that played in both English and Bengali, alleging Ahmed wanted to cut the NYPD budget by two-thirds. According to Ahmed, she’s proposed a $1 billion dollar cut over four years to the NYPD’s budget which totals close to $5.6 billion.

Sunil Hali runs a network of media outlets for the South Asian community including Radio Zindagi Network. He said Common Sense NYC sought air time to run the same ad on Election Day and offered to pay a month’s worth of ads for just one day. Hali said he rejected the offer because there wasn’t enough time to properly vet the ad and also because it was negative.

“I don’t want to malign the other side,” he said. “But they could do better by running positive ads.”

Common Sense pointed out that all its advertisements are publicly reported with the NYC Campaign Finance Board, as required by law. The top three donors to the group are Stephen Ross, a developer best known for projects such as Hudson Yards and the Time Warner Center, Jack Cayre who is also a developer with many retail properties and Isaac Ash of United Legwear and Apparel.

In a statement, a spokesperson said the group considered this a critical time for the city, as it seeks to recover from the devastating pandemic.

“New York City is in a crisis and voters deserve to know the facts about those who seek to lead our city during one of our most difficult periods,” the statement said, adding that the donors themselves did not choose which candidates or races to invest in. Those decisions were left to the leadership of the group.

The adoption of ranked-choice voting for all New York City elections has the potential to upend how campaigns are waged, and open the door to more women and BIPOC candidates. And proponents have argued that the new way of ranking candidates would foster a more positive tone and keep the focus on the issues that matter to the most people because each candidate has an incentive to be ranked as high as possible by the most people. That was not the tenor of Common Sense NYC’s contribution to the District 24 race.

On Election Day, Yeshiva World newspaper ran an article with the headline, “Vote Today Or Cry Tomorrow,” and cited the anti-Ahmed mailers. The local state Assembly member Daniel Rosenthal was quoted in the article, urging people to vote despite the near-blizzard conditions.

“People were concerned about some of the radical views that candidate expressed on social media and it made them energized to go to the polls and vote against that,” he said.

Turnout data from the Board of Elections shows that Gennaro received 65% of his votes from a district with a high concentration of Jewish voters. In a recent tweet, he distanced himself from Common Sense and said debates should be on the issues “absent personal attacks.”

Genarro will be on the ballot again in June, when there will be a citywide primary for the same Council seat. Ahmed said the special election experience shook her.

“As much as I loved fighting for my community, it’s also a lot to have to put myself out there like that,” she said, adding that she wasn’t sure she would run again.