The Whole Picture
Money Isn’t Everything
A campaign’s footprint isn’t just dollars. Mailers use paper and ink. Signs use polypropylene plastic. Cars burn fuel to place them.
AI has a footprint too. Data centers use electricity and water. That’s worth being honest about.
So this page tracks both — money and carbon, line by line, for both campaigns.
The Comparison
Six Buckets. Two Campaigns. Both Costs.
195 expense records from the incumbent’s 2021 public filings, organized into six buckets. Click any row to expand the top vendors.
Top vendors in the incumbent’s 2021 filings:
- Minuteman Press — $18,576
- Rose Press — $9,015
- USPS postage — $3,260
- Bedford Dems printing transfers (multiple entries)
- Staples, GotPrint, Fridgedoor magnets
Inter-committee transfers and political donations:
- Bedford Dems 2023 — $10,000
- Bedford Dems 2025 — $5,000
- Bedford Democratic Committee — $4,213
- Other Bedford Dems committee variants (multiple entries)
- Chris Burdick for Assembly — $1,200
- Smaller transfers to Bowman, Delgado, Harckham, Buchwald campaigns
Itemized reimbursements to campaign staff and the candidate, per public filings.
Consultants, platforms, and professional vendors:
- Maria Colaco — $5,000
- Jovan Richards — $2,000
- Good Rebellion — $1,750
- Get Through (voter contact platform) — $1,673
- Amy Drucker Photography, Shiloni Pinto, design vendors (additional entries)
Paid advertising in local press and online:
- The Record Review (across name variants) — $5,725
- Halston Media — $3,850
- Kaye Media Partners — $2,280
Incumbent’s 2021 events, digital tools, and platform fees:
- Wix website — $1,519
- Katonah Museum of Art (venue) — $1,018
- Balducci’s, Whole Foods, Farmer & the Fish (event catering)
- NY League of Conservation Voters
- Act Blue platform fees
UNCAMPAIGN: domain registration ($13.12) — the campaign’s only expenditure to date.
$37,676
1,884 carbon
$0
0 carbon
Top vendors in the incumbent’s 2021 filings:
- Minuteman Press — $18,576
- Rose Press — $9,015
- USPS postage — $3,260
- Bedford Dems printing transfers (multiple entries)
- Staples, GotPrint, Fridgedoor magnets
$30,738
2,459 carbon
$0
0 carbon
Inter-committee transfers and political donations:
- Bedford Dems 2023 — $10,000
- Bedford Dems 2025 — $5,000
- Bedford Democratic Committee — $4,213
- Other Bedford Dems committee variants (multiple entries)
- Chris Burdick for Assembly — $1,200
- Smaller transfers to Bowman, Delgado, Harckham, Buchwald campaigns
$15,684
2,353 carbon
$0
0 carbon
Itemized reimbursements to campaign staff and the candidate, per public filings.
$13,724
1,372 carbon
$0
0 carbon
Consultants, platforms, and professional vendors:
- Maria Colaco — $5,000
- Jovan Richards — $2,000
- Good Rebellion — $1,750
- Get Through (voter contact platform) — $1,673
- Amy Drucker Photography, Shiloni Pinto, design vendors (additional entries)
$13,466
539 carbon
$0
0 carbon
Paid advertising in local press and online:
- The Record Review (across name variants) — $5,725
- Halston Media — $3,850
- Kaye Media Partners — $2,280
$6,733
1,347 carbon
$13.12
8 carbon
Incumbent’s events, digital tools, and platform fees. UNCAMPAIGN: domain registration ($13.12) — the only expenditure to date.
- Wix website — $1,519
- Katonah Museum of Art (venue) — $1,018
- Balducci’s, Whole Foods, Farmer & the Fish (event catering)
- Act Blue platform fees
$0
0 carbon
$0
~35 carbon
$0
0 carbon
$0
~10 carbon
$118,021
~9,954 carbon
$13.12
~53 carbon
The UNCAMPAIGN, by Comparison
That’s what running a campaign without mailers, signs, consultants, and direct mail looks like.
Less money. Less waste. Less noise.
Carbon in Context
What These Numbers Look Like
The Incumbent (2021)
~10 metric tons CO2e
- Roughly 2 average US passenger cars driven for a full year
- About 25,000 miles of driving in a typical 25-mpg car
- The annual electricity use of approximately 1.5 US homes
- About 1,100 gallons of gasoline burned
The UNCAMPAIGN (2026)
~53 kg CO2e
- About 130 miles of driving — roughly Bedford to Boston and back
- The carbon from burning about 6 gallons of gasoline
- Roughly the footprint of 50 Coroplast lawn signs — which this campaign isn’t producing
- About 2 weeks of electricity for a typical US home
One Coroplast lawn sign ≈ 2,500 Claude queries. Don’s campaign isn’t producing any signs.
Show Your Work
How We Got Here.
Every dollar figure on this page comes from the incumbent’s public campaign finance filings with the New York State Board of Elections. Every carbon figure comes from published emission factors applied to those dollar figures and cross-checked against physical-unit estimates.
Dollars
The Money
195 expense records from the incumbent’s 2021 campaign filings, categorized into the six buckets above. No “other” category — every dollar assigned to a substantive line.
Carbon
The Math
Each bucket carries an emission factor (kg CO2e per dollar) from published lifecycle data and US EPA input-output models. Conservative midpoints, not worst cases.
Liu et al. 2018 · US EPA EEIO · Husom et al. 2025
Caveats
The Honesty
Footprint numbers are estimates, not direct measurements. AI energy use varies across an order of magnitude in published research; we used a generous mid-range and added a safety multiplier.
Our judgment, transparently applied
Anyone is welcome to check our math. The filings are public, the factors are cited, the estimates are conservative on purpose.