Massey rallies young industry pros ahead of filing deadline

Paul Massey’s mayoral campaign made a last-minute fundraising pitch to the real estate industry’s young professionals Tuesday ahead of a crucial filing deadline.

“In order to be considered a serious candidate, he has to show a pretty substantial amount of money in his coffer, and we’re not there,” Newmark Grubb Knight Frank [TRDataCustom] broker and campaign bundler Billy Cohen said to the members of the Young Men’s and Women’s Real Estate Association on Tuesday, urging them to donate ahead of the 5 p.m. disclosure deadline on Wednesday.

Massey has said he aims to raise a couple of million dollars ahead of the Jan. 17 filing deadline, which covers July 16, 2016 through Jan. 11, 2017.

Massey’s campaign stumbled out of the gates when it failed to file required paperwork in August, but it scored a big victory last week when the Independence Party of New York endorsed him. The endorsement ensures his name will be on the ballot in November.

The mayoral hopeful spoke for about 30 minutes to the crowd, taking shots at Mayor Bill de Blasio and outlining some of his priorities as he ramps up his campaign.

Massey, a Republican, said he recently met with the mayor of Jerusalem, Israel, and plans to travel to the city and others to understand how to better manage the Big Apple.

“I’m going to 10 cities that are well-run – and have high mayoral approval ratings – to see what’s going on during the campaign to bring back best practice ideas to bring back new ideas about how to fix our schools, how to make us safer, how to bring these big infrastructure projects that we were talking about,” he said.

A Quinnipiac University poll published in November showed de Blasio with an approval rating of 47 percent, though 49 percent of respondents said they didn’t think he deserved a second term.

Massey said he plans to make tackling the city’s homelessness problem a priority.

“Within the first 100 days of me being elected you will immediately see a team that I will assemble before I take office to jump in and tear apart our homeless shelter programs so that they immediately are working and we can get these poor people off the streets,” he said.

The veteran broker said he also wants to implement a Peace Corps-type program “where a kid’s first job was volunteering for the city, helping with the homeless, helping with the schools,” and encouraged attendees to get involved.

“I bet there’s a potential commissioner in the room,” he said.

In its January issue, The Real Deal took a close look at Massey’s long-shot campaign.