Why Is the WFP Attacking a Special Prosecutor in the Data and Field Services Case?

The most hardcore elements of the New York City Council’s progressive cadre trooped out to Staten Island on March 11 to bang on a railing and denounce the “McCarthyism” behind the “political persecution” of former Working Families Party/Data and Field Services staffer Rachel Goodman, currently chief of staff to powerful Councilman Brad Lander. Goodman was identified in an unsealed indictment as a conspirator to defraud the Campaign Finance Board in the two 2009 campaigns to elect Debi Rose as Richmond County’s sole Democrat on the Council.

Progressive rhetoric was unrestrained at the St. George conference, which stands as an overblown sequel to a November presser at City Hall, where Council members were incredulous that someone as insignificant as a Staten Island special prosecutor could dare to question the probity of the Working Families Party’s saintly electoral operations. Indeed, may a cat look at a king?

Councilman Jumaane Williams called Roger Adler, the special prosecutor in the case, “a willful imbecile,” and repeatedly shouted “Investigate Adler!” Williams echoed the November comments of his colleague Corey Johnson, who ranted, “Roger Adler is a failed civil court judge who has never been a prosecutor and is trying to make a name for himself. It is disgusting he is doing this to one of the finest elected officials we have in this body. Shame on you, Roger Adler, go do something else with your life. Go after real criminals, not Debi Rose.”

Roger Adler, incidentally, is not a “failed civil court judge”; he ran for civil court judge in a 2008 election and lost. He has, however, been practicing law since 1971, was president of the Brooklyn Bar Association, worked in the Brooklyn D.A.’s office, and was three times appointed a special prosecutor, by Elizabeth Holtzman and Charles Hynes. He was counsel to the state Senate Investigations Committee, and was praised by Democratic state Sen. Craig Johnson as “a brilliant attorney and extremely fair minded.”

Accusations of racism have been levied against Adler by Council Members Dominic Richards and Laurie Cumbo, and Debi Rose herself claimed that “justice is elusive in Richmond County.” Brad Lander, speaking in November, explained patiently that he used Data and Field Services in 2009, and that their services were strictly aboveboard. “There is nothing here that merits criminal prosecution … it’s appalling,” Lander said.

Anyone paying the remotest attention to city elections in 2009 was aware that Rose’s campaigns were swamped with irregularities. Tens of thousands of dollars in payments to Data and Field Services (the WFP’s for-profit subsidiary) in February of 2009 appear to have covered work done by the Party itself, which is a direct violation of the law. Perhaps each of the 23 counts against the Rose campaign falls into a grey area, but for the WFP leadership to pretend that investigation of Debi Rose has come out of nowhere and is purely malevolent or a politicized fishing expedition, is absurd.

Indeed, the WFP has built itself into a force in municipal politics by playing as close to the edge of the law as possible in regard to channeling resources between its union backers and the candidates the party chooses to endorse. WFP staffers are routinely shuttled between various campaigns, and coordination of resources is common. Data and Field Services was formed as a means of providing accounting cover for the distribution of WFP operatives between different campaigns. The fact that DFS even existed at all should make people think twice about what the WFP was up to. How many other political parties form “for-profit” subsidiaries, and let them operate from the same offices?

As recently as February 2014 the Working Families Party was forced to sign a consent agreement with the state of Connecticut regarding irregular campaign practices of precisely the sort under investigation in Staten Island. For instance, “To the extent that WFCC (Working Families Campaign Committee) or WFP shares staff with any other entity, the WFCC or WFP as applicable shall maintain timesheets detailing the specific hours committee staff spent in performance of the work for WFCC or WFP….” The backstory of the WFP’s Connecticut dealings is not detailed, but one can reverse-engineer the narrative easily enough, given even the slightest familiarity with how the party has worked in New York.

The volume of the shouting on the part of WFP politicians and union supporters is enough to raise alarm bells for even mild skeptics—likely wondering if there is something worthy of investigation being covered up. If the case on Staten Island is so vaporous, then why did top de Blasio aide Emma Wolfe refuse to talk to the special prosecutor about her role managing the WFP’s campaign machine? She was offered immunity from prosecution, so she isn’t protecting herself.

Indeed, one supposes the corruption could go to the very top. After all, it was Bill de Blasio’s 2009 campaign for public advocate that had the deepest involvement with DFS—paying the entity some $200,000 for work, which might or might not bear scrutiny. There is also the odd 2006 payment of $33,000 to Bill de Blasio personally, for consulting services by the mysterious “Progressive America Foundation,” another WFP entity operating out of 2 Nevins St. The payment was approved by the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board, but exactly what de Blasio did for $33,000 was never explained.

Another important element pointing to, though not proving, campaign fraud is the existence of “common vendors,” who can easily coordinate resources for their clients. Consider the fantastic rise of the influential BerlinRosen consulting firm, whose eponymous principal Jonathan Rosen was a top ACORN official, and which helped engineer many of the WFP’s 2009 electoral successes, including the re-election of future Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito. BerlinRosen took in close to $4 million in the 2013 municipal cycle alone, and is generally known as a primary lever of political power in the de Blasio era. BerlinRosen raised eyebrows during the 2014 state legislative campaign cycle when de Blasio raised money for upstate state Senate campaigns, which then spent most of the funds with BerlinRosen. This circulation of money, while not illegal, nevertheless provokes serious questions about the role of the consultant/lobbyist in the political scene today.

The WFP’s leadership got ahead of the unsealing of the indictment of Rachel Goodman by finding a friendly reporter at The New York Times to write a softball piece about “freakish” special prosecutors, who are somehow allowed to terrorize hapless and innocent campaign workers in a “Twilight Zone” effort at political persecution. Jim Dwyer’s article echoes closely the message of Brad Lander and his WFP acolytes: that Rachel Goodman and Debi Rose’s campaign workers committed clerical errors that are common to many campaigns, and do not rise to the level of criminality.

Indeed, Lander and other WFP allies have made the case that since no other prosecutors have chosen to pursue criminal charges in the 2009 DFS campaigns, then that is proof that Roger Adler must be politically motivated. But what if this argument is turned inside out? Perhaps the problem is that all the other prosecutorial entities are al-ready compromised. Maybe what we need is more, not fewer, Roger Adlers.

City & State columnist Seth Barron writes the blog City Council Watch.