De Blasio under fire thanks to Cuomo’s political maneuvering

People have said many things about Gov. Andrew Cuomo, but no one’s ever accused him of lacking survival instincts.

When the Moreland Commission he appointed in 2013 started sniffing around the executive branch, Cuomo hurried to quash those inquiries. But the genius of the deal he cut was that in exchange for shuttering the commission, he was able to create a new independent enforcement unit designed to target political corruption – a unit that would be headed by a loyal longtime subordinate whose focus would be trained not on Albany but down the Hudson toward another political operative-cum-chief executive: Cuomo rival Mayor Bill de Blasio.

That Cuomo acolyte, Risa Sugarman, recently produced a state Board of Elections report on de Blasio’s operation that has turned up the heat on sundry campaign finance imbroglios from “simmer” to “boil.” The de Blasio cauldron was already overflowing with a pungent mix of horse carriages, nursing-home-for-AIDS-patients-turned-luxe-condos and diamonds for top cops.

But the action for which the mayor’s team faces potential legal peril involves events many miles north – de Blasio’s effort to accomplish what Cuomo consistently declined to do: help Democrats recapture the state Senate. And Cuomo made sure that de Blasio would pay for that. By placing his most trusted aide, Joe Percoco, into the planning around de Blasio’s effort, Cuomo not only got to claim to have fulfilled a promise to Working Families Party members, but also got access to an email thread that would later prove instrumental in his never-ending quest to remain New York’s political top dog.

In Missouri, where I served in the state Senate, there were campaign finance restrictions comparable to New York’s laws – which limit direct contributions to $10,300 per candidate but allow donors to give $103,000 to state or county political party committees, not earmarked for specific candidates. A legislative candidate in Missouri running under contribution limits of $650 might call a wealthy longtime donor and solicit $13,000 for a certain “friendly” local party committee. Sophisticated donors read between the lines: A “friendly” committee could accept $13,000 and contribute 20 times the legal limit to an individual candidate, but not directly to the candidate’s campaign.

That’s why candidates learned not to tell a donor explicitly that the money would be funneled straight back to the candidate (often with the committee skimming off a 3 to 10 percent “lug”), and donors learned to not to ask. All parties were careful not to acknowledge what was actually happening – an evasion of direct donation limits. Unfortunately for de Blasio, this is precisely what two political operatives did regarding a 2014 contribution he solicited. As the New York Times has reported, Matthew Lerch, campaign treasurer for then-state Sen. Cecilia Tkaczyk, emailed the Ulster County Democratic Committee’s treasurer. “Has the check for $60k cleared?” he asked, according to Sugarman’s report. “Below is our banking info, we need the 60 transferred over ASAP please.” Incidentally, a check for exactly $60,000 from a New York City-based nurses union with close ties to de Blasio had just arrived; the next day, the Ulster County committee transferred the $60,000 to Tkaczyk’s campaign. According to emails obtained by the New York Daily News, this was one of several huge donations de Blasio solicited in the fall of 2014 in his quest to help regain control of the Senate for his fellow Democrats.

Lerch had thus egregiously violated the maxim of former Louisiana Gov. Earl Long: “Don't write anything you can phone. Don't phone anything you can talk. Don't talk anything you can whisper. Don't whisper anything you can smile. Don't smile anything you can nod. Don't nod anything you can wink.” His email is what prosecutors call a “smoking gun,” and it led Sugarman to conclude that de Blasio had, in some cases, personally solicited such contributions (which were then directed to Upstate county committees by his campaign’s finance director) and that this constituted a premeditated “willful and flagrant” breach of state campaign finance laws.

De Blasio’s attorney responded to the report by noting that party leaders can solicit unlimited contributions to party committees and committees may fund individual candidates – and that unless donations to candidates were made “at gunpoint,” they are legal. This defense is disingenuous at best, and at worst willfully blind to political realities. In other words, sure, the Ulster County committee treasurer theoretically could’ve held on to the nurses’ $60,000 or used it for other purposes, but he would’ve never been able to show his face at a Democratic Party function again, and the same goes for any consultant who accepted the money for an unintended purpose. These are the unspoken codes of politics.

The mayor’s attorney also noted that Senate Republicans pioneered the use of local party committees to circumvent campaign finance limits for candidates. Criminal defense lawyers call this “selective enforcement,” but prosecutors and judges call it the “everybody does it” defense. Ask Shelly Silver or Dean Skelos how well that worked for them.

Like Cuomo and de Blasio, I was once an operative-turned pol with a reputation for campaign micro-management. I was sloppy: First, I wrongly approved illegal coordination between my campaign and a third party, and then acknowledged it verbally, breaking Earl Long’s dictate. When questioned, I claimed ignorance – later belied by my words on a close friend’s wire.

Cuomo got sloppy when he clumsily short-circuited the Moreland Commission and was forced into verbal gymnastics to explain the move. Previously, he’d called the commission “totally independent.” Then, it became his: “I can appoint you, I can un-appoint you.”

But even in those dark days, the wily governor was maneuvering de Blasio into a scheme Cuomo would later exploit. Now, de Blasio allies should hope that any operative who got sloppy will now keep his mouth shut –and that nobody was wired.

Jeff Smith is assistant professor in the urban policy graduate program at The New School. He is the author of three books, including Mr. Smith Goes to Prison (St. Martin's, 2015). He served in the Missouri Senate from 2006-2009 and in federal prison during 2010.