By Neil Fabricant

“Michael Bloomberg is the most corrupt politician New York has seen in our generation.”

Isn’t it about time that someone said that? Well, I just did.

Hyperbole?

In the past eight years Bloomberg has paid millions of dollars to the Republican Party and ended up with its ballot line three times. He did the same with the Independence Party, which also received sole source contracts from the Bloomberg administration. As far as I know, these contracts have never been questioned, let alone investigated. Is nobody interested? Taxpayer money aside, Bloomberg simply says:

It’s my money and I can spend it any way I want. And it’s all legal. And you’re a disgrace to even question it. I stand for progress, not politics.

Giving public officials cash in exchange for favorable government action is of course a crime. Granted, the real estate lobby, the hedge fund operators, the predatory equity crowd, and to be bipartisan about it, the trial lawyers do it all the time. If the exchange or the promise is explicit and can be proved, people go to jail. But the quid quo pro is rarely contemporaneous. Instead, the players carry around ledgers in their heads, political due bills. But it’s corrupt and everyone knows it. It’s just that the beneficiaries have made so much of it legal.

Is the Bloomberg Way really so different? Presumably, he hasn’t given the Republican bosses any personal cash or put people on his various payrolls in their capacity as public officials, and presumably he hasn’t asked for favorable government action in exchange for giving them cash for their personal benefit, as “personal” is defined by law. The distinction between crimes and sleazy politics is what lawyers call a fact-based question. So exactly what has he done?

First, a very brief history of the relevant players with whom Bloomberg has dealt to get the Republican ballot line.

George Pataki was New York’s governor from 1995 until December 2006. Rudy Giuliani was mayor from 1994 to 2001. Joe Bruno was the Republican senate majority leader from 1994 to 2007. Alfonse D’Amato, the former U.S. Senator from 1981 to 1998, was the boss of bosses.

D’Amato plucked Pataki from an obscure state senate position and made him governor. The two of them engineered a senate coup that installed Bruno as majority leader. D’Amato then defeated Giuliani in his first mayoral campaign by throwing a primary against him. Before he made a second try at defeating David Dinkins, Giuliani decided to kiss the ring. The primary threat disappeared; D’Amato produced major financing for his campaign, and presto! Guiliani became New York City’s first Republican mayor since John Lindsay. Eerily, just as Bloomberg bought the Independence Party line, the line that provided the margin of victory, Ray Harding, the Liberal Party boss, sold his Party’s ballot line to Guiliani. It provided Giuliani with his margin of victory. Harding became a real estate lobbyist for landlords and developers. Eventually, he and one of his sons whom Giuliani hired ended up on the wrong end of federal indictments. Giuliani, of course, went on to become a presidential candidate. But let’s stick to the Republican Party in New York.

When Alfonse D”Amato lost his senate seat to Chuck Schumer in 1998, he had already installed his chief fundraiser, Charles Gargano, as Pataki’s chief fundraiser and head of the state’s Economic Development Corporation. As such, Gargano controlled billions of dollars worth of real estate development deals, tax write offs, bond underwritings, and all the other mechanisms by which real estate operators, underwriters and politicians garner taxpayer cash to further their private interests. Gargano thus became the middleman for handling the money flows between New York’s real estate barons and Pataki. Presumably, it was legal in the form of campaign contributions.

D’Amato put many other operatives into strategic posts in the Pataki administration. When he lost his senate seat, he simply took off his government official hat and became a $500,000 per phone call lobbyist. If you needed something serious in the Pataki years, you talked to Alfonse.

What does all this have to do with Michael (call me Mike) Bloomberg?

When Bloomberg decided to run for mayor, he wasn’t going to bother with getting the requisite number of signatures on petitions and duking it out with the Republican hoi polloi in a primary. He would talk to the men I just named.

I wasn’t there at the rebirth of Michael Bloomberg as a born again Republican, but we know he paid or promised to pay however many millions for the Republican Party ballot line. How much? We know the floor; it’s a matter of public record. We will never know everyone who was hired, the contracts that were awarded or the myriad other ways in which money flows to those who control the Republican ballot line.

Bloomberg’s defenders would argue that Republican Party officials aren’t government officials and thus the millions of dollars that poured into the Republican Party from various Bloomberg money pots don’t fall within the statutory definition of bribing public officials. True enough. I do not accuse the mayor of committing an act of criminal bribery. I don’t know where the conversations took place, who said what, or in what sequence; all we know is he got the nomination and millions poured into the various Republican entities and candidates on the city, state and national level.

Let me try to make things more concrete. Here’s an imaginary script:

Bloomberg to his secretary: “Get me Pataki on the phone. Better yet get me D’Amato’s guy, You know, the real estate guy. What’s his name? That’s right, Gargano, Charlie Gargano.”

“Hello, Mr.Gargano, can you hold for Mr. Bloomberg?”

“Who?”

“Michael Bloomberg. That’s B-L-O-O-M-B-E-R-G. That’s right. You look him up and call me back.”

20 minutes later.

““I’ll be glad to take Mr. Bloomberg’s call. Just call whenever you’re ready.”

“Hello, this is Michael Bloomberg, call me Mike. I’d like to get together with the Governor to talk about how I might help the Republican Party in New York.”

“When would be a good time for you, Mike?”

“The sooner the better.”

“I’ll clear the Governor’s calendar. No need to come to Albany. We can meet at the Governor’s Manhattan office. It’s quiet and comfortable and private.”

“Fine, Thursday all right for you?”

“I can say that with 99% certainty. Let me call the Governor and I’ll get back to your secretary to confirm it.”

“Fine.”

“Bye Mike—Oh Mike, as far as anyone else at that meeting, the Governor generally likes to have me and Senator D’Amato along, but of course that’s between you and the Governor.”

“Well, you tell him that whatever he decides is fine with me.”

The meeting takes place. D’Amato, Gargano, and Pataki, maybe Pataki’s former law partner, Mike Finnegan, are all present. Not too many people.

The deal is struck. It goes without saying that Bloomberg would fund his own campaign. How much else was committed, to whom, will not appear in anyone’s memoirs.

Alfonse: “Who will take care of Giuliani?”

Pataki: “You’ll have to deal with him, he hardly talks to us.”

Bloomberg: “That’s fine. Leave it to me.”

Pataki: “He wants an extension of his term but he has to go through Albany. He won’t get it. We’ll take care of everything else. Welcome to the Republican Party, Mike.”

I haven’t read Joyce Purnick’s biography, but I doubt it opens up that line of inquiry. What we do know is that Bloomberg became the Party’s chief financier. At some point Joe Bruno, the former senate majority leader now under indictment for bribery and corruption became a Bloomberg best friend.

A bit more background for political junkies

Why did Alfonse enjoy such power and how did he exercise it? D’Amato was a minor town official out on Nassau County, Long Island. The Nassau County Republican machine under the leadership of a Joe Margiotta, later convicted and jailed for corruption, was a potent force in New York politics. Until civil law suits and federal indictments ended the practice, county employees were forced to pay one percent of their salaries to the Republican political operation in Nassau. D’Amato thrived inside this corrupt system and became a U.S. Senator.¹ Nassau County eventually went bust, and that’s why the Democrats now hold sway in Nassau County.

During the Reagan presidency, The Fonz, as he is sometime referred to, controlled the appointment process for U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. When, in 1983, he signed off on Rudy Giuliani’s appointment, the two men became fast political friends. D’Amato had some other friends on whose behalf he would call Giuliani from time to time. They were indicted mobsters.

The D’Amato-Giuliani friendship fell apart when Giuliani indicted Michael Milken, the junk bond king who financed many of the leveraged buyouts in the 1980’s. Milken was an important D’Amato funding source, having become such shortly after D’Amato announced that his senate subcommittee would hold hearings on the junk bond industry. Giuliani raised the stakes when he indicted Jack Libert, the treasurer of the senator’s campaign finance committee. He also indicted Libert’s law partner, Armand D’Amato. Of course, there was much talk that Giuliani was after the Fonz himself. That would put a strain on any friendship.

When Giuliani left his U.S. Attorney’s job to run for mayor in 1989, D’Amato engineered a Republican primary campaign against him using Ron Lauder, the multimillionaire cosmetic heir as a candidate. Arthur Finkelstein, D’Amato’s media consultant, produced a series of television commercials, aimed not at a Lauder victory—that wasn’t feasible or even interesting to Lauder—but rather to destroy Giuliani. Giuliani would go on to win the Republican primary but lose to David Dinkins in a close election. Political analysts attributed Dinkins win to the damage that Lauder’s primary campaign had inflicted.

Four years later as he prepared to run against Dinkins again, Giuliani feared another D’Amato-funded primary campaign. But the Fonz was facing a tough reelection campaign himself. Corruption and Mafia-related scandals continued to dog his career. Even the ethically challenged Senate Ethics Committee had criticized some of his actions. He needed the politician-prosecutor with the image of incorruptibility. The friendship was on again. Giuliani endorsed D’Amato. He was photographed with him on Hollywood-style undercover drug buys and in general helped the senator present himself as a drug-busting crime-fighter rather than the sleazy political operator he was known to be. D’Amato won reelection. Republican state and county leaders fell into line for Giuliani. The threatened primary never materialized, and Giuliani’s campaign received major financial support from D’Amato’s extensive donor network.

The next year D’Amato tapped George Pataki, an obscure state senator, to run against Mario Cuomo. He delivered the Republican nomination and funneled large amounts of cash from his own donors into the Pataki campaign. Giuliani now felt secure enough to annul his political marriage to D’Amato. In an effort to wrest control of the Republican Party from the D’Amato-Pataki cabal, he endorsed Mario Cuomo, whom it appeared would beat Pataki. In announcing his endorsement, Giuliani said that a Pataki win would usher in a state government “of D’Amato, for D’Amato and by D’Amato.” “If the D’Amato/Pataki crew ever get control ethics will be trashed.”

He was right about the ethics but off in his political calculation. Pataki won. That’s when D’Amato and Pataki engineered the coup that ousted the senate majority leader, replacing him with Joe Bruno. By then Pataki had already appointed Charles Gargano.

Like D’Amato, Gargano has been investigated over the years in connection with unsavory mob associations, the wiring of millions of state dollars to major Republican donors, bid-rigging charges, even an effort to open an Indian-sponsored New York gambling casino. And like the ex-senator, he always managed to stay one step ahead of the sheriff. Gargano and D’Amato became major fundraisers for George Bush—“Pioneers.” When Bush won the presidency, the federal corruption investigations into Gargano’s dealings ended. Sheldon Silver charged that Gargano was Albany’s most corrupt public official, a record of achievement that can be likened to Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak, and a record that may be broken in Albany this year.

Bruno’s son became a lobbyist on development deals that his father could advance or block from his position as majority leader. Bruno assured the voters that there were no conflicts of interest because his son only talked about such matters with the senator’s aides! D’Amato became a registered lobbyist whose fee for picking up the phone and lobbying the Pataki government sometimes ran as high as $500,000—for a single phone call.² And so the bland George Pataki presided over an era of New York political corruption unrivaled since the days of Boss Tweed. Until Michael Bloomberg came along.

I went back and took a look at one of Wayne Barrett’s pieces from Bloomberg’s last campaign season in 2005. Barrett, the incomparable investigative reporter for the Village Voice wrote the following:

Endorsement for Sale

Wayne Barrett
Tuesday, October 11th 2005

Michael Bloomberg, Colossus of New York:

Remember when Guy Velella was evil incarnate and Mike Bloomberg was doing everything he could to get the ex–state senator back into a Rikers Island cell? A year later, Bloomberg has almost everyone who worked for the former Bronx Republican chairman on his campaign payroll—payback for a pivotal endorsement engineered in February when Bloomberg was frantically trying to block the candidacy of ex–GOP councilman Tom Ognibene.

Jay Savino, Velella’s former chief of staff who now heads the Bronx party, acknowledges that Bloomberg has paid $2,000 a month “for space and phones” at its Bronx office, as well as hiring, at a combined cost so far of $39,608, Laura Tosi, Dawn Rahaniotis, Adrienne Sicilia, and Shanette Brown; all of them were closely associated with Velella. Sicilia was Velella’s personal secretary, and Tosi’s husband, Vic, the Velella- installed deputy director of the Bronx Board of Elections, was actually the party chair who engineered the endorsement. Savino’s father, a former councilman, went to federal prison in the ’80s for tax evasion and illegally acquiring a machine gun and three pistols with silencers.

When Ognibene won the endorsement of the Queens party, it was such a wake-up call for Bloomberg that he launched an intense campaign for the Bronx, where Velella’s antipathy was widely seen as an Ognibene opportunity. Bloomberg, aided by Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno, secured the endorsement three weeks before Velella, who would surely have opposed it, was released from jail. Had Ognibene won it, he might well have gotten the 7,500 signatures he needed to make it onto the ballot and force Bloomberg into a Republican primary, especially since he narrowly missed qualifying and the Bronx party gathered 2,700 signatures for Bloomy.

Bloomberg wound up paying $95,169 to Jeff Buley, the counsel to the state GOP, and $418,979 to Bob Muir, counsel to Republican congressman Vito Fossella, to knock the feared Ognibene off the GOP ballot. Buley, a lobbyist reportedly representing clients like a new Staten Island NASCAR venture before the city, is a partner of Al Pirro, the convict husband of Westchester D.A. Jeanine Pirro, who’s running against Hillary Clinton. Bloomberg also paid former state party chair Bill Powers $80,010.

Ognibene says his old friend Powers met with him early this year at the Sheraton and tried to convince him to “step aside in the mayoral race” and run in a special election for a vacant Queens Assembly seat. Ognibene says Powers did not mention he was working for Bloomberg, instead insisting that “this comes from me, not from Bloomberg,” and promised to help Ognibene finance the race. Top Bloomberg aides had previously approached Ognibene with job offers in an apparent effort to get him to withdraw.

A longtime member of the Conservative Party before running for council as a Republican, Ognibene got the party’s leaders, including boss Mike Long, to give him its November line. But Long, who maintains a “cordial relationship” with Bloomberg and whose wife recently marched at the mayor’s side in a Bay Ridge parade, has done nothing to raise money for Ognibene.

Indeed, the party has raised nearly a half-million dollars this year, without encouraging any of its well-heeled donors to help its ostensible candidate, who spotlighted the party’s red-meat issues of gay marriage, abortion, and property tax hikes at the recent debate. Long explained that the hard-right contributors who bankrolled prior mayoral candidates are “no longer around.” Bloomberg’s aide Bill Cunningham, who’s known Long for years and accompanied Bloomberg on several visits to Conservative Party cocktail parties, says he had “no conversations with him about the level of support” the party might give its struggling nominee.

Long’s daughter Eileen, a former aide to Governor Pataki, was appointed by President Bush as regional director for the General Services Administration last year, making Long’s support of a Bloomberg opponent strange. Long attributed the hiring to his daughter’s strong résumé and Pataki’s recommendation.

Notes
[1] Kicking in part of your salary to hold onto your government job wasn’t unique to the Nassau County Republicans. Onondaga County (Syracuse) Republican party officials were convicted for forcing county employees to pay a fixed percentage of their annual salaries to the county committees as well. See the fact patterns in U.S. v. Margiotta, 688 F.2d 108 (1982) and Cullen v. Margiotta, 811 F.2d 698. Also see People v. Mulroy, 439 N.Y.S.2d, 108 Misc.2d 907 (1979)
[2] The story of the Giuliani and D’Amato off again-on again marriage is well-known in New York political circles, but many of the more salacious items are not. Wayne Barrett’s recent biography, “Rudie,” Basic Books, 2000 recounts them in vivid detail. The Pataki-D’Amato marriage has yet to receive full-length treatment.