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accustomed to thinking like an operative or sought a way to raise money outside the limits imposed by the city’s campaign finance system. But another public relations professional, who has not worked for the mayor and who spoke on the condition of anonymity due to concerns about flouting client confidentiality clauses, said the nonprofit seemed like a wise defensive cover in case an opposition group launched a well-funded counter-campaign. Following the zoning vote, no Council member or their staff said they could recall United for Affordable NYC appealing to them. The nonprofit reported that most of the $372,500 it raised was spent on television ads, digital media buys and related design, production and printing costs. The mayor’s struggles to coax community boards to his point of view, some officials say, reflected shortcomings in his zoning plan. Assemblyman Charles Barron, who represents a part of East New York where one of the new zoning frameworks is slated to be implemented first, said he believed the measure passed, despite opposition, because the mayor won over the local Council member – the Council has a tradition of deferring to local council members on land-use and other decisions specific to the community. “(City planning officials) have access to do mailings, to do town hall meetings, to meet with everybody, to do robocalls, to put out slick material – why do you need a 501(c)(4)?” said Barron, referring to a nonprofit class that can engage in a significant amount of lobbying, but where donations are not tax-deductible. “Unless they have a bad plan and they’re desperate – and they feel that the plan wasn’t working.” Similarly, former City Council member Sal Albanese said during his years at City Hall former Mayors Ed Koch, Rudy Giuliani and David Dinkins got what they wanted from the Council because they had huge leverage over lawmakers. “(De Blasio’s) actually got more clout over this City Council than prior mayors because he actually was a major player in electing the speaker,” Albanese said. “You don’t have to go out and take private money from people that you’re going to be indebted to – and that’s why you’ve got seven investigations going on right now.” BY NO MEANS are such advocacy nonprofits unprecedented. Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams has an organization promoting his agenda, which investigators are reportedly examining for pay-to-play favors. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg worked with the Campaign for New York’s Future, which promoted a Bloomberg-backed congestion pricing plan intended to reduce traffic that ultimately failed in Albany. He also col-
September 5, 2016
“MIKE BLOOMBERG WAS A BUSINESSMAN AT HEART; RUDY GIULIANI WAS A PROSECUTOR AT HEART … THIS IS AN EXAMPLE OF MAYOR DE BLASIO, WHO IS AT HIS HEART A POLITICAL OPERATIVE.” — RORY LANCMAN, City Councilman
laborated with Education Reform Now, which was staffed by some of his former campaign and government staff and which ran ads opposing teacher tenure rules as Bloomberg was asking the state government to change them. Most of these groups, however, promoted policies that required signoff at the state or federal level; the borough president or mayor could not directly approve them. Still, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whom de Blasio worked for when Cuomo ran the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, has used two nonprofit advocacy groups to advance state issues. The Committee to Save New York primarily promoted his economic development agenda through television ads. At the time, the group’s leaders argued the organization was needed to combat the spending of special interest groups in Albany. More recently, The Mario Cuomo Campaign for Economic Justice advocated for Cuomo’s plan to raise the minimum wage. Unlike groups promoting de Blasio’s policies, the Committee to Save New York did not always disclose its donors. And while some say de Blasio was able to use advocacy nonprofits to circumvent spending limits tied to a public campaign finance system, Cuomo as a state representative cannot opt into such a system. Sid Davidoff, a lobbyist who has raised money for de Blasio, said nonprofit advocacy groups are a part of political life now that the internet has ushered in additional channels for consuming news, diminishing the power of the mayor or his counterparts to use the traditional press corp to communicate with New Yorkers. As for the zoning proposal push, Davidoff said the group was likely trying to win over constituents in every corner of the city because the Council is “a creature of local politics and local opinions.” “In this case, where you have a (Uniform Land Use Review Procedure), where every community board gets involved … all expressing their
opinions, local press carrying those opinions, it becomes a much larger PR problem,” Davidoff said. “That’s why the mayor felt it necessary to have his message done in this way.” DESPITE THEIR GROWING conventionality, these nonprofit advocacy groups have a history of controversy. State and federal investigators have reportedly been probing whether contributors to de Blasio’s nonprofit advocacy groups received preferential treatment at City Hall. The feds are also reportedly examining whether contribution limits were intentionally flouted when de Blasio and his allies raised money with the goal of delivering the state Senate to Democrats in 2014. De Blasio has repeatedly said he and his team behaved legally and appropriately. Nobody working on his campaign or in his inner circle has been charged with a crime. Legality aside, these nonprofit advocacy groups have raised concerns that de Blasio’s strategy is weakening the city’s campaign finance system by giving lobbyists and firms who do business with the city a way to support him that doesn’t limit how much de Blasio can spend – or who he can coordinate expenditures with. Good government groups have also expressed unease that some involved with the 501(c)(4) organizations also interact with the mayor in their role as lobbyists or strategists for private clients. Indeed, United for Affordable NYC’s board and contractors are far from strangers at City Hall. Metropolitan Public Strategies has a retainer to push the New York Hotel and Motel Trade Council’s agenda with the city. Two of United for Affordable NYC’s three board members have ties to organizations with city contracts: Carlo Scissura works as CEO and president of the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce; and James Freedland, who left Metropolitan Public Strategies shortly before the nonprofit launched, worked at Metropolitan