Bill de Blasio told POLITICO earlier this year that he would not rule out taking money from real estate executives in a potential presidential bid
A POLITICO review of thousands of emails released through a Freedom of Information request and interviews with former employees fill in the contours of de Blasio’s fundraising apparatus: Political staffers pushing him to hit up developers and unions seeking something from the city, while lawyers scramble to ascertain the guidelines for such fundraising and whether the mayor himself followed them.
Three people familiar with the fundraising protocols, who would only speak on background, said that assertion struck them as insincere, since they believe the mayor was briefed on the legal guidance. In fact, de Blasio constantly defends his practices when batting away reporters’ questions by insisting he followed legal protocol.
Several former aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity, remembered receiving conflicting opinions from different attorneys about how to communicate about de Blasio’s nonprofits. Some lawyers advised using only private email for communications. Others insisted all business be conducted on government email and maintained, incorrectly, that even City Hall staffers’ emails with people who didn’t work in government could be shielded from public disclosure.
While multiple news outlets have reported that donors to the Campaign for One New York had business before the city, the emails show de Blasio’s aides suggesting he raise money for The Progressive Agenda from a different list of potential donors, many of whom also had business before the city. The nonprofit reported raising money from just four discrete donors, all of whom de Blasio appears to have solicited himself — the United Food and Commercial Workers, American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees, a grocery chain called Mom’s Markets, and John Stocks, who gave money to the nonprofit through the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a shadowy organization of powerful Democratic donors whose donors aren’t publicly disclosed.
“If they are called out for the practice a couple of times, I think it’s weird that they continue to run up on that line by fundraising at all from people who may not be on the [city’s official] ‘doing business’ list but clearly do business with the city,” the person said.hosted a fundraiser last month for de Blasio“He may not be on the fucking database, which is probably a pretty bad database, but clearly he wants to do business with the city,” the person told POLITICO.
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