J. David Goodman

Inside, the New York attorney general, Letitia James, danced atop a platform in a roped-off club at an exclusive party hosted by a New York City public employee union. Lobbyists swayed to the beat, mingling near the tate Assembly speaker and Brooklyn’s district attorney.

It is perhaps the most unusual gathering in New York politics, held 1,600 miles away: the annual exodus of the state’s political class to Puerto Rico.

The vibe is something like a spring break pilgrimage for public officials and the lobbyists who woo them, where mojitos accompany talk of prevailing wages and the traditional “talk to my staff” culture melts away.

The event is staged by a nonprofit known as Somos, whose stated purpose, according to tax filings, is to “address problems of the Hispanic community.” The San Juan conference and another in Albany, New York, are the main endeavors of the group, whose chair is appointed by the Assembly speaker, Carl Heastie.

This year’s top sponsors, listed as paying between $5,000 and $40,000, were a who’s who of companies and groups with pending struggles in Albany.

There was Airbnb, embroiled in a bitter fight with a powerful hotel workers’ union, and cigarette company Altria, which is battling bans on flavored electronic cigarettes. Education Equity, a group opposed to changing New York City’s standardized test for high school, had at least two lobbyists stalking the main hotel bar.

“It’s basically Albany transplanted to San Juan, except with, remarkably, more lobbyists,” said Julia Salazar, a first-term state senator from Brooklyn. “The experience for me was just being bombarded by lobbyists and feeling pressure to party with them, which I wasn’t thrilled to do.”

Making the trip this year were Gov. Andrew Cuomo, Mayor Bill de Blasio, at least 13 state senators, 28 Assembly members, about half of the New York City Council, both the city and the state comptrollers, Cuomo’s budget director, union officials, and scores and scores of lobbyists.

For both officials and the lobbyists that followed them around, the appeal of the conference was the easy access to decision-makers.

“You’re not being handled, and there is no staff,” said David Greenfield, chief executive of a Jewish charity called the Met Council and a former City Council member from Brooklyn. “Around here, it’s 10 o’clock at night, and you’re like, ‘Look, senator, what’s the deal? You want to get this done or not?’ And they’ll say yes or no.”

Wearing a suit near the pool, Greenfield added that the flowing alcohol and the dress code that can turn quickly to cabanawear and shorts helps almost everyone feel relaxed.

“I would say probably more business happens here in one weekend than in three months in City Hall or in Albany,” he said. “That’s how significant it is.”

The relaxed atmosphere can begin on the way to the island: On one Thursday flight, more than a dozen top officials and a handful of lobbyists piled into the same plane, including James; the state Senate leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins; and the New York City comptroller, Scott Stringer, another likely mayoral candidate. Officials visited one another in the aisles or turned around in their seats for conversation, like children on a field trip.

The conference included workshops on serious topics, such as the Puerto Rican debt crisis and the post-Hurricane Maria education system. “We’re there to generate revenue for Puerto Rico and to learn,” said Assemblywoman Maritza Davila of Brooklyn, who helped lead the event this year.

She said that she did not handle the sponsorships and could not provide the cost of the conference this year. “I don’t get involved in the money piece,” she said, adding that contributions to the event do not have any effect on legislation.

Larry Fernandez, chair of the Somos board, declined to say how much had been raised or spent at this year’s conference. He said in an email that the conferences in San Juan and Albany were the “sole purpose” of the nonprofit.

The nonprofit, formed in 1987 by members of the state Assembly’s Puerto Rican and Hispanic task force, has reported contributions of about $1 million a year in recent years and put an average of 6% of the contributions to grants or scholarships from 2004 to 2016. (In 2017, Hurricane Maria forced the cancellation of the conference in San Juan, and the nonprofit reported $337,000 in grants.)

The scheduled events at the conference in Puerto Rico, which began the day after Election Day and ended Sunday morning, were mostly an afterthought for the elected officials who attended. They opted instead for a string of meetings, meals and extracurricular activities.

“There’s a whole conference here, and nobody goes,” said one council member. “They come for this,” he added, indicating the crowded main bar of the El San Juan Hotel, where the conference was based.

Most of the more than 30 lobbyists, union officials and elected leaders interviewed for this article did so in various stages of inebriation and on the condition of anonymity. Two lobbyists threatened a reporter with murder — jokingly, it seemed — should their gossipy bar talk make it into print.

Other allowances are made: With cellphone cameras all around, legislators mostly avoid swimwear. One said she could not imagine putting on a bathing suit. A councilman said he made it a practice of never taking off his shirt.

Those who flew down Thursday, including Cuomo, missed the “day of service” that included tree planting and coastal cleaning. The governor’s speech at a dinner that evening lasted less than 12 minutes.

The usual dynamics of New York politics traveled down as well: De Blasio skipped the dinner where Cuomo, his frequent political rival, made his remarks. (De Blasio held his own events and meetings in Puerto Rico over several days.)

After the governor’s speech, a crush of people attempted to talk with Cuomo as he exited. New York City’s schools chancellor, Richard Carranza, was among those pushing valiantly through the crowd, but he failed to get the governor’s attention. Cuomo flew home that night.

For lobbyists, the conference offered a chance to make a direct case on policies — like single-payer health care or casinos or charter schools — that are likely to be taken up in Albany next year.

Several health care officials, including those from the powerful Greater New York Hospital Association, could be seen milling around, as could the chair of the state Senate health committee, Gustavo Rivera of the Bronx, who is sponsoring a bill to create a single-payer health care plan for the state.

The American Israel Public Affairs Committee had a presence, as did the real estate lobby. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn showed up at the bar one night, joining Johnson, the speaker, and Diaz, the Bronx borough president.

Tough political questions — such as Puerto Rican statehood, a divisive topic on the island — did not come up in public discussions. Nor did Israeli internal politics, even as the conference honored Dani Dayan, consul general of Israel in New York whose support for settlements has made him a complicated figure.

Most people were content to gather a little intelligence on the next legislative session, get a window on how various political players are thinking, and — crucially — use the atmosphere to establish relationships and advance agendas.

“Somos is where I get my work done,” said Assemblyman Michael Blake, who is running for Congress in the Bronx, as he grabbed a quick bite on a hotel patio.

Nearby, Councilman Antonio Reynoso of Brooklyn passed by wearing a T-shirt with his name on it, white against a red background.

“You get way more people coming up to you,” he said of his shirt. “People are like, ‘Is that Antonio Reynoso?’ Yup!”

Keith Powers, a Manhattan councilman, stopped to admire the shirt. “Can I take a picture?” he asked, and then he did.

“Everyone is in the same place,” said Blake, finishing his meal. “The question is, what do you do when you leave from here?”

This article originally appeared in

The Tropical Conclave Where Politicians and Lobbyists Go to Make Deals

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico — It was 11 p.m. on the Friday after Election Day, and two likely candidates to be New York City’s next mayor — Corey Johnson, the council speaker, and Ruben Diaz Jr., the Bronx borough president — were deep in conversation under purple-lit palms outside a beachfront hotel.

He called longtime political allies and associates he had not spoken to for years. He told people that he was not interested in small donations from casual supporters. What he needed — to help him qualify for the next round of Democratic debates — was big money, fast.

He asked for maximum contributions of $2,800, according to three people who were directly solicited from the mayor.

To some, he sounded hopeful and determined, to others, dejected and pained.

“We both knew that this was a Don Quixote mission,” said Ravi Batra, a supporter of de Blasio’s, relating a five- to 10-minute call from the mayor in mid-September, roughly a week before the mayor exited the race.

Batra had already given the maximum contribution to the mayor’s presidential run, as had his wife. But the mayor still called, hoping he could raise money from others.

And so Batra, a politically connected lawyer, asked his son, Neal, also a lawyer, to give. And he did: $2,800 recorded in federal campaign filings on Sept. 16, four days before the mayor dropped out.

The roster of those who gave to de Blasio in the campaign’s final days mirrors those who had donated before. In several cases, the campaign went back to the same supporters, imploring them to help find others to give. Friends. Co-workers. Family.

And de Blasio, as he has throughout his mayoralty, took an active role in fundraising. He has long carved out time from his official schedule for “call time” so he can phone donors and finance his political ambition — an aggressive strategy that led to overlapping state and federal investigations, but ultimately no criminal charges.

His need for more money grew more acute as his dim presidential hopes faded. Large contributions continued to come in, from lobbyists and lawyers, real estate developers and the family that owns the New York Mets.

But de Blasio had burned through $1 million in the third quarter of this year as he crisscrossed the country in search of a galvanizing moment to propel his campaign. At the same time, he struggled to raise money, gathering about a third of that amount.

Yet even in September, de Blasio did not talk as if the end was near in his telephone pitch. He still held out hope of qualifying for the October debate — which came and went without him last Tuesday.

Bruce Berg, chief executive of a real estate development company, gave money two days before de Blasio dropped out, according to federal filings.

“I did it as a favor to somebody,” Berg said in a brief phone interview. “I don’t want to talk about it at all, sorry.”

Another developer who works with Berg and gave that day, Peter Palazzo, said he decided to give a maximum contribution out of genuine political preference. “Sanders didn’t seem to be an appealing candidate. Warren didn’t seem appealing either,” he said.

“I didn’t realize — obviously — that he was throwing in the towel a few days later,” added Palazzo.

For his federal campaign, de Blasio said he would go further than the required rules and refuse donations from people who are listed in the city’s “doing business” database. But that did not stop him from calling those people and asking them for help.

David Weinraub, an Albany-based lobbyist on the list, said he got a call from the mayor last month.

“I hadn’t talked to him in a long time,” Weinraub said. “I said, ‘What do you need, a zillion smaller donors?’ And he said no, I got that,’” he recalled the mayor saying confidently. (De Blasio was relying on an endorsement by the city’s hotel union, which provided him with thousands of low-dollar contributions to his campaign.)

“The goal then was that he was going to try to get into the October debate,” Weinraub recalled, “and he said he actually needed some big donors.”

Weinraub asked his son, Frederick, an employee of the lobbying firm, if he would be willing to give his own money. He did so.

A spokesman for the mayor’s presidential campaign, Jon Paul Lupo, said in a statement that “the mayor has not accepted money from any person on New York City’s ‘doing business list,’” adding that “many factors” went into de Blasio’s decision to end the campaign.

Another donor, who requested anonymity to discuss the conversation with the mayor, said de Blasio called one evening last month after a long day.

“I said hello. He said, ‘This is Bill de Blasio,’” the donor recalled. “He said, ‘I’m doing very well but I didn’t make the September debate’ and — his voice was literally breaking as he said that — he said that more than anything he felt that it was important that he reach his goal of making the October debate.”

The mayor was again looking for a maximum contribution — which the donor ultimately provided.

“I just felt sorry for him. He was in pain. I felt sorry for his pain, not so much for him. I heard a person who was in pain,” the donor said. “As a lifelong New Yorker, I said I would be happy to contribute to that effort.”

Others were less forthcoming with their reasons for helping a mayor whose campaign was slowly coming apart.

“I’d rather not comment. There’s no benefit, no upside,” said Albert Laboz, a real estate developer who made a maximum contribution about a week before de Blasio dropped out. “No comment, see you later,” he added, before hanging up.

In the end, the mayor fell far short of what he needed. Just $43,000 in campaign cash remained in the bank, federal filings show, when the doors closed on his operation Sept. 20.

“Even though it was a campaign coming to an end, campaigns should come to an end gracefully and not owe money,” Batra said. (His son did not respond to a request for comment.)

The very last donors to de Blasio’s presidential campaign were executives in Sterling Equities, including Richard Wilpon, whose family owns the New York Mets, and Saul Katz, the team’s president, and several people connected to them.

They also received a personal solicitation from the mayor, according to a person with knowledge of the discussion.

But while filings showed a total of $5,400 given via two separate entities on Sept. 19, the mayoral request came back in April. They simply did not get around to formally giving contributions until September. If they had waited one more day, they might have saved their money.

Of course, the Mets management is not known for timing the market.

Inside the Last, Desperate Days of de Blasio's 2020 Campaign

NEW YORK — As the end of his presidential bid beckoned last month, Mayor Bill de Blasio furiously worked the phones, trying to forestall the inevitable.

There have been pitched battles over Brooklyn Bridge vistas blocked by waterside apartments, and the shadows cast by billionaires’ apartment towers over Central Park.

But when the residents of a 12-story loft building in Chelsea learned that a proposed tower next door threatened to darken most of their windows and block their Empire State Building views, they tried a less confrontational approach.

They banded together to make the developer an unusual offer: $11 million not to build.

The gambit captured the kind of wealth that now courses through New York City, where residents of a former warehouse building — with full-floor apartments that stretch 5,600 square feet, twice the size of an average new American home — were willing to pay a hefty price just to protect a view.

The owners used a typical developer strategy and turned it on its head: They bought the developer’s air rights — normally used to allow for taller buildings than allowed — at the neighboring property.

But the loft owners have no intention of using those air rights to build; their full intent is to prevent the neighboring developer from building anything taller than the three- and four-story buildings that had been on the site, at Seventh Avenue and West 17th Street.

“Sometimes people have bought a dinky little asset next door,” said Jordan Barowitz, vice president of public affairs at the Durst Organization, a real estate firm. “But I’ve never heard of that much cash being spent for an intangible, for a view.”

The deal, which took place in 2016, has not been previously reported, and some of those involved were reluctant to discuss it.

“It was expensive,” said John R. Muse, 68, a Texas investor and absentee owner whose grown children live in the building, on West 17th Street. “I wouldn’t say prohibitively. But expensive.”

Not everyone paid the same amount, with lower-floor owners paying less and, on the lowest floors, nothing. Muse admitted, with some embarrassment, that he could not recall exactly how much he had paid — perhaps around $1 million for his unit’s share.

A review of records over the past five years by The New York Times turned up an instance of a similar deal between a condominium and an adjacent property owner. That one involved neighbors of the Zen Studies Society on East 67th Street.

In that case, residents of the neighboring six-story apartment building paid $3.25 million to purchase the air rights from the Zen center, ensuring their windows would not be blocked in the future. They worried about future development on the site of the religious institution, which was facing legal trouble.

“It’s typically done by developers,” said one resident of the Upper East Side building, Ryan Freedman, who works in real estate. “This was the opposite of that.”

The L-shaped loft building in Chelsea, a few blocks from the West Village and Google’s New York headquarters, has been home to artists and celebrities drawn to its tall ceilings and sprawling space.

Meryl Streep’s husband, sculptor Don Gummer, once lived in the building, a former warehouse known as the Chelsea Prairie, as did actor Harrison Ford, who owned the penthouse until 2012, when he sold it for roughly $15 million. One unit recently sold for $9.75 million.

“At the price point, it just happened you had some valuable apartments and it was worth a fair amount of money to them,” said Jonathan L. Mechanic, chairman of the real estate at the law firm of Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver &amp; Jacobson, who was not involved in the deal. “If you had $500,000 apartments, it would be much harder to get to $10 million.”

The idea for the deal materialized almost immediately after the developer, Gary Barnett of Extell Development, made clear his intention to erect a 145-foot condominium at Seventh Avenue and 17th Street, replacing a set of short buildings.

“He contacted the building management and said, ‘I’m putting a big building there,’ ” recalled Thomas Levine, 73, a painter who lived on the eighth floor for two decades and sold his apartment last month.

The proposed new building would have been roughly as tall as the L-shaped loft building — and positioned directly to its inside.

The residents moved quickly: Within about a week, a small group sat down with Barnett to offer to buy the air rights. He initially wanted far more than $11 million. Over several meetings, they haggled in Barnett’s offices. He never came to see the views.

Barnett recalled telling the residents that he would be willing to make a deal if they were willing to pay the right price. They were.

“It’s not common,” Barnett said. “Most of the time, they sue you and try and stop you somehow. These people stepped up to the plate and paid market value for the building rights.”

The deal took a few months to work out, but ended with a meeting in the sixth-floor unit to vote on the proposal. All agreed to go forward, even if, for some residents, it was a stretch.

“There were pros and cons about it,” Levine said. “But everybody realized that it was something we had to do. We wanted the light, we wanted the views, we wanted the value.”

Levine said he did not have enough available cash for the transaction, but that a neighbor was able to loan him the money.

“I think it was the most financial pressure on me,” Levine said, standing in the mostly empty corner living space where his studio had been. “But it would have been a disaster. It would have been a lot of dark.”

Now, instead of new condominiums, a short glassy commercial building is nearing completion at the corner, and nothing taller can ever replace it.

Unless, that is, someone some day shows up with an offer too good to turn down.

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/21/nyregion/manhattan-real-estate-views-air-rights.html" id="01fb431f-f264-3606-a240-a9c69da10f6b">The New York Times</a>.

NEW YORK — In New York City’s forest of tall buildings, having a view is an inestimable commodity, to be treasured and, when necessary, fought over.

How Much Is a View Worth in Manhattan? Try $11 Million

For Mayor Bill de Blasio, the quick fundraising stop in Boston was the latest in a series of out-of-town trips aimed at raising cash and boosting his national profile as he toys with a 2020 presidential run.

For the company hosting him, Suffolk Construction, the fundraiser offered a chance to help de Blasio at a time when the firm is aggressively trying to extend its footprint in the city.

The company has already one connection to the mayor: Late last year, it hired Shola Olatoye, the former chairwoman of the New York City Housing Authority, who resigned amid scandal last year, but had been roundly praised by de Blasio throughout her tenure. Olatoye’s responsibilities for Suffolk include generating new business in and around New York.

De Blasio has previously faced questions over his fundraising tactics that have appeared to target those with actual or potential business with the city government. State and federal prosecutors investigated his practices but declined to bring charges.

The mayor is now seeking large donations for his political action committee, Fairness PAC, which has paid for some of de Blasio’s recent cross-country travel. Shortly after his fundraiser in Boston, de Blasio was to travel Friday to Nevada to meet with local Democrats.

“We have a political system that requires us to seek individual donations,” de Blasio said at an unrelated news conference in City Hall on Thursday, adding that he hoped the system would be changed. “What’s important is to follow every law, every rule, and to have a very consistent vetting process. That’s what we do.”

The specifics of Friday’s fundraiser, which is scheduled to begin at 8:30 a.m. and will last about 90 minutes, were kept solidly under wraps. A spokesman for Fairness PAC declined to provide the name of the host.

“Not going into details of private fundraisers,” said the spokesman, Michael Casca, a City Hall aide who is using his vacation time to work for the committee. “The mayor is continuing his hard work to elect progressive candidates and make bold change all over the country.”

But one invitee described the contents of the invitation.

“The outcome of federal and state elections has a huge impact on what the mayor can accomplish in New York City,” the invitation read, according to the person. “And this PAC is an opportunity to harness the amazing energy in the Democratic Party and help change the direction of our politics on both a local and national level.”

The invitation came from John F. Fish, the Suffolk chief executive and a prominent Boston figure who helped spearhead the city’s failed attempt to lure the 2024 Olympics. In addition to hosting the event, Fish in December donated $5,000 — the maximum contribution amount — to de Blasio’s political action committee, records show.

“Suffolk is proud to be making strides in the New York region by introducing clients to more sophisticated planning and construction technologies and delivery methods,” said a company spokesman, Sam Spokony. The company did not respond to questions about the fundraiser.

This wasn’t Fish and his company’s first foray into national politics.

In 2017, the Federal Election Commission fined Suffolk $34,000 for donating $200,000 to a political action committee supporting Hillary Clinton, Priorities USA, while it was working as a federal contractor in West Point, New York. The fine was among the larger penalties meted out in connection with the 2016 presidential election, according to the commission. (Priorities USA returned the contributions in mid-2016.)

In the past two years, Fish has contributed $2.2 million to political campaigns, mostly to elect Democrats to federal office, according to federal filings.

At the same time, Suffolk has sought to increase its presence in New York.

Among its projects, the company recently completed construction of an apartment tower in Brooklyn Bridge Park, a development that included city-subsidized affordable housing. And the company’s website featured a panoramic aerial shot of the Brooklyn waterfront and Lower Manhattan on its main page as of Thursday.

“We’ve been focusing on really relationship building,” Charlie Avolio, the head of the company’s New York office, said in 2017. “We don’t chase work, we chase relationships. And if we can create productive relationships, at some point, they’ll be fruitful.”

The hiring of Olatoye — who faced withering criticism during her tenure at the city’s troubled housing authority, in large part because of a high-profile lead paint scandal — appeared to be part of those efforts.

“At every step of my career, I’ve been passionate about building relationships,” she said in a statement in October when her new job at Suffolk was announced. “I will help the company expand its footprint in the region and lead its growing business development team.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/04/nyregion/de-blasio-2020-fundraiser.html" id="2b169a30-a9b5-3308-adbe-25e18e63d47b">The New York Times</a>.

NEW YORK — The invitation was sent to a select group of well-heeled potential donors, who were asked to attend a Friday morning fundraiser at a construction firm in Boston. Donations of up to $5,000 were expected. The guest of honor would be the mayor — of New York City.

Why Will a Fancy Fundraiser for New York's Mayor Be Held in Boston?

After all, the dinner was being held a little more than two weeks before the New York state budget was due, and what better way to make valuable connections than to pay tribute to the guest of honor, Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Among those present were the vice president of a school bus company seeking tax breaks for the purchase of buses; a recycling company founder looking for a broadening of the 5-cent deposit law; and an affordable housing developer lobbying for real estate tax credits.

The fundraiser was held March 14 on the 20th floor of the St. Regis Hotel, just off Fifth Avenue and a block from Trump Tower. The minimum donation per couple was $25,000.

The event, which was billed as a spring dinner with the governor, was strictly under the radar: It was not listed on Cuomo’s calendar, and even the invitation was vaguely worded, with the locale only provided in the RSVP.

And although a reporter who showed up at the fundraiser was barred entry, The New York Times was able to piece together an account of the event through interviews with six attendees and a partial guest list of 35 invitees. The guests included senior Cuomo administration officials, including the state budget director.

The fundraiser provided a vivid example of how things work in Albany’s pay-to-play culture, where political contributions are often viewed by business leaders as a prerequisite for getting their perspective heard in the capital. It also offered a glimpse into the nexus of money and politics that is commonplace across the ideological spectrum and around the United States, and something that Cuomo has excelled in.

The governor is considered one of the Democratic Party’s most prolific fundraisers, accumulating more than $30 million in his campaign war chest until last year’s costly re-election effort, when he spent dearly to fend off a primary challenge from Cynthia Nixon.

The high-priced event seemed in stark contrast to Cuomo’s promise of “real campaign finance reform” made two months earlier, as he announced his support for a public financing system. In January, the governor signed new limitations on corporate donations and, in his State of the State speech, vowed to “combat big money in politics” and empower small donors.

But the vast majority of Cuomo’s political fundraising has come from big checks, and the event at the St. Regis, held in a room with a trompe l’oeil of the sky on a partly cloudy day, continued that trend.

COREY MUIRHEAD is a vice president at Logan Bus Co. and interim president of the New York School Bus Contractors Association. School bus contractors are lobbying the state on several issues of interest to their members, including tax exemptions for the purchase of new school buses.

“I coordinate with my lobbyist, and I go to events that they feel are important,” Muirhead said. “We have stuff that we want to see done up in Albany.”

ROBERT MUJICA is the state budget director. He had been working out of Cuomo’s Manhattan office on the day of the fundraiser, the governor’s staff said, and received an invitation as a matter of courtesy.

About 100 people mingled in a crowd that included Mujica, and the governor’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, before sitting down at more than a dozen tables for two slices of filet mignon, vegetables and what one attendee described as a “little peaked salad.”

According to the invitation, a limited number of tickets were available for $5,000; most single tickets were $15,000.

The governor delivered a speech that touched on Amazon, the tumult in Washington, and the transition from campaigning to governing that he said some new Albany legislators had to learn.

CONRAD CUTLER is the chief executive of Galvanize Group, a company that collects cans and bottles to return them to distributors. Galvanize Group wants the state to approve an expansion of the bottle bill, which is backed by Cuomo and would make more bottles eligible for deposit.

“I thought he gave a great speech. He really knew how to relate to the crowd,” Cutler said. His company gathers bottles and cans and returns them to the distributors, collecting the deposit and a 3.5-cent handling fee. “He addressed a lot of pressing issues involving health care and the MTA. He underscored his commitment to New Yorkers who have issues.”

Thirteen minutes before the fundraiser officially began, Mujica emailed a statement to reporters, lashing out at the Democratic-led state Senate and accusing it of creating “false political expectations” with its budget proposals.

Then the dinner started, with attendees sporting badges with two names: theirs and Cuomo’s, the latter done up in his campaign logo.

“As the governor said since Day 1, anyone who can get swayed by a single dollar has no place in government,” Richard Azzopardi, a spokesman for Cuomo, said. He added that people who said their lobbyist told them to attend the fundraiser should “fire their lobbyist and get their head examined.”

Azzopardi defended the presence of senior aides — including Mujica, who is in charge of the state budget being negotiated in Albany — at the fundraiser, saying Mujica had “worked out of his New York City office that day and this event was after hours.” Staff members are routinely invited to events as guests, he added.

Cuomo, for his part, came from Albany for the event and was in the capital the next day, according to his public schedule.

JOHN SAMUELSEN is the president of the Transport Workers Union International. The union, especially its Local 100, represents tens of thousands of public transit workers in the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Samuelsen said he arrived just after the governor had finished his formal address. He said he spoke to the governor for a couple of minutes about the subway. Samuelsen, who recalled wearing a Woolrich shirt to the event, said he could not recall how much he had donated to attend.

“Honestly, I’m not even in the weeds on that level,” he said, adding that his union has happily long spent money to support Cuomo. “The governor has been the best governor for the trade union movement ever.”

One oddity at the fundraiser? Neither attendees nor staff members from the Cuomo campaign could describe what office, if any, Cuomo, who was recently re-elected to a third term, was raising money for.

Nor could those contributing to him.

“I didn’t ask. It’s obvious what it is. It’s the continual cycle of fundraising,” Samuelsen said. “That’s what he does. That’s what everybody seems to do.”

The roster of invitees included some well-known figures in New York real estate such as Douglas Durst; prominent political donors like Republican billionaire John Catsimatidis; and past contributors to Cuomo like Elliot Gibber, who owns an egg products company and donated $73,000 to the governor’s 2018 re-election campaign.

“I walked in and walked out,” Gibber said. “I have huge facilities in New York state. I believe in the governor. He’s done a lot of work for education and private education.”

Durst gave but did not attend; Catsimatidis said he did not contribute or go to the event, explaining the governor’s invitation as a matter of their long-standing friendship.

“I go back with the governor 20 years,” Catsimatidis said. “In 50 years in business, I have never gotten anything from the city or the state.”

“You know what I’ve gotten? Ungatz,” he said, of a slang term for nada, zip, zero. “That’s Italian, I think.”

CHARLIE BACHTELL is the founder and chief executive of Cresco Labs, a cannabis company based in Chicago.

Others who bought tickets did so while they had an issue of importance to them being decided in Albany, like Bachtell.

Cresco Labs hired a lobbyist in New York for the first time this year, state records showed. Cuomo has said he wanted to reach an agreement on legalizing marijuana as part of the budget process, but he seems to have relented on that notion.

A spokesman for the company declined to say why Bachtell had attended the fundraiser.

LARRY REGAN is the president of Regan Development, which develops market-rate and affordable housing. Regan has been lobbying the state on real estate tax credits. He paid for a ticket, but did not attend the event, a spokeswoman said.

MAURY LITWACK is the executive director of the Teach Advocacy Network, a coalition of Jewish day schools and yeshivas. The group wants the state to expand its STEM reimbursement program for nonpublic schools. The week before the budget is passed could decide the size of that program.

“The governor has been a champion of the STEM program and Jewish causes,” Menashe Shapiro, a spokesman for Litwack, said. He said that while Litwack had briefly attended the end of the fundraiser, “he did not write a check.”

Muirhead, the bus company executive, said he attended in his role as interim president of the New York School Bus Contractors Association, which was lobbying the state government. He said a big issue for the group was a possible tax exemption on the purchase of new buses.

Cutler, the recycling executive, was also clear about his interest in the fundraiser.

“Gov. Cuomo proposed to expand the bottle bill to all beverages except wine and liquor,” he said, noting that the bill does not cover a few select categories, like milk. “I agree with that because I make money on every bottle that’s redeemed, and for environmental reasons.”

This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/27/nyregion/cuomo-fundraiser-donors-lobbyists.html" id="76feb099-f863-3af7-a407-4c91d7f15f40">The New York Times</a>.

At a Secretive New York Dinner, $25,000 Buys Access to Cuomo

NEW YORK — The rooftop fundraiser was meant to be a secretive affair, but word spread quickly among those with pending issues before the state. Lobbyists told their clients that the event would be a good thing to go to.

The governor has had multiple phone conversations with Amazon executives, including Bezos, over the past two weeks, according to two people with knowledge of the efforts. In those calls, Cuomo said he would navigate the company through the byzantine governmental process.

Cuomo did not offer a new location but rather guarantees of support for the project, one person said. Amazon executives gave no sense the company would reconsider.

The executives also learned of an open letter being arranged for publication in The New York Times on Friday, also urging Bezos, the company’s chief executive, to reverse course again and build the campus in Long Island City, Queens.

The letter was signed by more than 70 supportive unions, including the AFL-CIO, local businesses and business leaders, community groups, and elected officials including Reps. Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn, a top Democrat; Max Rose, a first-term Democrat from Staten Island; and Carolyn Maloney, whose district encompasses the Amazon site; and former Mayor David Dinkins.

The letter said that Cuomo “will take personal responsibility for the project’s state approval,” and Mayor Bill de Blasio “will work together with the governor to manage the community development process.”

So far at least, the company has shown no sign of reconsidering its decision to abandon the deal, in which Amazon promised to create up to 40,000 jobs in Long Island City in exchange for a state grant of $500 million and state and city tax breaks that would have eventually totaled more than $2 billion.

“I’ve had many conversations with Amazon. I hope that they reconsider,” Cuomo told reporters at an unrelated event Thursday on Long Island. “It would be helpful if the state Senate said that they would approve it; that would be helpful. But in the meantime I haven’t heard any changes.”

Andrea Stewart-Cousins, Democratic majority leader of the state Senate, said in a statement that she had indicated her “willingness to work” with Amazon. “I have always been clear that I support job creation and was disappointed with Amazon’s decision and hoped they would reconsider,” she said.

An Amazon spokeswoman declined a request for comment.

The conversation between Cuomo and Bezos appeared to have been the first time the two had spoken at any point about Amazon’s plans for Queens or about the company’s abrupt decision earlier in February to cancel the project amid noisy opposition.

Since the deal fell through, Cuomo has been arguing in public and in private that support for the project was and remains far more widespread than it may have seemed.

“I do believe Amazon should have stayed and fought the opposition,” said Cuomo in a radio interview Tuesday. “It was a vocal minority opposition. Seventy percent of the people support Amazon.”

He reiterated that message to Amazon executives during calls, according to one of the people with knowledge of the exchanges, both of whom requested anonymity in order to discuss the private conversations.

The campus was meant to be one half of what had been called a second headquarters for the company; the other half, with roughly the same number of jobs, is still planned for a Virginia suburb of Washington.

But Amazon faced vociferous opponents — including local groups, some unions and political activists animated by the surprise victory of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — from the moment it announced its plans for Queens in November. Three months later, with no end in sight for the sustained political pressure and negative attention, executives decided to pull the plug.

Those familiar with the company’s thinking have insisted that the decision to abandon the New York City plan had been based on a confluence of factors, including the loud opposition and the lack of any sign it would abate.

“We think we could have gotten New York done, but you have to say, ‘At what cost?' ” Holly Sullivan, Amazon’s director of global economic development, said at an event in Virginia on Thursday. “We made a prudent decision that gives us the opportunity to hyperfocus on D.C.”

The advertisement, an open letter to Bezos that was set to appear on a full page in Friday’s newspaper, is aimed at combating the notion that the opposition to Amazon was widespread, arguing that a “clear majority” of New Yorkers support the company.

“We know the public debate that followed the announcement of the Long Island City project was rough and not very welcoming,” reads the letter, paid for by the Partnership for New York City, a prominent business group. “But when we commit to a project as important as this, we figure out how to get it done in a way that works for everyone.”

Kathryn Wylde, president of the partnership, said the letter had been aimed not just at Amazon but at assuring technology companies generally that New York City welcomed their businesses: “Yes, it’s directed to Amazon in hopes they will reconsider. Equally, it is a message to the broader industry.”

“The governor’s office was working with the business community on how to send this message,” Wylde added, and the result was the letter.

Many of those signing on to the letter — including public housing leaders, unions like Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union and the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York — were supportive of the deal all along. A spokesman for de Blasio, whose initial support of the Amazon deal has turned into vociferous criticism after the company pulled out, said the mayor was aware that the letter was being prepared.

The most vocal opponents, like Stuart Appelbaum, president of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union, were not among the signatories.

“Our concerns remain the same,” Appelbaum said in response to Cuomo’s efforts. “If Amazon wants to come to New York, it must respect all workers and communities.”

One thing that has changed in the last two weeks: Stewart-Cousins, the state Senate majority leader, withdrew her nomination of Sen. Michael Gianaris to the obscure Public Authorities Control Board. The position would have given Gianaris, who represents Long Island City, the ability to vote down the development project for Amazon when it came before the board in about a year’s time.

But Cuomo refused to appoint Gianaris, who declined to comment on the governor’s efforts, or to formally reject him. And so last week, Stewart-Cousins selected another Queens representative, Leroy Comrie, to sit on the board, a person who would be more likely to get the governor’s approval.

Comrie did not respond to a request for comment.

“The state Senate made a terrible blunder; everyone, including their members, knows it,” said Dani Lever, the governor’s communications director. “The governor will take over the process and can comfortably assure Amazon the approval will get done.”

NEW YORK — Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who was staggered by Amazon’s decision to pull out of its plans to come to New York City, is working intensely behind the scenes to lure the company back, even connecting with Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s founder, to make a personal pitch.

J. David Goodman

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