{"id":5769,"date":"2010-01-30T11:44:41","date_gmt":"2010-01-30T16:44:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/?p=5769"},"modified":"2010-01-30T11:46:51","modified_gmt":"2010-01-30T16:46:51","slug":"did_bloomberg_pay_street_money_to_get_reelected","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2010\/01\/did_bloomberg_pay_street_money_to_get_reelected.html","title":{"rendered":"Did Bloomberg Pay Street Money To Get Reelected?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Street money<\/a>? Are you kidding me? Was he watching that Cory Booker movie<\/a> or something? That’s what some are suggesting after details of a mysterious campaign expenditure emerged in the Post<\/a>:<\/p>\n

A $750,000 personal campaign contribution that Mayor Bloomberg channeled through the state Independence Party during last year’s mayoral election landed in the hands of a top aide, The Post has learned.<\/p>\n

The aide, John Haggerty Jr., served as a Bloomberg “volunteer involved in some of the activities” of Special Election Operations LLC, a hastily formed company that hired 200 to 300 workers to do poll watching on Election Day, according to Ken Gross, counsel to the campaign.<\/p>\n

. . .<\/p>\n

One veteran GOP consultant said he believed Special Election Operations was designed to dispense “street money” — cash that’s spread around on Election Day to volunteers and for such incidentals as lunch.<\/p>\n

But Howard Wolfson, the mayor’s campaign spokesman, insisted the $750,000 — part of a $1.2 million personal contribution Bloomberg made to the state Independence Party right before the election — didn’t go for that purpose.<\/p>\n

“The [Independence Party] made the same Election Day expenses that all party committees make every election for Election Day workers,” he said in an e-mail.<\/p>\n

“Because the IP does not have the infrastructure to handle this kind of activity in-house, it used Special Election Operations to handle the payroll payments to all these individuals.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wolfson’s “explanation” even sounds like it’s street money. And $750,000? That’s not even close to what was suggested Obama would have to spend to get elected in Philadelphia<\/a>. We’re taking a lot of pizza parties!<\/p>\n

See also: Bloomberg For Mayor 2009<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Street money? Are you kidding me? Was he watching that Cory Booker movie or something? That’s what some are suggesting after details of a mysterious campaign expenditure emerged in the Post: A $750,000 personal campaign contribution that Mayor Bloomberg channeled through the state Independence Party during last year’s mayoral election landed in the hands of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68,64],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-follow_the_money","category-please_make_it_stop"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5769"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5771,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5769\/revisions\/5771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}