{"id":7732,"date":"2016-05-26T20:26:42","date_gmt":"2016-05-27T01:26:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/?p=7732"},"modified":"2016-05-26T20:26:43","modified_gmt":"2016-05-27T01:26:43","slug":"everyone_is_doing_it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/archives\/2016\/05\/everyone_is_doing_it.html","title":{"rendered":"Everyone Is Doing It"},"content":{"rendered":"

And by that, we mean everyone we do business with is doing it<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Mayor de Blasio’s Campaign for One New York fund hit a trifecta on May 27, 2015 — courtesy of lobbyist extraordinaire James Capalino.<\/p>\n

The group first received a $10,000 check from Capalino. That same day, identical checks arrived from two of the lobbyist’s deep-pocketed clients, RAL Development and Cipriani USA, for a total of $30,000.<\/p>\n

And the very next day, Capalino was on the phone with the man himself — Mayor de Blasio.<\/p>\n

Not bad for a guy who, as a lobbyist doing business with the city, is barred from giving more than $400 to a candidate per election.<\/p>\n

The mayor’s website and Capalino insist the phone chat concerned a proposed (and ultimately failed) helicopter ban, and Capalino says donations to the mayor’s cause never came up.<\/p>\n

Whether anything else came up remains a mystery as City Hall refuses to say whether notes of these lobbying chats exist.<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

The other key loophole Capalino has tapped into is bundling. Though individuals can’t give more than $4,950, they can collect piles of checks from others and present them to a candidate in a bundle.<\/p>\n

Between October and December, Capalino bundled $44,940 for the mayor’s 2017 reelection bid. Donors included some of his clients.<\/p>\n

An executive of Bauhouse Group, which needs City Hall support for a huge Upper East Side tower the neighborhood opposes, gave $4,950. Michael Stern, CEO of JDS Development, wrote five checks in one day totaling $4,950. Capalino has lobbied for city approval of a JDS residential tower that would be the tallest in Brooklyn at 1,066 feet.<\/p>\n

It’s all part of his technique, as inscribed in an ad he bought in the recent Inner Circle program: “If you don’t do politics, politics will do you.”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And by that, we mean everyone we do business with is doing it: Mayor de Blasio’s Campaign for One New York fund hit a trifecta on May 27, 2015 — courtesy of lobbyist extraordinaire James Capalino. The group first received a $10,000 check from Capalino. That same day, identical checks arrived from two of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-things_that_make_you_go_oy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7732","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=7732"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7732\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7733,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7732\/revisions\/7733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bridgeandtunnelclub.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}