You Can Make A Lot Of Shitty Behaviors “Routine” . . .

Because, really, defending something as “routine” is not really much of a defense:

Mayor Bill de Blasio took an unusually personal role in raising money for a nonprofit group backing his political agenda, according to several people who received fundraising appeals from the mayor.

The mayor has acknowledged making calls for the Campaign for One New York, a nonprofit group set up to support his agenda whose donor solicitations are now under investigation, and de Blasio has defended the calls as routine.

But elected officials with ties to similar nonprofits have largely avoided taking such a direct role in soliciting money for those groups, and the calls from the mayor were unusual enough to become a topic of conversation among business leaders and CEOs.

One business person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, described receiving a surprise call from the mayor at his office early in his first term. De Blasio spoke generally about the need to support his administration’s agenda and to marshal resources for the inevitable attacks against the mayor’s plans for affordable housing and universal pre-kindergarten.

De Blasio did not directly ask for a contribution, according to this person, but said to expect a follow-up call from Ross Offinger, who served as the chief fundraiser for the Campaign for One New York, a nonprofit group dedicated to backing the mayor’s agenda. Offinger did call, but this person ultimately decided not to donate.

Some potential contributors who spoke with the mayor but were not inclined to support the Campaign for One New York instructed their assistants to screen the follow-up calls from Offinger, according to several sources.

The solicitations are now part of a sprawling series of investigations into de Blasio’s administration and its fundraising practices, and whether donors received preferential treatment from de Blasio and his aides. De Blasio’s staff has declined to disclose who the mayor contacted on behalf of the group.

[. . .]

A POLITICO New York analysis of the donors to the Campaign for One New York found that more than two thirds of the 141 discrete donors who have given to the nonprofit either had contracts or proposed contracts with city agencies, or were actively seeking approval for a project when at the time they contributed.