Everyone Is Doing It

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 lobbyist’s deep-pocketed clients, RAL Development and Cipriani USA, for a total of $30,000.

And the very next day, Capalino was on the phone with the man himself — Mayor de Blasio.

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.

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.

Whether anything else came up remains a mystery as City Hall refuses to say whether notes of these lobbying chats exist.

[. . .]

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.

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

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.

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.”