Eric Adams shady PAC fund raising reveals connections to Schnepps Media and Brooklyn developers that once rallied behind de Blasio

Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park report

So the New York Times today has a deep dive on Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams's relationship with donors, How Eric Adams, Mayoral Candidate, Mixed Money and Political Ambition, which sounds a lot like a deep dive the Times did on his predecessor, Marty Markowitz. 10/24/11, From Brooklyn Office, Mixing Clout and Charity.

It's unfortunate that such investigations--which rely not only on significant reporting chops but access to documents that are not simply online--come so late in their administrations. (As noted below, The City and Politico previously published their own investigations.)

After all, this comes after numerous institutional endorsements of Adams, which can of course be transactional, as well as a full-throated New York Post endorsement of him, and a second-place nod from the New York Daily News. While the latter did cite his "entanglements" with those doing business, both should have had to reckon more with his record.

And it's confounding that Adams--who refused to be interviewed, a not atypical tactic for him, instead issuing a statement--claimed that "Black candidates for office are often held to a higher, unfair standard — especially those from lower-income backgrounds such as myself."

It's confounding because Markowitz got similar treatment. And it's disturbing because it wouldn't be the first time that Adams had invoked race to court supporters and resist hard questions, such as his defense of scofflaw nightclubs.

The Times details how his "fund-raising has repeatedly pushed the boundaries of campaign-finance and ethics laws," such as a fund-raiser from real estate developer David Schwartz, whose Slate Property Group, just happened to get Adams to endorse a zoning change for a project in Downtown Brooklyn.

Those advisory opinions can be strategic--Adams sometimes supports with conditions, asking for concessions (which may well be baked into proposals) rather than oppose projects, such as with the 80 Flatbush project.

But the key here is that Adams's campaign didn't properly disclose Schwartz as an in-kind contributor or an intermediary and nor did his advisory opinion "disclose his fund-raising relationship with Mr. Schwartz." The City Council later approved Slate’s rezoning.

The Slate executive was one of at least three donors receiving the borough president’s endorsement for zoning changes against the wishes of community boards. The others were also later approved by the City Council.

The Times notes that two lobbyists who influence him "sit on his nonprofit’s board, and a third was recently hired as a campaign consultant." 

And it finds his defense of his role in an Aqueduct racino contract dubious, since newly disclosed document show that bidders were invited to a fund-raiser.

Adams's One Brooklyn makes him the only one of the city’s current borough presidents with a nonprofit that raises private money, mixing of course with politics.

And while it must certify that it spends no more than 10% of funding on communications boosting Adams, he found a workaround: using the money to publicize One Brooklyn’s events and thus himself. See cover at right.

Note that that One Brooklyn publication is published by Schneps Media, which controls the lion's share of neighborhood media in Brooklyn (Brooklyn Paper, Brownstoner, Courier-Life, Caribbean Life) and the Metro/amNY, as well as other publications. Let's not expect a lot of investigative reporting from them.

And though One Brooklyn claims that it can't solicit or accept donations from anyone with a “particular matter” pending before them, "the nonprofit appears to have done so," the Times reports.

 

 As with Markowitz, the nonprofit allows donors to offer far more support than they could via campaign finance:

Jed Walentas, who runs the development firm Two Trees Management, is limited to $400 in campaign contributions per election cycle, because he is on the list of people doing business with the city. But Mr. Walentas’s family foundation has given One Brooklyn $50,000, records show. (Mr. Adams’s campaign has also received at least $24,000 from other donors solicited by or connected to Mr. Walentas.)

For his part, Mr. Adams championed a $2.7 billion streetcar plan that Mr. Walentas has promoted through a group he founded, Friends of Brooklyn Queens Connector Inc. The streetcar, Mr. Adams tweeted in 2018, “has real potential to be one of those solutions for our disconnected waterfront.” The project stalled, and Mr. Adams has recently distanced himself from it in the glare of the mayoral race.

The borough president is also in line to issue an opinion on a rezoning request for Two Trees’ next big project, River Ring, a pair of apartment and commercial towers with a waterfront park in Williamsburg

Mr. Adams, in a recent interview, said he was already “extremely impressed” with the way the Two Trees plan had taken account of rising sea levels. “This is how we need to start thinking,” he added. Mr. Walentas declined to comment.

Hmm. That reminds me somehow of what he said in 2013 about affordable housing: "We need to look at what Bruce Ratner is doing, with his great, really cutting-edge, trying to build up using pre-fab housing, can we do this throughout in the borough of Brooklyn, and can we encourage others to do that as well."