How Bloomberg rewards his volunteers

From the NY Times:

Michael R. Bloomberg took his turn in the witness chair in one of the odder political trials in recent memory. Never glancing at the jurors, his facial muscles held in equipoise during cross-examination, he called to mind a lizard sitting in the sun.

Patricia E. Harris, the first deputy mayor, took off three months from her day job to “volunteer” in the mayor’s campaign, and walked away with a $450,000 thank-you from the mayor. Kevin Sheekey, the former deputy mayor, also “volunteered” and walked away with a pile. (He promised on his first day of testimony to ask his wife how much the mayor paid him; the next day, Mr. Sheekey explained that the couple had taken in a movie and darned if the question had not slipped his mind.)

It’s in this context that Mr. Haggerty finds himself sitting at the defense table staring at old friends. He was not so much a “volunteer” as a prized political operative who specialized in putting his candidates on the ballot, and trying to knock opponents off. He is adept at what is called ballot security in a courtroom — but voter suppression on the streets of New York.

From NY1:

Bloomberg largely kept his cool under intense cross-examination, even when the questions touched upon everything from his decision to run for a third term to a payroll scandal at City Hall.

He did, however, show a lack of knowledge about some key aspects of the case, namely the laws governing contributions to political parties.

“Quite frankly we were a little surprised with the number of questions that the mayor simply did not know the answer to,” said Dennis Vacco, attorney for John Haggerty.

At one point, in an apparent effort to discredit the mayor, the defense tried to use words from the mayor's own autobiography against him. The prosecution pounced, calling it courtroom theater.

“That is not an ambush when we are pointing to the witness’ own words in an autobiography. This is the DA’s witness. He is not ours. You would think that the DA would come better prepared,” said Vacco.

Bloomberg knew exactly what was going on

From the Village Voice:

...right up to that fateful election day, John Haggerty Jr. had worked his heart out for the Bloomberg cause with no apparent payment by the most generous political candidate in municipal history. Other top officials of Team Bloomberg scored the biggest paydays of their lives. Haggerty worked for free—at least as far as filings show. Yet his tasks were just as crucial, if not more so. He played the leading role in persuading five cranky Republican county leaders to get over their hurt feelings and give Bloomberg their nomination, even though the mayor had jilted them two years earlier by quitting their party. Take a look at those photos of Bloomberg's pre-nomination meetings in which he pleaded with GOP officials to let bygones be bygones. There's John Haggerty, quietly at his side.

Without the GOP nod, Bloomberg would've been forced to slog it out as a third-party candidate against an African-American Democrat on his left and a Republican spoiler on his right. We know how that would have turned out: Even with the GOP in line, Bloomberg managed only a 4 percent win, despite spending more than $108 million. We'd be talking today about Mayor William C. Thompson. That seems like reason enough to want to throw Haggerty a million bucks worth of thank-yous.

"John was responsible for the mayor's election," says Tom Ognibene, the former Queens Republican Councilmember. "Without the Republican line, he was not getting re-elected."

...the reason Bloomberg never cried thief last year is because there was no harm and no foul. "John got this money funneled to him," he says. "That's why there was no complaint filed. He never took a penny. He could've been making hundreds of thousands of dollars. This was John's bonus."

Then there's Bloomberg's own curious performance in all this. Vance says that he's had complete cooperation from the mayor and his campaign, and that neither are targets. For that, Bloomberg can thank the state's election laws, which are murkier than a Louisiana oil slick.

By routing it through his own checking account, the mayor guaranteed that it would stay secret until mid-January, the party's next required public filing. That much of the scheme Haggerty was clearly involved in. In a note to Bloomberg's campaign staff cited in Vance's legal papers, Haggerty wrote that the payment for the operation should be funded with "a Housekeeping contribution that will not be reported until January 15, 2010."

From the Times Ledger:

Queens Republican Party Chairman Phil Ragusa said he tried to dissuade Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s re-election campaign last year from dealing with GOP operative and Forest Hills resident John Haggerty Jr., who was indicted earlier this month on allegations he stole $1.1 million of the mayor’s money and lied to Bloomberg that the money would go to poll watching and ballot security operations.

“I warned Bloomberg before this happened,” Ragusa said in a phone interview Monday, saying he was “saddened and surprised” by the indictment against Haggerty, who along with brother Bart have been warring with Ragusa over control of the Queens GOP.

Ragusa said he did not want to take satisfaction from the indictment against his rival.

“I don’t want to revel in someone else’s problems if he did it, and the evidence seems overwhelming ... he’s going to have his day in court, right?” Ragusa said.

“I am the chairman of Queens,” he said. “They should’ve run the campaign through the different counties, not through political operatives. We never saw any of Bloomberg’s people out on the street. He should have come to us and let the Haggertys go someplace else.”

Bloomberg calls for larger Wall Street bonuses

From the Village Voice:

Bonus awards on Wall Street are expected to be up almost 20% this year, and Mike Bloomberg thinks they should be higher. Mayor Mike announced Friday on his radio show that New York City workers should do something about that: "Our cops, firefighters, teachers -- all municipal workers -- should be down there screaming: 'Pay Wall Street people more.' That's where their salaries come from, not the reverse." Per the Post, he was being puckish.

Presumably he was also being puckish about this: according to Bloomberg, it's just not fair that everyone's picking on Wall Street, because the biggest bailouts last year were AIG (which, actually, is here in New York) and the auto industry. Payments to both, of course, were dwarved by the payments made to Wall Street, but they took place the year before.

Aides fret that smaller margin of victory = smaller bonuses

From the NY Times:

Michael R. Bloomberg prides himself on importing traditions from Wall Street to City Hall. But he did not count on introducing this one: end-of-year bonus anxiety.

The mayor’s unexpectedly close re-election could jeopardize the quadrennial payouts — some as high as $400,000 — that he has routinely showered on his campaign workers, a highly unusual perk in municipal politics, a world not typically associated with lavish pay.

Mr. Bloomberg, a former bond trader, considers the bonuses a reward for hard work and successful results: as his election-night victory margins have grown, as they did from 2001 to 2005, so have the checks he writes to his staff.

But on Tuesday, his margin of victory dropped by three-quarters, compared with 2005 — not exactly cause for a cork-popping celebration.

So like investment bankers stung by a poor earnings report, some of the mayor’s campaign operatives are fretting over a potentially diminished windfall.

Photo from the Daily News