Campaign worker's mother fraudulently voted in D.A. primary

NY Daily News

Like any good son, when Working Families Party campaign worker Rafael Shimunov found out that his mother couldn’t vote in the recent primary for the Queens district attorney, he took to Twitter to complain about voter fraud.

Shimunov, whose mother, Margarita Shimunova, is a registered nurse and immigrant from Uzbekistan, voted for insurgent candidate Tiffany Cabán by paper ballot because the Board of Elections had her registered as a Republican.

“She’s never voted GOP in her life,” he tweeted in response to an ongoing social media conversation about claims the election was rigged. He went on to describe his mother’s health issues and her struggle immigrating from the former Soviet Union as a refugee.

“It’s not right, I heard they’re going to throw my vote away,” she said.

However, BOE records reveal an awkward family secret: Margarita Shimunova is indeed a registered Republican and therefore wasn’t eligible to vote in the June 25 Democratic primary.

Shimunova confirmed to the Daily News Friday that it was, in fact, her signature and date of birth on the BOE form showing she registered to the party of Lincoln in 2008.

But she denied being a Republican and said that she voted for Barack Obama and Bernie Sanders.

Records show that the mom voted in six elections since she registered, mostly general elections in which she could vote for either party. But documents show she also voted in the 2016 Republican primary during which Donald Trump carried his home state with 59% of the vote.

Well, that was a stupid thing to do, son. 

Cuomo pushes minimum wage hike

From the Huffington Post:

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) announced Sunday that he plans to submit a proposal to raise the minimum wage to $11.50 an hour in New York City and $10.50 an hour in the rest of the state.

The proposal is something of a reversal for Cuomo, who less than a year ago was opposed to allowing municipalities across the state to set different minimum wages. Having several different minimum wages throughout the state, Cuomo said last February, would create chaos by forcing communities to compete against one another. The current minimum wage in New York state is $8.75 per hour, a figure that's set to rise to $9 at the end of this year.

Cuomo's position reportedly began to shift this summer when he was courting the support of the progressive Working Families Party and backed a proposal to let different municipalities set different minimum wages. Under that proposal, New York City would have been able to set a minimum wage as high as $13.13 an hour.

While labor groups are praising Cuomo's decision to raise the wage, Bill Lipton, the state director of the Working Families Party, expressed disappointment that Cuomo, who was re-elected to a second four-year term in November, did not go further.

“We applaud Governor Cuomo’s proposed increase in the state minimum wage as an important first step in the right direction,” Lipton said in a statement Sunday. “But $11.50 is almost $2 less than what he endorsed last spring. And the truth is it’s nearly impossible to raise a family in this state on even $12 or $13 an hour.”

Speaker wannabe Weprin throwing a lot of money around

From DNA Info:

The race to become the next speaker of the City Council is a costly one. Queens City Councilman Mark Weprin, in particular, has recently been spreading his campaign wealth around to key players in next year’s speaker battle.

Since the mid-March filing Weprin has made three donations of $10,000 each to the Bronx and Brooklyn Democratic Parties, as well as to the influential Working Families Party, according to New York City Campaign Finance Board records.

Weprin also spread tens of thousands of dollars to other council candidates for a total payout to political allies of $53,500.

Speaking of the Working Families Party, did you know that they endorsed Austin Shafran in the CD19 race, but won't allow him to run on their line? What's up with that?

Como flub justifies elections board snub

From City Hall:

Apparently, even a former commissioner of the Board of Elections and one-time hopeful for the executive director job can make mistakes on his elections paperwork.

That is what Anthony Como, the Republican running against State Sen. Joe Addabbo discovered some time late Tuesday, hours after submitting 4,900 petition signatures to create a third party line for his candidacy.

The problem was that Como filed the petitions for the wrong election.

At 3 p.m. on Tuesday, Como submitted petitions for the “Tax Cuts Now” line that were designated for the Sept. 14 primary, not the Nov. 2 general election, when he will face Addabbo. As a result, the Board has taken initial actions to invalidate Como’s signatures, according to Steve Richman, its general counsel. The 10-member Board as a whole will now get the case.

Como already lost out on the Independence Party line after a dispute over his campaign’s use of signature gatherers from the party’s rival New York City faction. The “Tax Cuts Now” line was conceived of as a replacement.

Instead, it seems it will be the party line itself which may be cut now.

From the Queens Courier:

Addabbo questioned whether all of the petition signers were legit saying he has heard stories of confusion.

“A number of people I spoke to said they were approached to sign petitions for Como and some of them thought it was for Andrew Cuomo, and they didn’t know what they were signing,” Addabbo said.

[Where did I hear this before? Oh yeah...]

Meanwhile, Addabbo is still dealing with his own ballot issue, whether or not to appeal the court’s decision to boot him from the Working Families Party Line.

“I normally like to exhaust all legal remedies before closing a case or a matter,” Addabbo said.

Kim accepts shady WFP line

Statement from Steven Stites, Spokesman, Dan Halloran for City Council, Regarding Kevin Kim Accepting the Scandal-Plagued WFP Line

“Kevin Dukun Kim has come upon the Working Families Party endorsement in a way that surprises no one – a backroom deal designed to fool the voters. The benefits of this deal are enormous – and possibly illegal. Kevin Kim now stands to benefit from the Working Families Party’s web of underhanded activities, its ties to ACORN and its mysterious Data and Field Services, a business created solely to evade campaign finance law.

“A vacancy was caused when Barbara Byrnes, a Queens resident and Democrat who had been endorsed by the Working Families Party for City Council in our neighborhood, was nominated by the Working Families Party for a judgeship in Suffolk County. Pundits had predicted that Kim would in fact get Byrnes off the line to pave the way for him to have an extra line without having to face the scrutiny of the voters. Since Byrnes is only on the WFP line in Suffolk, the nomination is a sham device to create the vacancy. Kevin Kim, upon accepting the nomination, did not even announce the endorsement.

“Kevin Kim claims to be a reform candidate – but he stealthily accepted the help of the WFP, ACORN and their insider cronies. An unknown amount of money may now flow from Kim’s campaign to Data and Field Services. The WFP’s role in other campaigns is under investigation by the New York City Campaign Finance Board, local District Attorneys and possibly the Attorney General. Kim’s expenditures must now also be scrutinized for any evidence of laundering or illicit funneling through this shadow corporation, and whether Kim is violating the public trust in campaign finance laws.

“This is par for the course for Kevin Kim. He already has on his payroll Michael Nussbaum, a formerly convicted felon and the notorious ‘bag man’ for the infamous former Queens Democratic Borough President Donald Manes. Kevin Kim has raised virtually all of his campaign funds from out of state, and even out of the country, and now he is officially in bed with the scandal-ridden Working Families Party and ACORN. And Kevin Kim will clearly say and do anything to be elected.

“I call for an Attorney General investigation of Data and Field Services immediately. And I ask the voters to reject the politics of corruption practiced by ACORN, the WFP and Kevin Kim.”

In response, the Kim campaign came up with a story about their volunteers being pelted with fliers and a football...

Photo from YourNabe.com

Is the WFP the 21st Century's Tammany Hall?

From True News from ChangeNYC.org:

WFP: Return to Tammany Hall Power
Liu over David Yassky, 55.68-44.32; De Blasio over Mark Green, 62.5-37.5

Nobody Asked Me ... But

The City's divided Democratic Party leaders can't elect citywide candidates. It was the power of the paid operation of the WFP and voters turn off by the entire election system that won the day. It is shocking that in a Democrat runoff Liu received 127,173 or just 4% of the registered Democrats in the city (3,177,740). De Blasio did a little better wtih 138, 736, he got 4.4% of the city's democratic voters. Just 2.7% of all the city's registered voters (4,657,516) . . . Liu political consultant and lobbyist Bill Lynch has more power over Liu than consultant lobbyist Hank Morris ever had over former city and state comptroller Alan Hevesi. How will Lynch's complete victories effect the state and city's lobby consultant business. Wayne Barrett of the Village Voice on NY1 questioned last night how Liu elected by the unions will be able to audit and offer the transparency needed of the union pension funds and millions in health care programs they run with city funds.

WFP Could Now Be the Most Power Party Since Tammany Hall
Earlier this month, the WFP the 11,800 member party backed four of the five challengers who ousted incumbents in the City Council. The WFP's ability to pull out the vote for its selected candidates increases that clout considerably, raising the question of how many elected officials are going to be willing to take on. At a meeting of the partnership and Citizen Budget Commission Steven Berger said The only people legislators listen to is the Working Families Party. Both Tammany Hall and WFP gained their power by organizing and providing for the poor.

More dirty dealings in Council District 19 race

From City Hall:

On July 16, a legal aid worker named Barbara Byrne quietly filed petitions to run as the Working Families Party designee in the district currently represented by Tony Avella. That Byrne was not herself a resident of the district, never opened an account with the Campaign Finance Board or had anything resembling a campaign operation was irrelevant: she was never planning to be on the ballot.

Byrne is in line to be nominated by the WFP for Queens County Supreme Court judgeship at the WFP’s judicial convention this weekend, according to a source with knowledge of the situation...

Byrne, a party loyalist, is unlikely to win the judgeship, given that Queens Democrats are expected to nominate someone else at their judicial convention scheduled for Thursday evening.

But the maneuver allowed the WFP to stay out of a contested Democratic primary—one of the few on which the party was silent, and the only one among that small group in which a competitive general election was expected—and assured that whoever won, the Democratic and WFP support would be unified for the general election. From the outset, the plan was to have Byrne as a placeholder who would be removed through the judicial nomination so that the WFP could have a candidate for November without having one in September.

Byrne did not return calls requesting comment.

Byrne had originally collected 11 signatures in total, via two petition gatherers. One of those, Alex Melman, describes himself as a summer intern for the WFP on his Facebook page. The other, Sarah Abernathy, was described in a New York Times article last fall about the WFP’s efforts fighting the term limits extension as a canvasser, and the WFP campaign finance disclosures with the state Board of Elections show a payment of $120 to her for get-out-the-vote and canvassing on Election Day 2008.

WFP spokesman Dan Levitan declined comment on Byrne or the ballot line in the Council district.

Kim said that he was unaware of the maneuvering by the WFP and was unsure whether he would indeed get the party line.

...Halloran challenged Kim not to take the WFP line, both because of questions about the party’s for profit company, Data and Field Services, and because of the machinations involved in giving Kim the line.

“For someone who talks about the need for reform, it would raise a red flag to accept the nomination of a party that has been shown not to be following campaign finance rules, and whose problems extend nationally, to the scandals surrounding ACORN,” Halloran said. “And the way that he is going to get the line—it was a straw card from the beginning.”

DeBlasio the lobbyist

From the Daily News:

Public advocate candidate Bill de Blasio set a bad precedent when he hired himself out in 2006 as a paid lobbyist while serving on the City Council.

An organization called the Progressive America Foundation paid de Blasio $33,000 to press states to adopt election rules that would enable groups like the Working Families Party to more easily field candidates.

De Blasio got an okay from the Conflicts of Interest Board with two provisos: that his lobbying would be done elsewhere, and that the foundation had no business with the city.

On the first count, de Blasio is fine. On the second, he is in murky waters. At the time of the payment, the foundation shared an address with the Working Families Party, and the two organizations have had a number of the same directors over the years.

The affiliations and the interests of the two organizations are close enough to create at least the appearance that the foundation was putting money into de Blasio's pocket at a time when the party was pressing numerous issues before the Council.

Campaign finance no-nos uncovered

From City Hall:

A complicated web of coordinated activities, shared resources and staff, and quiet money transfers between the Working Families Party, a secretive private company called Data and Field Services and at least six current Council campaigns, as well as Bill de Blasio’s campaign for public advocate, appears to have found several ways around the strict city campaign finance laws. Upwards of a million dollars, and possibly more, are involved, with over $1.7 million in matching funds comprised of taxpayer dollars already disbursed and more are potentially at stake.

There have long been assumptions and rumors of the collaboration between the Working Families Party (WFP) and its favored candidates, but never before has the scope of or intricate processes behind its joint activity been exposed to the degree made possible by an extensive review of public documents and close to 50 interviews with a range of key players conducted by City Hall over the last few days.

Similarly, though the existence of Data and Field Services (DFS), a for-profit company incorporated in February 2007, had been mentioned in passing in prior press reports and as an ambiguous line on a dozen campaign finance reports over the last year and a half, never before have the details of the company and the extent of its ties to the Working Families Party been revealed.

And here's the follow up:

Just days after City Hall published a report examining the work done on their campaigns’ behalf by the Working Families Party and its secretive for-profit company, seven Council candidates and public advocate candidate Bill de Blasio filed reports showing an additional $114,178.76 paid to Data and Field Services (DFS). Together, that brings the total to $154,033.76 reported in payments so far to the company that shares staff, office space and resources with the Working Families Party (WFP).

In other words, 74 percent of the total money sent to DFS so far was reported in the week after the initial article appeared on www.cityhallnews.com. Those filings were to reflect a time period which ended on Aug. 10, the day the article appeared, but were not due in to the Campaign Finance Board (CFB) until Friday, Aug. 14.

Many of the recent charges stand in direct contradiction to what campaign managers and spokespeople were saying said about DFS work for the campaign just one week ago.