Mayor Bill de Blasio’s struggling presidential campaign benefited from a six-figure boost unavailable to candidates who set up routine exploratory committees and the move has already resulted in formal complaints to the Federal Election Commission.
Three developers — Chrysler Building owner Aby Rosen, luxury condo builder William Lie Zeckendorf and real estate scion Daniel Brodsky — each gave $2,800 to his campaign account and another $2,500 to each of the PACs, for example. “As you look at it, it seems self-evident what was going on here,” Fischer said. “This seems like an effort to allow a small number of wealthy donors to give thousands above the contribution limits, and the de Blasio campaign seems to have some sort of theory for how that’s permissible.”
But it used a different logic when deciding whether to report contributions to the FEC that underwrote those expenditures.on this issue — that because the PAC initially helped fund state Senate campaigns, it was not an official exploratory committee and was therefore not subject to rules limiting donations and requiring they be reported to the FEC.