A New York construction company threw a fundraising party for Eric Adams in 2021 that appears to violate city campaign laws requiring the company to register with the city’s Campaign Finance Board.
The May event yielded nearly $75,000 with matching funds, according to Campaign Finance Board records, but the campaign didn’t file the required paperwork identifying the fundraisers as bundlers — people who collect individual donations and bundle them together. Akdag said most of the people who attended the event sought work from KSK — subcontractors who get in the company’s good graces have a better chance of getting jobs when they come up.The rules around fundraising transparency are meant to discourage those quid pro quo relationships between donors and elected officials.
“A host of a fundraiser that's organized independently of the campaign must be reported as an intermediary,” Eric Friedman, assistant executive director of the Campaign Finance Board, said in an interview. “This discussion about intermediaries is a perfect example of a law that needs to be reviewed to ensure that it's meeting the challenges of the way that campaigns work today.”