Election Campaigns

Bill Thompson's Job After Last Election Poses Trouble for 2013 Mayoral Run

Like most politicians, Bill Thompson is no stranger to the phrase "You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours." In 2009, then-Voice columnist Tom Robbins explored the connection between a $150 billion pension fund and Thompson's mayoral campaign against Bloomberg. As comptroller, Thompson used his posi ... More >>

Bloomberg, Guy Who Spent $108 Million Last Election, Bashes Looser Finance Campaign Laws

Any politician that shells out $108 million to win a mayoral race should be precluded from warning about the dangers of unlimited campaign spending. Of course that didn't stop Mayor Michael Bloomberg from blasting City Council's proposed reform bill on campaign finance law -- a bill that Bloomberg ... More >>

Nan Hayworth's Lady Problems: Did Her Campaign Manager Tell Women 'To Wear as Little As Possible' To Party?

Let's say -- completely hypothetically, simply for the sake of argument, of course -- that you are running a Congressional campaign. And let's also say -- again, completely hypothetically, simply for the sake of argument -- that your first campaign manager spokesman recently resigned after writing ... More >>

Can Occupy Wall Street Trust Its Own Candidate?

Running for Congress, George Martinez calls himself the Occupiers' candidate. The rest of the movement isn't so sure.

NY1 Freezes Congressional Candidate George Martinez Out of Debate, May Reconsider

Supporters of George Martinez, a candidate for the Democratic nomination in New York's 7th Congressional District, are pressuring NY1 to reverse its decision not to invite Martinez to the station's political debate, accusing the station of a bias that privileges well-connected fundraisers over grass ... More >>

Religion and Campaign Finance Reform Mix: Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf To Talk Elections

Remember the "Ground Zero mosque" that wasn't just a mosque but actually a community center but still had people enraged back in 2010 because they thought it would be a victory monument to terrorism? We hadn't really thought about it much recently, either -- until today, when we heard that Imam Fei ... More >>

Obama Will Support Super PAC, Despite Earlier Opposition

​In a dramatic reversal of his previous stance, President Obama announced late on Monday that his re-election campaign would begin accepting fundraising money from Priorities USA Action, a super PAC. Obama had previously stated that, because he opposes the Citizens United ruling that makes unc ... More >>

Joe Bruno, Other Pols Use Campaign Funds to Pay Legal Expenses

Joe BrunoBy Adam Schwartzman Five prominent New York politicians have dipped into their campaign funds to pay for nearly $3 million in legal expenses associated with investigations of their possible misconduct, a Voice examination of campaign disclosure reports has revealed. While it's unclear if t ... More >>

Working Families Party Says No Charges By U.S. Attorney. Now It's Cuomo's Move.

​The Working Families Party says that it received an all-clear last night from the U.S. Attorney's office ending its almost year-long probe of the party's campaign operations, including its Data & Field Services unit, with no charges filed. A spokeswoman for top prosecutor Preet Bharara says ... More >>

Grand Jury Probe of Mike's Indy Party Bucks Spells a Cuomo Conundrum

​The Post, the Wall Street Journal, and Capitol Tonight are all reporting -- without apparent fear of contradiction -- that a criminal grand jury has been convened to consider charges involving an Independence Party payment of $750,000 last fall to a Queens political operative. The grand jury ... More >>

Rick Lazio's History of Fearmongering with 'Misinformation' on Health-Care Reform. We Dig Up a Memo.

Lazio needed health care in 2000 when he fell and busted his lip in front of everyone on the first day of his futile Senate campaign. See Jon Stewart's clip.By Scott Greenberg Gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio's "Stop Obamacare" campaign sounds suspiciously like one of his fearmongering strategies ... More >>

Mike Bloomberg's $1.2 Million Indy Party Donation Gets Murkier and Murkier

​The legality of Mike Bloomberg's $1.2 million in personal contributions to the Independence Party immediately before last year's mayoral election gets murkier and murkier. I wrote a blog item last week that demonstrated three ways the contributions may have violated state law, exposing Bloo ... More >>

Mike Bloomberg Broke Election Law, Admit His Own Lawyers

Things are looking slushy, Mike​Even Mike Bloomberg's lawyers say he broke election law when he gave $1.2 million to the Independence Party right before the November election. The mayor's media guru, Howard Wolfson, and his elections lawyer Ken Gross told the Daily News that Bloomberg's two ... More >>

Bloomy Flack Changes Speeds on Campaign Spending

This weekend brought a good reminder about how campaign spokespeople are just hired guns, spinning the message for whoever is picking up the tab. When papers reported on Saturday that Mayor Bloomberg - who has refused to participate in the city's public campaign finance system that caps spending - h ... More >>

Campaign Finance Board Doles Out Matching Funds, Updates on Scandal (Updated)

The city's non-profit Campaign Finance Board has said it will dole out just over half a million dollars in matching funds to 42 candidates tomorrow morning -- the second-to-last financial package the candidates will receive before the September 15 primary election. Set to take in some of the large ... More >>

Speaker Quinn Pads Campaign Staff with Council Staffers

In Mid-July, Jan Messerschmidt, the manager of City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's re-election campaign, sent out a letter to supporters. In just over a month, Messerschmidt bragged, the campaign's "more than 90 volunteers" had logged thousands of door-to-door man hours, garnering enough signatu ... More >>

Inside Mayor Bloomberg's Hiring of Hillary Clinton Aide Howard Wolfson

Souvenirs and Slime: Inside the Greatest Collection of Presidential Campaign Memorabilia

South Bronx Man Dreams of the Presidency

Campaign Finance Board Fines Barron, Palma and Four Others

Caroline Giuliani: Obama Flip-flopper

Election Countdown: 40 Days to Go!

Cash Clashes Loom for Campaign Reformers

Giff's Ground Game Gears Up

Council Races: Big Bucks for a Lonely Fight

Advocate Race: Debt Be Not Proud

Mayoral Runners Make Ethnic Appeals

The Big Money

No longer an unknown, the mayor still holds a billion-dollar advantage

Al's Secret Admirers

F.E.C. Filings reveal that Sharpton has friends with friends in high places

Morning Report 2/21/05
The Tangled Roots of Doug Wead

The Right Rallies For Al

Machiavellian minister wins DNC subsidies and plots mayoral moves

The Best Votes Money Can Buy

Facts and figures of the most expensive election campaign in U.S. history

Advice to the Lovelorn

Memo to a candidate's new aides: just go ahead and let Kerry be Kerry

Brooklyn's Blood War

A soap-opera congressional race turns into a scandal of campaign-finance abuse

Sharpton's Cynical Campaign Choice

Reverend Al Dumps Jesse's Best for Bush's Buddy

Sleeping With the GOP

A Bush Covert Operative Takes Over Al Sharpton's Campaign

Sharpton in the Rainbow's Shadow

Reverend Al slips and slides as political landscape shifts

Wired to Wired

Dean Finds That Courting Blogocrats Means Answering Tough Questions

Tough Watchdog

Lefþer the Latest to Feel Campaign Board’s Bite

Code Unknown

••• How to Play the Race Card

The Best Campaign Money Can Buy

Team Bloomberg in the Chips

New York’s Bean Counter

Will the Votes Add Up for Alan Hevesi?

When a House Is Not a Home

Did Vallone Jr. Cross District Lines to Vote for His Dad?

Stiffed by a Stiff

Waiting for That Check From Lazio. And Waiting. And Waiting.

Advantage: Hevesi

City Comptroller Scores Big in Primary Races as Ferrer and Green Stumble

Brooklyn Betrayal

Una Clarke Tramples on the Truth, Friends, and the Law

The Rogue Candidate

The Embarrassing Midlife Crisis of Steve Forbes, Rich White Guy

'Dollar Bill' Bucks the Odds

The Great Liberal Hope from Wall Street

FBI Probes Dole '96: Part II

FBI Probes Dole TV Ads