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So, maybe Ratner sorta helped Mangano's defense fund

All campaign contributions are fungible, right?

Newsday reported 7/17/18, in Mangano used $900,000 from campaign fund to pay his defense attorney:
Former Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano, facing an October retrial on federal corruption charges, paid $900,000 from campaign funds to his criminal defense attorney during the first half of the year, according to campaign finance reports filed Monday with the state board of elections.
Actually, the campaign account, Friends of Ed Mangano, has paid the law firm some $1.23 million since May 2015, as the filings show. And Mangano has raised $2.8 million just since 2014.

A curious Ratner contribution

But I want to remind people of what I wrote in May 2014: how Barclays Center developer Bruce Ratner, who the previous August won the nod to revamp the Nassau Coliseum, did not--according to state campaign finance records--contribute directly to the successful re-election campaign of Nassau County Executive Mangano, who favored Ratner's bid over that of rival Madison Square Garden.

However, it looks as if Ratner and his wife, Pam Lipkin, indirectly gave Mangano's campaign $25,000. Their $12,500 contributions to lobbyist Alfonse D'Amato's PAC, Renew New York were soon followed by a $25,000 contribution from the PAC to Mangano, whose office remains involved in the Coliseum project.

The Ratner/Lipkin contributions were the only contributions to Renew New York, outside of those by D'Amato himself, during the six-month period. The couple had never previously given to the PAC.



Yes, money's fungible, so it can't be proven that Ratner/Lipkin contributions went to Mangano. But the sequence sure points that way.

Remember, Ratner's political contributions are almost always strategic; though the developer considers himself a staunch Democrat and liberal, business considerations have always trumped ideology.

An interesting bit of Mangano spending

Also, Mangano's campaign spent $20,800 on NEC, or Nassau Events Center (aka the Nassau Coliseum) in early 2017 on CONSV, or constituent services. It's unclear what that was: tickets to give out to an event? (Update: see below.)




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