Campaigns participating in the city campaign finance system are not allowed to receive direct assistance from political parties. Nor are they allowed to receive either donations or in-kind donations in excess of the contribution limit set for the campaigns, with the additional condition that these contributions not push them past the set spending limits for the campaigns. Protections like these prevent campaigns from having an unfair advantage over others, who would need to expend campaign resources in order to make up the difference.

WFP workers have been in the district in recent days identifying voters, Gutierrez said, providing 'a great compliment to the volunteers.'

Gutierrez said there is a conference call roughly once a week between Schulman, Way and WFP staff'he could not remember the main WFP contact, but said he believed her name was Rebecca'so that Schulman can use her knowledge of the district to determine where best to send the WFP workers.

Though no payments to either WFP or DFS appear on Schulman campaign disclosures to date, Gutierrez said a contract with Data and Field Services has since been signed to cover some of the costs. Though he was not able to give the exact dollar amount that the contract was for, Gutierrez said he did not believe the campaign was a big client.

After all, he reasoned, 'if we were one of the big clients, we would have been on that list that went out from WFP a couple of days ago, that I'm sure you saw on Liz Benjamin's blog, about all the big candidates they were working with.'

Gutierrez seems to have been referring to a July 31 post on the Daily Politics, which quoted an email from WFP electoral campaigns director Emma Wolfe touting six Council candidates who 'represent the best of New York City. Their values embody everything the Working Families Party stands for.' Those candidates were: Williams, Jung, Rose, Dromm, Ydanis Rodriguez and Brad Lander.

Notably, the WFP had, until his abrupt resignation, been endorsing Miguel Martinez over Rodriguez, but switched to Rodriguez after Martinez pled guilty to federal charges of misusing taxpayer funds. Rodriguez's campaign did not return a call for comment on whether it is using resources from the WFP or DFS. No payments to either appear on his campaign's disclosure reports.

Lander's campaign issued an emailed statement in response to requests to detail how the $7,300 his campaign paid to DFS was spent, explaining that the company 'is assisting us with the grassroots field organizing'voter contact, recruiting and supervising volunteers, and spreading our message in the community. They have a proven track record of results and we plan to keep using them. They did play a small coordination role in petitioning and we are paying for all work that Data and Field does, in compliance with relevant CFB guidelines.'

The campaign provided no further information on his contract, and neither his campaign manager nor anyone else able to speak on behalf of the campaign was made available for an interview to elaborate what work may or may not have been done by DFS or WFP staff on behalf of the campaign.

Not all of the WFP-endorsed candidates have taken help from the WFP or DFS. Maritza Davila, running against Council Member Diana Reyna, is not and has no plans to use the WFP for help, said Davila campaign manager Allison Kroft. She said she was not familiar with a company called DFS. Neither has Ferando Cabrera, running against Council Member Maria Baez in the Bronx, signed on, said Cabrera campaign manager Benny Catala. While he said the WFP endorsement has been very helpful, there are neither paid or unpaid WFP staffers working together with the Cabrera campaign.
Whatever WFP workers are in the district are working on their own membership, Catala said, explaining with a laugh that he would avoid such situations because he believed having any joint efforts between the campaign and the WFP would be 'quite illegal.'

And DFS has apparently not signed on with several of the bigger campaigns endorsed by the WFP. According to the last available reports, no money has been spent on DFS by either the Liu for Comptroller campaign or the Richard Aborn for Manhattan District Attorney campaign, though neither campaign returned calls for comment about whether there were plans to use the company in the future. According to Bill Thompson's mayoral campaign, there has not been any use of DFS or WFP staff to date, nor are there plans to use them.

But one citywide campaign has contracted DFS, with a payment on July 2 for $10,435 to DFS and plans to pay more: that of Bill de Blasio for public advocate. This is in addition to the $10,000 maximum political contribution the de Blasio campaign made to the WFP in October 2008, close to two weeks before announcing his intention to run for public advocate.

'We're on contract with Data and Field through Sept. 15,' said de Blasio campaign spokesman Matt Wing, referring to the date of the primary. 'We are just contracting them generally through Sept. 15.'

Wing did, however, detail some of the services that DFS is providing to the de Blasio campaign via an email: 'They knock on doors to talk to voters, they help turn out our volunteers and they organize. To win an election in New York City, you've got to get your message out to the voters directly'that's what field organizing is, and that's what they do.'

According to Wing, no petition signatures were collected by DFS for the de Blasio campaign.

Wing said he would not comment on whether the de Blasio campaign had any field expenditures beyond the money being paid to DFS, explaining, 'that's campaign strategy. We're not going to give you an answer on that.'

Asked whether the de Blasio campaign is receiving assistance from the WFP, and specifically had been given access to the WFP voter file, Wing said, 'We're not going to comment on resource allocations for the campaign.'

Asked whether that meant that there had been a list provided, Wing responded only with a question of his own, which seemed to indicate that the de Blasio campaign was in possession of a WFP voter file: 'Are you asking whether they give us for free the voter file or whether we bought it?'

He did not comment further.

However, one place where the de Blasio campaign seems to have benefitted from the resources of the WFP was for its June 9 petitioning drive, which was held at the Working Families headquarters at 2 Nevins Street.

Cantor, addressing the issue of the de Blasio campaign drive in WFP headquarters in a conversation before the topic of DFS had even been broached, said that in terms of the WFP being compensated for the space, 'we have a contract, and they have to pay for everything that the contract codifies.'

No money is listed on the de Blasio campaign finance disclosures as paid to the WFP for use of the space.

Wing's statement in response to whether the de Blasio campaign had paid for use of the space gave a slightly different account.

'We are in full compliance with the Campaign Finance Board guidelines and the law,' he said. 'We paid Data and Field Services to rent space, to train our volunteers for a variety of field activities, including volunteer coordination for some petitioning.'

Several seconds later, Wing elaborated on the statement by saying he needed to check whether the payment made to DFS was indeed to cover the cost of renting the space, and that the people at the petitioning training were in fact volunteers, accompanied by a campaign election lawyer. Ultimately, though, no further comment was provided.

Given the lack of clarity on whether DFS pays rent or simply uses the WFP space at 2 Nevins Street, the ultimate recipient of any money which might have been paid by the de Blasio campaign to rent the space cannot be determined.

And in addition to the space, the de Blasio campaign appears to have had the benefit of a WFP staffer named Peter Kim coordinating the event. Kim's name appears on the invitation put up on the de Blasio campaign Facebook page for the petitioning drive, there referred to as the campaign kick-off, as the contact for the event, complete with his @votewfp.org email address.

Cantor said he was unclear as to whether Kim was currently counted as a WFP or DFS employee, though he did say that he was aware that payments had been paid to Kim from DFS at certain points in the past. He could not say whether any of those payments were happening currently.

Campaign finance disclosures from the de Blasio campaign list no payments to the WFP (beside the political contribution) or Kim.

When asked whether the de Blasio campaign would be paying any money to the WFP for staff, Cantor said, 'They are paying for some staff'they have to,' explaining, 'there are organizers that have moved over to

the de Blasio payroll.'

Who these people might be is unclear, since the de Blasio campaign uses payroll company ADP to disburse wages, and does not itemize the money sent to ADP by name for most employees.

But that does not mean that the people left behind at WFP are ignoring the de Blasio campaign, Cantor said.

'Internally, people are talking about how people can move their members and their lists to be supportive of him, what kind of issues we want him to'just the normal stuff,' he said. 'We're trying to figure out how we can do our share to get the last 10,000 votes he needs, or whatever the number is.'

As for the de Blasio campaign, Wing would not say whether there is any firewall or official policy in place for the staff to ensure a complete separation from WFP.

'We are in full compliance with the letter and the spirit of the campaign finance laws,' Wing said. 'That is my comment.'

In response to several questions directed toward de Blasio himself about whether he had instituted a policy to ensure separation between his campaign and the WFP, whether he has put such a policy in writing to avoid confusion and about campaign employees, Wing provided a one-sentence statement from de Blasio: 'I am incredibly proud of my campaign staff and the state of my campaign.'

On Sunday afternoon, de Blasio campaign attorney Lawrence Laufer called in, saying that Wing suggested he speak further to the question of the campaign's contract with DFS.

'I wanted to make it clear that staff workers are covered under this contract, and the campaign does provide full compensation for the time of those workers in performing services for the de Blasio campaign, and that it's our understanding that no one else, including the WFP, is compensating those workers for their time performing services for the de Blasio campaign.'

Laufer said he believed that Cantor was right in saying there are people who have worked for the WFP now on the de Blasio payroll, but said he did not know if it was necessarily the case that these people were separate from those provided by DFS.

'I can't say that for a fact,' he said. 'I don't know how the payroll breaks down between DFS and the staff offhand, and I'm not in the position to be looking at the contract today.'



On July 7, attorney Jerry Goldfeder sent a letter on behalf of Mark Green's public advocate campaign to Campaign Finance Board executive director Amy Loprest requesting an advisory opinion on how the CFB "intends to interpret and implement the law relating to third party expenditures, and specifically, what constitutes sufficient evidence to warrant a finding of co-ordination."

The letter proceeded to present a number of hypothetical situations without names of either candidates or third-party entities attached, asking the board to explain which might be acceptable and which not.

The CFB investigative process, though, is intensely specific to the facts involved in each review it conducts. Therefore, when the response to Goldfeder's letter finally arrived on August 6, the CFB took care to avoid making any statement which said firmly what might or might not be acceptable, while noting, "evidence of non-independent activity is usually largely circumstantial and must be evaluated based on the totality of the circumstances."

The opinion then quotes Board Rule 1-08(f), which lays out six potential factors to be used in determining whether third-party expenditures are independent or not. Several additional factors are then provided based on past CFB decisions. Referring to the ruling in the 2003 special election which put Annabel Palma on the Council, the Board pointed out, among other things, that use of common vendors could count toward in-kind contributions, and then referring to Fernando Ferrer’s 2005 mayoral campaign, noted that common employees between an organization and a campaign could also count toward in-kind contributions.

People carefully watching the request for this opinion suspected that Goldfeder was fishing for a ruling which might be applied to the Working Families Party, and, given that his client is an opposing candidate in the public advocate race, suspected as well that Goldfeder had the de Blasio campaign in mind. There even seemed to be a sense of this within the CFB, which also already seemed aware of the potential that the WFP-DFS relationship and the WFP relationship with its endorsed candidates might be an issue this year.

The facts about the lack of distinction between WFP and DFS, as well as the specific issues of apparently shared staff and resources with so many of the campaigns involved, could force the board to rule on whether this is along the same lines as activity prohibited by the advisory opinion, beginning with the first condition: “whether the person, political committee, or other entity making the expenditure is also an agent of a candidate.”

No clear lines exist between the WFP staff and the DFS staff being paid by the campaigns of Rose, Van Bramer, Jung, Williams, Dromm, Schulman, Lander or de Blasio to act on their behalf.

The third condition of Rule 1-08(f), “whether a candidate has authorized, requested, suggested, fostered, or otherwise cooperated in any way in the formation or operation of the person, political committee, or other entity making the expenditure,” seems to only be potentially relevant to de Blasio, whom Cantor often talks about as a key player in the formation of the party 11 years ago. In those days, de Blasio was not yet in elected office, but working as a highly regarded political operative.

“He was very much involved, to be honest, with the very creation of the Working Families Party,” Cantor said, using words which parallel several other statements he has made over the course of the past few months. “We’re friends with everyone else who’s running, but we have a special bond to him and we’re trying to make sure that that is known.”

The WFP made an unusally early endorsement of de Blasio for public advocate, in mid-March.

The fourth condition of Rule 1-08(f), “whether the person, political committee, or other entity making the expenditure has been established, financed, maintained, or controlled by any of the same persons, political committees, or other entities as those which have established, financed, maintained, or controlled a political committee authorized by the candidate,” could force the board to rule on the situation raised by the apparently diaphanous relationship between WFP, DFS and all the WFP-endorsed candidates who are also clients of DFS, as could the fifth: “whether the person, political committee, or other entity making the expenditure and the candidates have each retained, consulted, or otherwise been in communication with the same third party or parties, if the candidate knew or should have known that the candidate’s communication or relationship to the third party or parties would inform or result in expenditures to benefit the candidate.”

The sixth condition is that “whether the candidate, any agent of the candidate, or any political committee authorized by the candidate shares or rents space for a campaign-related purpose with or from the person, political committee, or other entity making the expenditure.” In the case of de Blasio at least, there was space rented from DFS for petitioning training, and there seems to be no way to tell, given the lack of clarity on the DFS-WFP connection and on how DFS pays rent, whether this space was in fact rented from the WFP, with payment possibly going to DFS.

The additional factor of examining common vendors raised in the CFB advisory opinion may require a ruling as well.

Not only have the WFP and at least nine city candidates all used DFS this year, but five of those candidates— Rose, Ferreras, Van Bramer, Williams and Lander—all use the communications firm Berlin Rosen, and three of them—Jung, Dromm and de Blasio—all use Red Horse Strategies for consulting. (Berlin Rosen also works with Aborn for Manhattan district attorney, who has been endorsed by the WFP but so far shows no contract with DFS; Red Horse also works for Queens Council candidate Frank Gulluscio, who similarly has been endorsed by WFP but so far shows no DFS contract.) In addition, de Blasio retains the consulting services of the Mack/Crounse Group, which also works with 32BJ, UNITE/HERE and United and Food Commercial Workers. All three unions are part of the WFP coordinating committee. 32BJ and UNITE/HERE have endorsed de Blasio.

As for the idea raised in the advisory opinion, that common employees could be counted toward in-kind contributions, the transitive property may be in play here: if campaigns contract DFS, but DFS is essentially the same as WFP, then the board would have to rule on whether that means campaigns are in fact contracting WFP.

Eric Friedman, spokesperson for the CFB, said he would not comment on whether or not an open investigation into the WFP, DFS and the campaigns associated with both.

However, he said, “Issues of coordination are among the most serious issues that the Board has to deal with. When it’s found, it can be subjected to some of the most serious penalties that are allowed under the law. So it’s something that the board always takes care to investigate thoroughly.”

Friedman said he could not speak to specific issues not yet reviewed or ruled on by the CFB, but he did detail the sorts of things that might rouse CFB attention.

After all, Friedman said, “in the law, there are limits to the size of contributions that a candidate can receive from any one person or entity. There are also limits on how much a campaign can spend overall,” adding that both of these are to restrict advantages of influence.

“Third party activity that is coordinated implicates both those very important limits,” he said.

If coordination is found, Friedman said, a breach of certification would be issued, the legal method for demonstrating that campaigns found to have coordinated have violated the contract they made as a condition of the opt-in system which provides them matching funds of taxpayer money. A civil offense, breach of certification has so far led to a maximum $10,000 fine, an end to public matching funds going to the campaign and a demand to return whatever matching funds might have already been distributed.

Combined, the seven campaigns which have contracts with DFS have already received $1,774,770 in matching funds, as part of the first payments issued by the CFB on August 6.

Friedman said the CFB is in favor of as much openness as possible, in contrast to what happens when political campaigns have third-parties make expenditures on their behalf which cannot be viewed by the public.

“One of the great things about the system in the city is that it is very transparent, it provides a high level of disclosure for campaigns,” he said. “Things are a little more opaque once things are removed from the campaign. Disclosure provides a level of trust. If people can see it, then they can trust what’s going on is above boards. The less people can see, the more you have to wonder about what’s going on.”

As for Cantor, he said that he believes DFS’s existence and way of doing business should fit in with CFB criteria.

“You want to make it clean. You want to be able for the candidates to hire DFS, if they so desire, then you have a contract.” Cantor said. “The CFB seems to favor this. They’re really sticklers on this stuff.”

Late in the last of several conversations over the course of this reporting, with Cantor, who called in on a Saturday afternoon while spending the weekend in the Hamptons, once again made the case that he believed everything going on between DFS and WFP was normal.

“You have to, you know, when people move on to certain parts of the work, then they have to move on to one payroll or another. This is very common in the not-for-profit world,” he said.

Of course, employees going back and forth between WFP and DFS—and apparently working for both simultaneously—are moving between a non-profit entity and a for-profit entity, making the situation different from the one Cantor described. Toward that point, Cantor was reminded that DFS is incorporated as a for-profit entity.

“I suppose. I guess technically it is,” he said, adding, “No one thinks of it as that.”

Then he paused, seeming to be considering all the questions that had been raised about DFS over the course of several days’ worth of conversations.