The eight candidates using Data and Field Services (DFS) reported a total of $118,541.88 in new spending with the company on their latest campaign finance disclosures—sending over a third of all the money that has been spent with the company to date in the last two weeks.

But unless those candidates together spend an estimated minimum $700,000 additionally in the week which remains until Primary Day, they will not be paying enough money to cover the company’s costs on their behalf, according to a conservative estimation using information about DFS provided by the Working Families Party (WFP) conducted by City Hall.

Last week, the Campaign Finance Board officially declared DFS an arm of the WFP, following a series of investigative reports in City Hall.

During interviews conducted in early August, WFP executive director Dan Cantor told City Hall that there were already 142 DFS employees who had been in place for several weeks working on behalf of those identified as WFP “priority candidates.” He made clear that there were several levels of compensation for employees, depending on skill and experience, but that the lowest rate was $82 per day for canvassers. But even assuming that the company has not hired additional staff since the beginning of July and calculating them all at that lowest rate, that would mean there have been 142 people working at $82 per day for 55 days between July 1 and the Sept. 15 primary (assuming two days off per week).

That would come to a total of $640,420. Plus a standard approximate payroll tax of 11 percent which would come to $70,446.20, DFS wage expenses alone would be $710,866.20.

Cantor also boasted of the excellent benefits DFS provides to even its lowest ranking employees. Assuming that the company pays a low $300 per month for health insurance for three months for 142 employees, that would cost $127,800.

Even assuming there are no benefits besides this insurance, adding it to the wage expenses, that would have DFS paying an estimated $838,666.20 just to cover its employees. That number does not include costs for transportation, campaign literature and things like copying petitions which would need to be within the company’s operating budget, nor for rent, office equipment like computers or a phone system.

Cantor said in the interviews in August that DFS pays a share of money to the WFP for use of its office equipment, though no payments show up on WFP disclosures for these costs, and that DFS pays a share of rent directly to the landlord, though the owner of the building claimed to have never heard of either the WFP or the company. Given the real estate market in the neighborhood of its 2-4 Nevins Street home, though, this would easily put DFS costs over $1 million on the low end.

Yet the cumulative costs paid by city candidates to date—$299,717.30—comes nowhere close to this number. So far, public advocate candidate Bill de Blasio is the biggest spender, sending $67,740 to the company. Manhattan district attorney candidate Richard Aborn comes in second to date, at $55,000. As for the Council candidates, Danny Dromm has spent $32,600, SJ Jung has spent $45,365, Brad Lander has spent $30,041.88, Jimmy Van Bramer has spent $18,800, Debi Rose has spent $7,908.54, Lynn Schulman has spent $17,500 and Jumaane Williams has spent $24,761.88.

Much of this spending has come since the initial reports on DFS, despite most involved campaigns initially saying in early August that they were at that point done using the company.

Individual information about most of the contracts is not currently publicly available, though according to the short explanations included with the candidates’ filings, DFS appears to provide a range of services which seems to include campaign consulting, canvassing, campaign staff, professional services, voter services, petition printing, field and campaign management. Unclear is how the services provided to de Blasio, for example, are different from those provided to Aborn, who has so far been charged just $12,000 less by DFS for work done in his borough-wide race for him than what was charged to de Blasio, who is running citywide.

However, the cumulative charges can be tracked, and with them being $299,497.30 compared to the at least $1 million in calculated DFS costs, there is a combined conservative estimated disparity of at least $700,000.

For some time, WFP employees had been privately confiding to others in the political world that there would be no way to track whether DFS provided more value than the money paid to the company would have bought, according to sources.

Cantor claimed DFS works not just on behalf of candidates, but does other canvases as well. However, now at the height of the campaign season, helping elect the select few priority candidates, especially de Blasio—whom WFP employees have made clear in conversations with many people is their overwhelming priority—most of the DFS work is likely being done on behalf of city candidates.

Also unaddressed in these estimates is the work being done by WFP employees such as the communications staff, since these were not among the 142 DFS staffers in Cantor’s count, by his telling.

If this estimated disparity is correct, the money to cover it could come from anywhere—donors, vested interests, even some rich angel backers content to pour money into a company that Cantor admitted in previous interviews is unlikely to ever turn a profit. Given DFS’s officially corporate structure, tracking the company’s funding sources is impossible via public disclosures. If money has been used to subsidize campaigns, it would be subject to the contribution and spending limits set by the CFB.

(One source for DFS funding is clear: in the first six months of the year alone, the WFP sent $408,821.51 to DFS, according to the disclosure with the state Board of Elections filed in mid-July. If additional money has been sent to DFS by the WFP since mid-July, those transfers would not need to be reported until the January 2010 filing.)

While not addressing the DFS question directly, CFB spokesman Eric Friedman said that all campaigns’ contracts with vendors will be investigated during the audit process, potentially with an eye toward questions of whether market rate has been charged.

“Any time goods or services are provided at a discount that’s not provided to the general public, that essentially amounts to an in-kind contribution. That’s something that’s subject to both the contribution and spending limits,” he said.

DFS has not been the only entity located at 2-4 Nevins Street to have drawn big campaign cash as the primaries draw closer: NY Citizens Services, Inc., a company for which no records can be located but which evidence suggests is linked to ACORN, reported receiving $42,467.30 combined from four candidates during the last filing. Two of these candidates—de Blasio and Council candidate Mark Winston Griffith—had previously spent money with the company, but two—Jumaane Williams and Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito, running for re-election—seem to be new contracts. De Blasio reported the most new money spent with the company, at $22,500, bringing his total to $42,951.20. Griffith sent an additional $7,927, bringing his total to $18,483.30. Williams sent $1,540 and Mark-Viverito spent $10,500 (their money was sent to Citizens Services, Inc., a company for which records can be found and which has a clear ACORN link).

Williams, notably, reported spending $540 with the company on August 26 for petitioning expenses, paid the same day it was invoiced, though this was well over a month after petitions were due. He also reported spending $541.88 on August 25 and then another $220 on August 26 for petitioning expenses with DFS. The first charge had pending since June 30, but the invoice for the $220 was not issued until August 3.

Council candidates Rose and Van Bramer, who previously spent money with the company, did not report any new spending with NY Citizens Services in the most recent filing.

As with the DFS contracts, there seems to be a wide range of services provided and rates charged by NY Citizens Services, which candidates have reported using for campaign consulting, field staff, professional services, campaign workers, petitioning expenses, canvas services and organizers. Among Council candidates, Mark-Viverito’s rate seems to call for payments of $5,250, while Griffith’s is $5,278. Rose, meanwhile made payments of $1,800.

De Blasio and Mark-Viverito are among the Council members who have steered significant government grants to an ACORN non-profit located at the same address, New York Agency for Community Affairs, which in turn transfers most of those funds to the same ACORN account out of which many political expenses on behalf of favored candidates are drawn.

Donating To WFP While Paying DFS

Potentially Raises Additional Questions

On Matching Funds

Though going to same bank accounts, contributions and payments for services for now remain separate

Some political observers believe that one consequence of the Campaign Finance Board’s ruling declaring Data and Field Services to be an arm of the Working Families Party should make the money paid to the company ineligible for matching funds. After all, there are strict limits in how much candidates can shift to other political committees, to prevent them from using more taxpayer-dollar matching funds than necessary, and if DFS is just part of the WFP, the thinking goes, those rules should apply to every dollar that the eight city candidates involved have paid DFS.  

Public advocate candidate Bill de Blasio has already given a $10,000 contribution to the WFP, which is the limit for citywide candidates. If the CFB rule on deductions from payments were triggered by his use of DFS, then the $67,740 he has already sent to the company could, presuming a 6-1 rate, cost his campaign $406,440 in matching funds, with more at risk for every new dollar his campaign pays DFS.

For now, at least, the CFB does not seem to be viewing the money paid to the WFP as contributions in the same way as money paid to DFS for services, despite its ruling officially linking the two. Contributions and payments are viewed separately under the law, potentially posing yet another new legal question created by this unique situation of a political party forming a for-profit corporation with the same staff and offices.

De Blasio is on pace to spend the most money with DFS of any candidate this cycle, though he may not top the $111,092 which Darlene Mealy sent to the WFP—about half her total spending—to run her 2005 Council race. Other past top spenders with the WFP were Letitia James, who paid the party $62,803 in her 2003 special Council race; Jerome O’Donovan, who paid the party $78,500 in his 2001 Staten Island borough president race; and Mark Green, who paid the party $42,000 in his 2001 mayor’s race.

All of these races occurred before DFS was officially incorporated in February 2007. Yet aside from several small expenses for reception tickets totaling a few hundred dollars between them, none of these candidates made any sizable donations to the WFP simultaneously while paying for its services. To date, de Blasio is the only candidate in city history to make the maximum contribution to the WFP while also paying the WFP additional money for its services.

—EIRD