by Edward-Isaac Dovere
eidovere@cityhallnews.com
A complicated web of coordinated activities, shared resources and staff, and quiet money transfers between the Working Families Party, a secretive private company called Data and Field Services and at least six current Council campaigns, as well as Bill de Blasio's campaign for public advocate, appears to have found several ways around the strict city campaign finance laws. Upwards of a million dollars, and possibly more, are involved, with over $1.7 million in matching funds comprised of taxpayer dollars already disbursed and more are potentially at stake.
There have long been assumptions and rumors of the collaboration between the Working Families Party (WFP) and its favored candidates, but never before has the scope of or intricate processes behind its joint activity been exposed to the degree made possible by an extensive review of public documents and close to 50 interviews with a range of key players conducted by City Hall over the last few days.
Similarly, though the existence of Data and Field Services (DFS), a for-profit company incorporated in February 2007, had been mentioned in passing in prior press reports and as an ambiguous line on a dozen campaign finance reports over the last year and a half, never before have the details of the company and the extent of its ties to the Working Families Party been revealed.
The company was set up by Kevin Finnegan, then acting as a lawyer on behalf of the WFP, and currently the political director of 1199SEIU. Explaining the benefit of having a private company to the New York Post in April, Finnegan said that having a private for-profit company would allow candidates to avoid potential problems with the campaign finance laws, which put limits on the amount of money candidates can give to political parties. In New York City, that amount is $10,000.
Another benefit of incorporating a private, for-profit company is that none of its activities--all of them done on behalf of the WFP and various political candidates--are visible to the same level of detail that would be possible if the WFP or the candidates made the expenditures themselves. In addition to the fact that regulations bar the WFP from having staff reach out beyond the ranks of its members for petitioning or any other campaign activity, and limit the amount of money the WFP can donate to campaigns, all such expenditures would need to be documented in public campaign finance reports, a requirement that the DFS corporate structure obviates.
Money transferred to DFS from the WFP and political candidates can be tracked, however, since these all must report their own expenditures. Already during 2009, according to the latest available records showing their finances through mid-July, the WFP has transferred $554,629 (listed as "wages") and nine campaigns together have transferred $253,855 (listed as "campaign spending") to DFS, for a total of over $800,000. The money from WFP is out of the general party account, which is funded in part by union contributions totaling to $345,000 so far this year, with the biggest donors being RWDSU, TWU, UFT and CWA. According to WFP executive director Dan Cantor, the WFP paid full payroll taxes on these wages.
It is impossible, however, to know how this money has been spent by DFS.
One person who said he had knowledge of DFS spending and spoke on the company's behalf was Cantor. Cantor confirmed multiple times that he is not an employee of DFS, but said he was authorized on the company's behalf because, as he put it, "I created it."
In a subsequent conversation, he said that speaking on behalf of DFS "is my job, it's obviously my job."
In the outgoing message on his cell phone, Finnegan says that he is out of the country. Cantor said he believed Finnegan is in Russia, again indicating that there is no one else to talk to about DFS but himself.
Cantor also made clear throughout conversations that he has ongoing access to DFS records, participates in discussions about DFS business decisions and can very quickly get information about DFS activities.
DFS was incorporated with the state Department of Corporations with an address listed as 612 2nd Street in Brooklyn, which according to Cantor, was then the residence of George Short, whom Cantor identified as an accountant, "our former finance guy."
Cantor said he was unclear of the corporate structure of DFS, including whether there is a board of directors. He said he believed Short may be the president of the company, but was not sure. Short, whom Cantor said is ill, could not be located.
The employees of DFS, Cantor explained, are "organizers, mobilizers, campaigners," as well as "some core of kind of field managers, leadership team."
As to the services that the company provides, Cantor said, "fundamentally, it's organizing."
Despite the name of the company including the word "Data" Cantor said he was not aware of DFS doing polling or significant data analysis. The focus is on field operations, he explained.
"It could go from soup to nuts: it could involve strategizing, messaging, our volunteer mobilization--that's a gigantic part of the puzzle," he said, "canvassing, GOTV, phone banking--although that's almost always 100 percent volunteer, but someone has to organize the volunteers."
He made no mention of DFS providing any permanent staff to campaigns or providing communications assistance.
Several times, he explained the relationship between WFP and DFS by saying they shared a similar mission and purpose.
"DFS is kind of owned by Working Families, although it's not technically owned--it's part of the Working Families family, so to speak," he said, adding a little bit later, "it's very much part of Working Families."
Asked if the company had been succeeding in achieving the goals he and others had for it, Cantor seemed relatively upbeat.
"Yes and no," he said with a laugh. "We have dreams, as of yet unrealized, that some day we'll make some money. But not yet. We want to have a kind of capacity to have year-round field capacity to work on issues, to work for a few candidates that we endorse."
Later, when asked whether there is a corporate structure in place that outlines what would be done with any profit which DFS turns if the day comes when it does, Cantor seemed unsure, other than apparently suggesting the money would be turned back to WFP.
"We set it up as a for-profit so that it could make money and then donate the money back, but at the rate we're going, I'm not sure it ever will," he said. "We basically want to break even."
In other words, Cantor said that the WFP, as a non-profit entity, had established a for-profit entity
in the hopes of turning money back to the non-profit.
And while he said WFP does not actively encourage its endorsed candidates to use DFS, he ruled out the idea of DFS being hired by candidates who had not been endorsed by the WFP.
"Why would we want to do that?" he said. "We want
to help people who share our values."
Repeatedly, Cantor pointed out what he saw as the parallels between the DFS operation and how the Bloomberg 2009 campaign hires staff and companies to promote the mayor's re-election. He also made repeated references to his belief that DFS working on behalf only of WFP-endorsed candidates was the same as when other political parties or candidates contract companies specializing in either Republican or Democratic campaign work.
Of course, those companies are not owned by the parties, nor do they operate out of parties' headquarters, as Cantor confirmed that DFS has long been doing, and as the address on payments from WFP to DFS at 2 Nevins Street reported in state campaign finance disclosures show. Cantor said that Short, as a consequence of his illness, had moved away and was no longer a resident of 612 2nd Street. Indeed, the pinkish-brown, three-story row house on the quiet Park Slope street now has a piece of tape by the doorbell appearing to list the resident as "Timoney." The residence appears to be occupied, at least judging by the lights that were on and the number of potted plants filled with pink flowers on premises when the property was examined from the street on August 6.
When asked if DFS pays rent to the WFP for use of its office space, Cantor said, "of course."
When pointed out to him that no money shows up as coming into the WFP from DFS for this or other purposes on the WFP disclosure report, he said, "they pay it to the landlord ...' If they pay their fair share of the rent, you're asking, we have by square foot we measure, and the answer is yes."
In addition, he said that DFS pays WFP for use of the phone system and copy machines.
"You should think of them like a department of ours," he said. "We don't run this thing, but everybody knows this was created by us toward the goal of fighting toward a more decent society."
He said he sees no contradiction between thinking of DFS as a department of WFP or as the distinct corporate entity which it was filed as with the state Department of Corporations.
DFS has no listed phone number and has no website. No list of the people on DFS payroll, which Cantor numbered at 142 now at the height of campaign season, is publicly available.
One person, though, who seems to know about the inner workings of DFS is Bill Lipton, the WFP deputy director, who spoke on the company's behalf to the New York Times for an article published last October.
Reached at his desk on the evening of August 6, Lipton agreed to an interview, saying he had a couple of minutes to talk. Then, after being told that the topic was Data and Field Services, he responded with a nervous laugh and one-word answer: "Fuck!"
Lipton then said that he had no time to talk and would be referring all the calls to Cantor.
"It's not that complicated, but I've got an appointment," he said, trying to end the conversation.
Asked whether that meant he was unfamiliar with what DFS does, Lipton said, "it's not that I don't know anything, it's just that I'm running out and I don't have all the information that you want."
Lipton refused to answer any questions about whether he was an employee of DFS or not. Asked if he knew whether he himself was an employee of DFS, Lipton said, "I do. But I'd like to have somebody give you a call back."
Lipton returned a follow-up email asking him to clarify his employment status with DFS by referring questions to Cantor.
Lipton was not the only WFP staff member whose openness quickly evaporated when the topic of Data and Field Services was broached.
Calls to the main line at WFP headquarters on August 7 asking to reach Data and Field Services were transferred to Kristina Andreotta, the WFP canvas director.
Andreotta initially indicated her willingness to talk. But when she was told that the call was in reference to Data and Field Services, she too refused to answer questions and said the call should be routed through the communications department. She did not know whether she was supposed to talk to reporters without approval from that staff, Andreotta said.
When pressed to confirm her employment with DFS, she said, "I am an employee of Data and Field Services, yes."
When asked for her title or whether she was in charge of the company, she said she was putting the call on hold. About 30 seconds later, she came back on to say she would be transferring the call to the communications department. The call was then disconnected.
After being pressed for an answer to the question for days, Cantor finally said that there is significant overlap between DFS and WFP staff. Even he has trouble keeping track of who works for which entity when. As for whether there is DFS money going to WFP press secretary Dan Levitan, for example, Cantor said he "might be one of these people who might getting some, depending on what he's doing. People do different things at different times of the year--yes, he definitely has gotten paid by DFS at certain times of the year."
Levitan directed calls about DFS to Cantor.
"At any given moment, there are some people there, some administrative people for example, who work for both," Cantor explained. "Data entry, and some people who get paid by both. People often have two jobs. You know that."
Cantor said he did not think that Lipton was an employee of DFS, but indicated that he thought Lipton might receive a very small payment from the company. As for Andreotta, Cantor said he was pretty sure she is now just a DFS employee.
Over the course of several conversations, Cantor seemed to only be able to identify WFP staff as DFS employees after being told what kind of work that person was performing. He was unable to provide any hard and fast rules demarcating between the two despite being pressed repeatedly to do so.
The New York City Campaign Finance Board (CFB) requires campaigns to keep and show copies of all contracts with vendors, to prove that there are agreed-upon fees for particular services. The CFB even provides timesheets for employees of contractors to use. However, because these documents are used in the post-election audits the CFB conducts for every campaign, they are considered material in pending investigations and not available for public review. In fact, the CFB does not necessarily even request copies of these contracts until after the election.
"When someone switches over to a campaign, they're paid 100 percent by the campaign. The money routes through DFS and then to a paymaster [payroll company]," he said explaining that the checks which are issued to employees of both DFS and WFP "are funded from different sources at different times of the year."
Such paychecks, Cantor said, do not appear any different, nor is there any marking on them that indicates which dollars are being paid on behalf of DFS work and which on behalf of WFP work. There is not even a marking on the checks which says whether they are drawing on DFS or WFP funds, Cantor said, though adding later that everything is "fully documented."
Several times, Cantor said that the going rate for DFS organizers was $82 per day, or what he estimated as $30-40,000 annually. Notably, this would mean that most DFS employees would be making significantly higher salaries than WFP employees if there were separate staff. Cantor said there are 15 current WFP staff members. With the WFP sending $215,448 to its payroll company, Prestige Employee Administrators, in the first six months of the year, suggests that the WFP's cumulative payroll payments will be $431,000 for 2009. Accounting for approximated payroll taxes which would be included in the money sent to Prestige but not part of the salaries, that would peg the average annual salary of WFP employees at $25,666. This assumes that Cantor, Lipton and other WFP higher-ups, who are presumably among the 15-employee head count Cantor provided, are all on the exact same salary level. Since their salaries are likely higher, the average for the rest of the staff salaries must be lower.
In other words, WFP employees seem to be making salaries in the very low $20s, perhaps even lower, unless they are simultaneously being paid from some other source.
The WFP made just $37,000 in payments to The Hartford during this same period to cover employee benefits. The WFP often brags about its employees' benefits packages being better than what others provide.
The lines between WFP and DFS expenditures are blurry on more than just staffing costs, however. They go to expenditures as well.
Cantor said that the $554,629 in wages paid from the WFP to DFS so far in 2009 reported on the July WFP disclosure report were to cover the costs of canvassers to fundraise for the WFP and raise awareness on issues including "the importance of taxing the wealthy instead of cutting crucial services, campaign finance reform, health care and green jobs." He said that these costs--which spiked in February and then again in May, June and July--were to cover operations in Suffolk, Nassau and Rockland counties.
Asked whether he was able to provide an hour-by-hour breakdown of the work, Cantor said he could.
"I'm not interested in doing it,"he said. "If you have people that you want to know how much they get paid, I suppose I could tell you, but I don't like putting people's shit on the street."
Despite repeated requests to see the "perfect records" of DFS activity Cantor said he could access, he did not provide any specific information or documentation about the canvasses' locations, dates, hours involved or staff hired.
During this same period in the first six months of the year, the WFP spent $42,755 on rental cars charged to Enterprise Rent-a-Car, with rental costs spiking for bills paid in February, at $13,579, and in June, at $15,034. Though Cantor said he was unfamiliar with the specific rental car charges, he said he was confident the cars had been used to transport canvassers working on health care, green jobs and "fair share tax reform." In other words, while the WFP was paying wages to DFS to cover staff costs, the WFP was itself paying for the rental cars that staff would use, splitting the expenditures as if there is no difference between the two entities.
Neither Cantor nor others at the WFP provided responses to questions asking them to account for several costs listed as wages or expenses which had addresses but no names attached, nor why the names had were missing from the disclosure report. A total of $862 in wages and $14,257 in expenses (several listed as travel reimbursements) makes up these unattributed expenditures, along with $210.59 marked as costs for literature, $2,224.10 for fundraising and $1,500 for consulting.
Cantor declined comment on these charges.
{::PAGEBREAK::}
As for how DFS finds its workers, a lot of the recruitment seems to take place on internet job sites, though the process seems to be handled by the WFP, as in a job posting titled "Work for the Working Families Party" placed on Craigslist July 22 which in part reads, "In the coming months, we will be running campaigns to elect progressive candidates in NY, change the rent laws in NYC, establish a green jobs program that will create 18k new jobs, and create a public financing system for State elections to put special interest lobbyists out of business."
This job description matches with Cantor's account of DFS operations. The ad, however, directs applicants to www.workingfamiliesparty.org/jobs, where an online form is available for submission to the WFP.
On August 6, a separate ad appeared on Idealist.org under the heading "DEMOCRACY IS NOT A SPECTATOR SPORT!" That ad gives the website and a brief history of the Working Families Party before listing the job responsibilities entailed: "The WFP is currently hiring staff to work on an exciting electoral [sic] the most exciting electoral campaigns for progressive candidates this year in NYC. During other times of the year new hires will work on: volunteer recruitment and mobilization, one on one house visits with members and cold door knocking, participating in and supervising call centers, membership drives and fundraising, turnout for rallies and organizational meetings, qualifying candidates for the ballot through petitioning, organizing letter writing drives to pressure elected officials, and various other campaign related work."
Again, the job description and compensation match with Cantor's account of DFS work, and again, direct applicants to www.workingfamiliesparty.org/jobs, though also providing the option of calling an extension at the main line of the WFP (718-222-3796) which rings through to an unmarked voicemail box or emailing jobs@workingfamiliesparty.org.
Neither Craigslist or Idealist carries a listing from Data and Field Services.
Asked to explain this, Cantor answered via email that "Respondents to those ads would be employed by DFS for contract work for the WFP."
The message on the main line of the WFP also provides another number, (718) 222-5753, to call about jobs. That number goes to the voicemail box of someone who identifies himself as "Matt at the Working Families Party." Levitan, the WFP spokesman, said he was unfamiliar with a separate number to call about jobs, and that the number of people named Matt on staff made it impossible for him know which one the number was designed to reach.
In other words, the WFP and DFS do not show clear separations between them--not in office space, not in staffing, not in payroll, not in accounting for expenditures and not in hiring. WFP's claims to have set up DFS as a distinct entity do not match with how the two organizations work in practice. Aside from the DFS incorporation documents and apparently separate bank accounts, no one involved with the WFP or apparently involved with DFS was able to draw a clear line between the two on any fronts beside saying that the two entities were separate, that the arrangement between the two was not complicated and that they were confident everything being done was in full compliance with campaign finance laws.
A few days before Election Day 2008, the WFP released a memo from Cantor and Lipton on the Democratic efforts to take back the Senate which summarized six target races, "all of them done in close collaboration with the DSCC staff led by the estimable Doug Forand," the political consultant who left the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee staff at the outset of the election cycle to co-found Red Horse Strategies. The DSCC immediately became a main client of Red Horse.
With the much higher spending limits under state law, collaboration of the sort referenced in this memo is rarely a problem. Caps for donations and in-kind donations are so steep for candidates for the state legislature and state constitutional offices that reaching the limit based on resources or hours provided to the campaigns would take more than most groups could reasonably provide.
Under the much lower spending limits in city campaign finance laws--$4,950 for citywide campaigns and $2,750 for Council campaigns--the thresholds can be reached much more quickly and easily.
After the major successes of last year, when DFS took in $2,400 from Daniel Squadron and $35,000 from Kevin Parker over the course of helping each of them win Democratic primaries for their State Senate seat, Cantor said he and others engaged in conversations about making DFS a force in the 2009 city elections, with the city finance system's lower limits and stricter rules very much on their minds.
Cantor insisted he would be eager for the CFB to just point out whatever problems may exist. If problems are found, he said, he would be happy to set things straight.
"We love the campaign finance system. We're scrupulous about abiding by it. Campaign Finance Board's always said we're doing things right. If we're doing things wrong, they'll tell us and we'll fix it," Cantor said. "And so far they haven't said that, not that I'm aware of."
Speaking directly to the topic of third party involvement in political campaigns, the CFB issued a stern warning in an August 6 advisory opinion.
"Non-independent third party expenditures pose a serious threat to New York City's Campaign Finance Program and the Board is committed to ensuring that the law with respect to non-independent expenditures is enforced vigorously and consistently," the opinion states, explaining later that "each campaign bears the burden of demonstrating that any third party activity conducted on the campaign's behalf is indeed independent."
DFS's first big push in elections for city offices came in February 2009, shortly after Debi Rose was endorsed by the WFP on Feb. 5 in her run for the Council seat vacated by now Rep. Michael McMahon. Her campaign made five separate payments to DFS over the course of the next two and a half weeks totaling $45,000, apparently drawing on the approximately $88,000 she received in matching funds (she raised just over $47,000 in private funds, bringing her total to $135,000) to help foot the bill.
Despite this, Rose, who is now running a September primary campaign against Council Member Ken Mitchell, claimed to be essentially unfamiliar with DFS.
"I don't really know enough to tell you," she said, before getting off the phone to speak with her campaign manager, with a promise to call back shortly.
Rose never did. Instead, an email arrived from her current campaign manager, Vonda McKeithan, explaining that "Data and Field Services is great at what they do--engaging with voters one on one to get our message out. We want to talk to as many people as possible about the issues that matter to our community and they are a big help in doing it."
Though McKeithan referred to the use of the company in the present tense in this email and a subsequent one whichreferred to the company as "field organizing 101," in a later interview she said that Data and Field Services had in fact not done any work for the campaign during the regular election so far, but "they will be helping us in the last couple of weeks of the campaign."
McKeithan said she was uncomfortable answering questions about whether a contract had yet been signed for this work, but noted that Rose had been the one to pick DFS as a vendor for the campaign. Rose's statements about being unfamiliar with Data and Field Services, McKeithan said, was due to the candidate's not knowing the company by name, but only by what it did.
Rose was not the only one involved in her special election race who was unclear as to what Data and Field Services provided to the campaign. Asked to clarify the company's role, David Jones, the campaign manager for Rose's special election effort in February, said he had no memory of a company by that name. When reminded that the campaign had paid $45,000--a third of all the money available to the campaign between private and matching funds--Jones shrugged off the idea that this was a notable sum.
"I paid a lot of people," he said. "To you, it's a lot of money. To me, it's not a lot of money."
But Jones did remember the assistance that the campaign got from staff of the Working Families Party.
"The Working Families Party provided some analysis, things of that nature. They were very helpful in that regard," he said. "Their role is that they did a lot of data analysis and were very good at that."
This is despite Cantor's insistence that the WFP does not provide direct help to campaigns and that DFS does not deal in much data.
When presented with the fact that no payments had been made by the campaign to the Working Families Party for these services, Jones reconsidered his statement.
"The Working Families Party, they help out--there's another company that comes in that provides certain aspects, certain operations," he said. "There are other companies they recommend, and you can or can't use them. It's up to you. They give you a list of companies, and you pick and choose."
Just a few minutes later, Jones gave yet another account of how the breakdown of responsibilities worked.
"The Working Families Party was just like 1199 or DC 37. Their job was to coordinate the unions," he said. "That's what their contribution was. The companies that did data analysis and things of that nature, that's what they did."
For another special election held simultaneously in Queens, Julissa Ferreras spent $17,000 with DFS. Though Rose lost after an extended recount, Ferreras rode to victory to take the seat on the Council which had been held by her old boss, now State Sen. Hiram Monserrate. Fellow Queens Council Member Elizabeth Crowley has the distinction of being the first candidate ever to report spending money with DFS, sending $3,060 to the company during her unsuccessful special election campaign in June 2008. (She later won the seat in her rematch with Anthony Como in November 2008.)
Confusion between the two entities seems to be pretty standard. Also in February, the campaign of Mark Lesko for Brookhaven town supervisor drew headlines for writing $124,000 in checks to the WFP that it said was actually intended to go to DFS. WFP seems to have cashed the checks before realizing that the money needed to be refunded, which they were. That money was part of a total of $169,000 the Lesko campaign paid to DFS.
The campaign manager for Lesko's race, Lisa Wieber, would not comment on what services the campaign received for those payments, indicating that a communications director would call back on her behalf, though no one ever did. An April 5 report in Newsday on the WFP's involvement with the race, however, noted that there were 30 paid WFP operatives working in Brookhaven for most of the race, growing to 100 in the final days, with Wieber calling the WFP "crucial" in identifying 7,000 out of 24,000 voters assumed to be Lesko supporters.
Unclear from public reports is how much less support, if any, the Rose campaign received for the $45,000 spent with DFS in the Council race than what the Lesko campaign received for the close to four times as much it spent in the Brookhaven race for an election that was decided just five weeks later. Without that level of disclosure, there is no way to prove that the $45,000 was a fair market price, was overpriced, or was undervalued. The same is true for other clients.
Cantor said the determination for which campaigns use DFS is pretty simple from his perspective. The candidates using DFS, he explained, "are priority candidates."
And the campaigns seem to be happy with what they are getting from the company.
DFS is certainly worth hiring, said Brian Fritsch, campaign manager for Jimmy Van Bramer, who is running for the Queens Council seat being vacated by Eric Gioia. 
Fritsch said that the $4,700 the Van Bramer campaign paid to DFS was to cover the costs of collecting about 1,000 signatures he deemed "high quality," with workers simultaneously distributing Van Bramer campaign literature.
Ray Cline of the Progressive Strategies Group, another company specializing in signature gathering said that in terms of the current market, the amount of money paid for that number of signatures "could be a little high," though noting "it's a City Council race--there's no rhyme or reason."
Fritsch said he was confident the Van Bramer campaign had gotten a good value from DFS.
"We wanted to have far more petition signatures than necessary" Fritsch said, "and we felt that going with Data and Field Services was the best route."
Fritsch said the contract had been mostly settled before he began working on the Van Bramer campaign himself in late May, though the payment was not made to DFS from the campaign until July 1.
Fritsch said the petitioning work concluded the Van Bramer campaign's contract with DFS.
But as for the WFP, Fritsch said, the work together continues.
"They're involved in the campaign, definitely," he said. "They're helping with our canvas right now."
Fritsch explained that the campaign coordinates with Joe Kenton, a WFP employee who Fritsch referred to as the WFP field manager, to make sure the campaign staff and volunteers do not cover the same ground as the WFP workers who are in the district on their behalf.
The help goes beyond people on the ground, Fritsch explained.
"They're also doing our data management. We have their VAN [Voter Activation Network] service as well," Fritsch said, adding that he believes the campaign is paying the WFP for this help, though he was "not sure how it breaks down from the contract that we have with them."
According to city campaign finance disclosures, though, the Van Bramer campaign has yet to make any payment or contribution to the WFP or to Kenton. However, the WFP's state Board of Elections campaign finance disclosure shows a check for $4,700--the precise amount of the DFS contract--cashed and logged on July 7. Since Van Bramer shows a $4,700 expenditure to DFS, and WFP shows a payment from Van Bramer for $4,700, it appears that Van Bramer wrote a check to DFS that the WFP cashed.
Asked later, Cantor said he believed Kenton's work on behalf of the Van Bramer campaign was probably part of the DFS contract, and disputed Fritsch's statement that the campaign's contract with the company was concluded. He also disputed Fritsch's statement that there were any WFP people working in the district.
Other campaigns draw different delineations. The campaign of S.J. Jung, running for the Queens Council seat being vacated by John Liu, paid $10,820 on June 15--the most of any campaign reported so far during the current election cycle--to DFS, which campaign manager Lenny Sapozhnikov said covered the costs of some signature gathering and a retainer for canvas services. Sapozhnikov said he expects that DFS will do more voter contact in the future on behalf of the Jung campaign. 
"We don't have any Working Families staff on any canvas shifts. We have largely volunteer effort, supplemented by DFS paid canvassers. The Working Families Party is not staffing our campaign," adding a moment later, "directly."
But that statement came after Sapozhnikov initially tried to direct the inquiries about the campaign to Bryan Collinsworth, a member of the WFP communications staff who coordinates interviews with Jung. Sapozhnikov referred to Collinsworth as "our spokesman."
Cantor made no mention of communications staffing as a DFS service.
A call to Collinsworth was unreturned.
Asked to clarify that relationship, Sapozhnikov said Collinsworth "works for the WFP, which has endorsed us, and as part of our endorsement, he helps us with some press work. He's also helping other WFP-endorsed candidates, such as Danny Dromm, Debi Rose in Staten Island," adding, "part of the endorsement deal that sometimes he's available to answer some of the questions."
Elaborating further, Sapozhnikov explained that while the campaign's general communications consultant is Red Horse Strategies, as for the WFP, "They're sort of in the background sometimes."
Campaign finance disclosures from the Jung campaign show $4,000 in payments to Red Horse Strategies, but nothing to Collinsworth or the WFP. At first, Cantor said he did not know if Collinsworth is a DFS employee, but when told of Collinsworth's work on behalf of the campaigns, Cantor said, "he's getting paid by DFS to provide the campaigns communications help to various candidates."
Indeed, Jung's campaign is not the only one getting help from WFP staff for its communication work, nor is Collinsworth the only WFP employee providing help. Fielding calls for Jumaane Williams' campaign to unseat Council Member Kendall Stewart in Brooklyn is a woman named Saba Debesu. Debesu appears to be a WFP employee--she is listed as the contact for applications for the WFP's 'organizing intern' program on the WFP website, and has a WFP email address.
Reached for comment, Debesu was not able to immediately provide what Data and Field Services did on behalf of the Williams campaign, which paid DFS $4,000 on June 16. She pledged to call back with more, but never did, nor did she return a follow-up call or email.
Campaign finance disclosures from the Williams campaign list no payments to Debesu or the WFP, aside from a $100 political contribution made on Sept. 17, 2008.
Asked for Debesu's status, Cantor said, 'she's not a Working Families employee during the campaign. She's getting paid by DFS,' adding when informed that Debesu had not seemed to be familiar with what DFS was, 'I don't know. She probably does know. I don't know.'
Then there is the campaign of Daniel Dromm, running against Council Member Helen Sears, which goes beyond referring calls to staff at WFP headquarters. After all, the campaign has its own WFP staffer regularly in the office, a woman named Melody Lopez, who serves both as the Dromm campaign manager and as the organizer for the Manhattan chapter and Bronx Co-Op City Club for the WFP. (She also seems to be the 'Melody L.' of the current WFP employees encouraging new people to apply on www.workingfamiliesparty.org/jobs, saying, 'I started working with WFP during spring break of 2004. Two years later, I was responsible for a staff of 25 and I was running the field operation for a congressional campaign.') In addition, Lopez and Debesu, who is working on the Williams campaign, were the contacts for candidates in Manhattan and the Bronx filling out their 2009 WFP endorsement questionnaires.
Reached at the Dromm campaign office August 7, Lopez said that she is being paid by the Dromm campaign, but that all the money for her salary comes through Data and Field Services. The Dromm campaign made one $2,600 payment to date to DFS on June 15. Lopez was posting information on the Dromm campaign website's blog as early as June 9, identifying herself as the campaign manager in an item encouraging people to get involved with petitioning on behalf of the campaign.
Lopez said that money also covers voter contact and organizing efforts on behalf of the Dromm campaign, though was not used for petitioning. She was not able to immediately provide any breakdown of what the Dromm campaign got from DFS in terms of hours worked or other data.
Lopez said she was indeed on staff of the WFP, but was on leave, a fact that is not mentioned in her voicemail greeting at her extension at WFP headquarters.
Asked if this leave was official, Lopez said no.
'It's actually because I'm normally in the organizing department, so I'm on leave from the organizing department. I'm not doing my normal work. I'm sort of doing political work,' she said. 'Technically, I'm on staff.'
Lopez confirmed that she is still also receiving her normal salary from WFP.
Campaign finance disclosures from the Dromm campaign list no payments to Lopez or the WFP to compensate for her time.
Cantor, who had not previous included managing campaigns as one of the services DFS provides, gave a different account of how Lopez's payment works.
'Melody is under contract with the Danny Dromm campaign. They have a contract with DFS for campaign management and campaign services and campaign direction,' he said. 'After the election, hopefully she'll return to the Party.'
He seemed unclear of what a leave from the WFP to go work on a campaign would entail.
Shortly afterward, Cantor ended the conversation, but called back several minutes later with information that he had been told by an unidentified person other than Lopez that the contract between DFS and the Dromm campaign was much larger, somewhere between $40-50,000, and the $2,600 payment on 6/15 represented only the first in what will be a series. (This would be true of more campaigns as well, Cantor said, explaining, 'There's still plenty of work to do.')
He said more payments will be visible on Dromm's next campaign finance filing, but that Lopez's salary for her first month on the job was indeed a portion of the $2,600. With reasonable estimates of deductions for the voter contact and organizing efforts which Lopez said the DFS payments covered, that would put Lopez on track to make a salary of $20,000 annually or less.
Cantor then said that Lopez was right to say that she is getting her full normal salary, but that it is paid for by the Dromm campaign. As for Lopez's impression that she was still getting her full normal salary from the WFP, Cantor said she is not aware of where her checks were coming from, though he was.
Though Cantor said he had not talked to Lopez about what she had said about her payments, Cantor said he guessed that she had been confused by questions about where her checks were coming from to pay for the Dromm campaign work.
"She's getting the exact same paycheck she got beforehand--this is totally innocent, actually, but you're not going to believe it--but it's being funded from the silo of the Dromm campaign contract with DFS," Cantor said. "It's the same paycheck, deposited in the bank account, for the same amount. Because we're not going to cut someone's salary for going to work on the Dromm campaign."
Cantor said Lopez knows the difference, despite what she herself said and the lack of any information on the checks or elsewhere which he could point to where this information would be readily available to her.
{::PAGEBREAK::}
At least one additional campaign has started using DFS since the last filing period ended on July 11: that of Lynn Schulman, running for the Queens Council seat being vacated by Melinda Katz.
But when reached on August 7 to discuss Data and Field Services, Schulman's campaign manager, Jessica Way, said she was not familiar with a company by that name.
'Not at all, uh-uh,' Way said, asking, 'what do they do?'
Instead of using a company, Way explained, the Schulman campaign was 'doing all our canvassing with Working Families, and doing our own.'
The WFP's help has been particularly important, Way said, because 'they have a database called National Field.'
Way was speaking on her cell phone, and the call appeared to get dropped as she was being asked to elaborate on National Field. Attempts to get her back on the phone were unsuccessful, as was an effort to reach her by email.
Instead, John Gutierrez of the Mirram Group called back on the campaign's behalf several hours later.
Gutierrez said he did not know anything about National Field, but said that since Schulman got the WFP endorsement on May 28, the campaign has been working with WFP 'focusing on general GOTV and voter ID.'
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.
As a general principle, the CFB is wary of publicizing investigations while campaigns are underway, for fear of influencing the eventual outcome just by raising the specter of wrongdoing. And campaign finance violations are notoriously hard to prove, even with all the regulations in place—sometimes even the Board, so to speak, finds something that walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, has feathers, a tail and floats on water. But, continuing the metaphor, finding enough evidence to conclusively state that it is a duck can still be difficult.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.
“If there are functions of the campaign and significant costs of campaigning that are borne by a third party and the campaign has knowledge of it, then that’s coordination,” he said, adding the caveat, “any investigation of coordination is necessarily a very fact-specific inquiry.”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.
“Maybe we ought to revisit that to make it be what it really is,” he concluded.