A $750,000 payment from Mayor Bloomberg’s campaign was delivered to a mysterious Albany company that wasn’t even created until one month after the November elections, The Post has learned.
In an unusual transaction, Bloomberg’s campaign last month sent a $1.2 million check to the state Independence Party — and the party in turn transferred $750,000 to a previously unknown firm called Special Election Operations. The Independence Party appears to have kept the remaining $450,000.
Special Election Operations has no Web site, isn’t found in any Internet or database searches, and was incorporated with the state on Dec. 3, about a month after Bloomberg won re-election as an independent.
The address listed for the outfit, 121 State St. in Albany, is the same as a lobbying firm, Capitol Public Strategies, that is run by many former aides to former Gov. George Pataki.
A partner in the lobbying firm, Ryan Moses, a former state Republican Party executive director who answered the door when a Post reporter visited the address, said he had never heard of Special Election Operations and insisted it wasn’t located at that address.
But an hour later, he called The Post to say he had been mistaken. “I didn’t recognize the name,” he said.
Bradley Tusk, the mayor’s campaign manager, said two well-known and politically connected Albany lawyers, Jeff Buley and Mike Avella, were behind Special Election Operations.
Both worked in the mayor’s campaign — but each told The Post that they had no connection to the company and had never heard of it. Neither Buley nor Avella has an office at 121 State St.; both have offices elsewhere in Albany.
On paperwork filed with the state, the organizer of Special Election Operations was listed as Joseph Lipari, a tax lawyer with the firm of Roberts & Holland in Midtown Manhattan. He didn’t return numerous calls. As a limited-liability company, no other company officials had to be identified on the paperwork.
Bloomberg’s $1.2 million payment went into the Independence Party’s housekeeping account, which can only be used for office expenses and party-building purposes — and not to benefit a single candidate.
So if whatever work Special Election Operations did was strictly for Bloomberg and not all party candidates, it would violate state election law.
Sources said it could also violate the city’s campaign-finance rules, since it would be considered an in-kind contribution that wasn’t reported.
Independence Party Chairman Frank MacKay accepted “full responsibility” for hiring Special Election Operations but said he had no idea who cashed his party’s check for $750,000.
MacKay claimed a consultant whose name he couldn’t recall referred him to the company, whose principals he didn’t know and couldn’t name.
Howard Wolfson, the mayor’s campaign spokesman and soon-to-be special counsel, said Bloomberg’s contribution was intended to support the Independence Party’s “field and Election Day operations around the state — canvassing, turnout reports, machine checks.”
But MacKay told The Post the party’s election operation was only citywide.
Asked about the contradiction, Wolfson responded in an e-mail, “I’m not going to speculate on conversations you may have had with Chairman MacKay.”
Wolfson repeatedly ignored requests since last week for the names of the people behind Special Election Operations.
Bloomberg has had a long and cozy relationship with the state Independence Party, to which he contributed $1.35 million in 2008 to boost Republicans running for state Senate.
Records show Bloomberg sent $600,000 to the party on Oct. 30 and another $600,000 on Nov. 2, a day before the election.
Wolfson said the party then hired a “specialist for human-resources activities since they weren’t going to go out and hire each worker one by one and do all the paperwork that came with it.”