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CCNY'S INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER   OCTOBER 2000 VOLUME 3, NUMBER 1

Badillo Watch:
Standards, But Not For Me

by Rob Wallace

CUNY Board of Trustees Chair Herman Badillo is running for mayor of New York. You forgot that didn’t you? Looks like Badillo did too. In late September Newsday reported that Badillo, running as a Republican, lost out on more than $80,000 in public campaign funds because he forgot to do the necessary paperwork.

The Campaign Finance Board monitors the finances of electoral campaigns run in New York City. The Finance Board also awards public financing to candidates who register with it. For every $1 raised the Board gives candidates $4, as long as individual contributions to the candidates do not exceed a $1000 limit.

Because Badillo did not get the proper documentation to the Finance Board in time, Badillo lost over $80,000 in Board matching funds. The required documentation included copies of contributor checks and money orders. “The filing was four days late, and I find [the Board’s action] a Draconian penalty,” Badillo said. “There are always the courts. This is a matter for negotiation.”

But Frank Berry, the Finance Board’s spokesman, told Newsday that Badillo’s campaign had plenty of time to file the needed documentation and that the Board’s decision was final.

BadilloWatch thinks it a mite hypocritical of Badillo to denounce CUNY and its students for supposed lax standards while he cannot satisfy what’s asked of him. How embarrassing that Badillo somehow concludes he’s the only one who deserves second chances.

A Newsday review of Badillo’s campaign financing showed him dependent on contributions from his own law firm, Fischbein, Badillo, Wagner, Harding. The law firm contributed two checks of $2,064 and $42,012 in January. But corporate contributions can not be matched with Finance Board funds.

In his recent biography of Rudy Giuliani, Wayne Barrett writes that Badillo’s law firm became a political powerhouse with Giuliani’s election. Companies who wanted business from the City during the Giuliani years hired Badillo’s law firm to lobby the City because of the firm’s political connections.

Badillo ran as a Democrat on a “fusion” ticket with Republican Giuliani in 1993 and acted as his education advisor thereafter. Fischbein helped put together the fusion ticket. Ray Harding is the boss of the Liberal Party, which endorsed Giuliani in the 1993 and 1997 mayoral elections.

Harding, at that time broke, joined the firm after the 1993 election and was soon charging clients $375 an hour.

According to Barrett, a couple months into Giuliani’s first year as mayor, Fischbein & Badillo’s list of clients jumped from three to seventy-two, twenty more than any other law firm. When the sleazy nature of the Fischbein & Badillo lobbying was revealed in 1997, the law firm redefined what it meant by “lobbying” and adjusted its disclosure filings with the city in a way that hid clients that had business with the city.

The only standard Badillo and friends care about is how much they can get away with. 

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