A secretive dinner where $25,000 buys access to Cuomo (and Filet Mignon)

After all, the dinner was being held a little more than two weeks before the New York state budget was due, and what better way to make valuable connections than to pay tribute to the guest of honor, Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Among those present were the vice president of a school bus company seeking tax breaks for the purchase of buses; a recycling company founder looking for a broadening of the 5-cent deposit law; and an affordable housing developer lobbying for real estate tax credits.

The fundraiser was held March 14 on the 20th floor of the St. Regis Hotel, just off Fifth Avenue and a block from Trump Tower. The minimum donation per couple was $25,000.

The event, which was billed as a spring dinner with the governor, was strictly under the radar: It was not listed on Cuomo’s calendar, and even the invitation was vaguely worded, with the locale only provided in the RSVP.

And although a reporter who showed up at the fundraiser was barred entry, The New York Times was able to piece together an account of the event through interviews with six attendees and a partial guest list of 35 invitees. The guests included senior Cuomo administration officials, including the state budget director.

The fundraiser provided a vivid example of how things work in Albany’s pay-to-play culture, where political contributions are often viewed by business leaders as a prerequisite for getting their perspective heard in the capital. It also offered a glimpse into the nexus of money and politics that is commonplace across the ideological spectrum and around the United States, and something that Cuomo has excelled in.

The governor is considered one of the Democratic Party’s most prolific fundraisers, accumulating more than $30 million in his campaign war chest until last year’s costly re-election effort, when he spent dearly to fend off a primary challenge from Cynthia Nixon.

The high-priced event seemed in stark contrast to Cuomo’s promise of “real campaign finance reform” made two months earlier, as he announced his support for a public financing system. In January, the governor signed new limitations on corporate donations and, in his State of the State speech, vowed to “combat big money in politics” and empower small donors.

But the vast majority of Cuomo’s political fundraising has come from big checks, and the event at the St. Regis, held in a room with a trompe l’oeil of the sky on a partly cloudy day, continued that trend.

“I coordinate with my lobbyist and I go to events that they feel are important,” said Corey Muirhead of Logan Bus Co., who attended the dinner. “We have stuff that we want to see done up in Albany.”

About 100 people mingled in a crowd that included the state budget director, Robert Mujica, and the governor’s top aide, Melissa DeRosa, before sitting down at more than a dozen tables for two slices of filet mignon, vegetables and what one attendee described as a “little peaked salad.”

According to the invitation, a limited number of tickets were available for $5,000; most single tickets were $15,000.

The governor delivered a speech that touched on Amazon, the tumult in Washington, and the transition from campaigning to governing that he said some new Albany legislators had to learn.

“I thought he gave a great speech. He really knew how to relate to the crowd,” said Conrad Cutler, whose company, Galvanize Group, gathers bottles and cans and returns them to the distributors, collecting the deposit and a 3.5-cent handling fee. “He addressed a lot of pressing issues involving health care and the MTA. He underscored his commitment to New Yorkers who have issues.”

Thirteen minutes before the fundraiser officially began, Mujica emailed a statement to reporters, lashing out at the Democratic-led state Senate and accusing it of creating “false political expectations” with its budget proposals.

Then the dinner started, with attendees sporting badges with two names: theirs and Cuomo’s, the latter done up in his campaign logo.

“As the governor said since Day 1, anyone who can get swayed by a single dollar has no place in government,” Richard Azzopardi, a spokesman for Cuomo, said. He added that people who said their lobbyist told them to attend the fundraiser should “fire their lobbyist and get their head examined.”

Azzopardi defended the presence of senior aides — including Mujica, who is in charge of the state budget being negotiated in Albany — at the fundraiser, saying Mujica had “worked out of his New York City office that day and this event was after hours.” Staff members are routinely invited to events as guests, he added.

Cuomo, for his part, came from Albany for the event and was in the capital the next day, according to his public schedule.

One oddity at the fundraiser? Neither attendees nor staff members from the Cuomo campaign could describe what office, if any, Cuomo, who was recently re-elected to a third term, was raising money for.

Nor could those contributing to him.

“I didn’t ask. It’s obvious what it is. It’s the continual cycle of fundraising,” saidJohn Samuelsen, president of the Transport Workers Union International and an ally of the governor. “That’s what he does. That’s what everybody seems to do.”

Samuelsen said he arrived just after the governor had finished his formal address. He said he spoke to the governor for a couple of minutes about the subway. Samuelsen, who recalled wearing a Woolrich shirt to the event, said he could not recall how much he had donated to attend.

“Honestly, I’m not even in the weeds on that level,” he said, adding that his union has happily long spent money to support Cuomo. “The governor has been the best governor for the trade union movement ever.”

The roster of invitees included some well-known figures in New York real estate such as Douglas Durst; prominent political donors like Republican billionaire John Catsimatidis; and past contributors to Cuomo like Elliot Gibber, who owns an egg products company and donated $73,000 to the governor’s 2018 re-election campaign.

“I walked in and walked out,” Gibber said. “I have huge facilities in New York state. I believe in the governor. He’s done a lot of work for education and private education.”

Durst gave but did not attend; Catsimatidis said he did not contribute or go to the event, explaining the governor’s invitation as a matter of their long-standing friendship.

“I go back with the governor 20 years,” Catsimatidis said. “In 50 years in business, I have never gotten anything from the city or the state.”

“You know what I’ve gotten? Ungatz,” he said, of a slang term for nada, zip, zero. “That’s Italian, I think.”

Others who bought tickets did so while they had an issue of importance to them being decided in Albany, like Larry Regan, a housing developer seeking real estate tax credits who did not go to the dinner, and Charlie Bachtell, chief executive of Cresco Labs, a Chicago-based cannabis company.

Cresco Labs hired a lobbyist in New York for the first time this year, state records showed. Cuomo has said he wanted to reach an agreement on legalizing marijuana as part of the budget process, but he seems to have relented on that notion.

A spokesman for the company declined to say why Bachtell had attended the fundraiser.

Others with an immediate interest in state matters included Maury Litwack of the Teach Advocacy Network, a coalition of Jewish day schools and yeshivas that would like an increase in the reimbursement for science and math education at nonpublic schools. The week before the budget is passed could decide the size of that program.

“The governor has been a champion of the STEM program and Jewish causes,” Menashe Shapiro, a spokesman for Litwack, said. He said that while Litwack had briefly attended the end of the fundraiser, “he did not write a check.”

Muirhead, the bus company executive, said he attended in his role as interim president of the New York School Bus Contractors Association, which was lobbying the state government. He said a big issue for the group was a possible tax exemption on the purchase of new buses.

Cutler, the recycling executive, was also clear about his interest in the fundraiser.

“Gov. Cuomo proposed to expand the bottle bill to all beverages except wine and liquor,” he said, noting that the bill does not cover a few select categories, like milk. “I agree with that because I make money on every bottle that’s redeemed, and for environmental reasons.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.