The mayor's campaign told the Daily News that the $750,000 donation that went to Special Elections Operations LLC was meant for election day expenses like food for volunteers and transportation. (AP Photo/Henny Ray Abrams)MANHATTAN — Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr. is looking into where a $750,000 contribution Mayor Michael Bloomberg made to the state's Independence Party ended up, the Daily News reported Tuesday.
The personal campaign contribution from the mayor — who ran on the Independence and Republican Party lines this fall — was funneled from the Independence Party to Republican political operative John Haggerty Jr.
Haggerty and Independence Party Chair Frank MacKay both received subpoenas from the district attorney, the News said.
The district attorney's investigation focuses on a firm called "Special Elections Operations LLC," which Haggerty registered after the election as a "pass through" for the mayor's money, the News reports.
The mayor donated $600,000 to the Independence Party in October and another $600,000 in November. The mayor's campaign told the News that the $750,000 that went to Special Elections Operations LLC was meant for election day expenses like food for volunteers and transportation.
But the full amount has not yet been accounted for.
“We handed the money over to the Independence Party, and they have the full accounting, presumably, of how the money was spent,” Bloomberg's campaign lawyer Ken Gross told the News. “…The understanding was that the money was helping go to the party to pay for Election Day expenses such as poll watchers."
In November, Haggerty, a longtime Bloomberg ally, received a $120,000 check from the mayor for a Queens Political Action Committee he had formed, according to the New York Post.
The district attorneys office had no comment.
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