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Mayor's Deputies Defend Campaign Donation Allegedly Stolen by Worker

By DNAinfo Staff on September 27, 2011 7:01pm

Mayor Michael Bloomberg and First Deputy Mayor Patricia Harris at an LMCC dinner at 7 World Trade Center in 2008.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and First Deputy Mayor Patricia Harris at an LMCC dinner at 7 World Trade Center in 2008.
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Getty Images/Scott Wintrow

MANHATTAN SUPREME COURT — They were called to testify by prosecutors, but a pair of current and former deputy mayors who took the witness stand Tuesday went on the defense when asked about Michael Bloomberg's decision to donate to a political party so that it could pay for ballot security on election day.

First Deputy Mayor Patricia Harris and former Deputy Mayor of Governmental Affairs Kevin Sheekey said the mayor did nothing wrong when he made a $1.1 million contribution to the Independence Party — an expenditure former campaign worker John Haggerty is accused of taking as a payment for security at 1,300 poll sites that was never performed.

Sheekey said that the mayor had paid for polling-site security every election year he ran since 2001, and that the same plan was in place for his third-term campaign for mayor in 2009.

"Campaign finance law is complicated... But the mayor had done in '09 precisely what he had done in '05 and '01," Sheekey said on the stand during the second day of Haggerty's trial. 

Defense attorneys have argued that prosecutors should drop the charges against Haggerty because the money was a gift to the Independence Party and no longer in Bloomberg's control. As a result, they say, there was no victim and, therefore, no crime.

"Wasn't it your ultimate goal to get ballot security without putting the campaign's fingerprints on it?" said Dennis Vacco, a former New York State Attorney General who is one of Haggerty's attorneys, in a line of questioning posed to Sheekey, the mayor's former deputy and a current executive at Bloomberg LP.

Current First Deputy Mayor Harris said her understanding in 2009 was that the money would be transferred to the Independence Party to be paid to Haggerty in order to perform ballot-security operations, which he'd done through the Republican Party in the past.

Prosecutors say the mayor did not break any laws and argued Haggerty created a shell company one month after the election to funnel the hefty contribution and pay himself off.

Haggerty is charged with grand larceny, money laundering and falsifying records.

Bloomberg is expected to testify, possibly next week.