The New York City Campaign Finance Board ruled in late October that while Mayor Michael Bloomberg didn’t violate the new campaign finance law, he certainly did not honor the spirit of the law. As the New York Times reported, the mayor’s $1.2 million contribution to the Independence party prior to the 2009 mayoral election occurred right before the new law went into effect.
On the eve of the 2009 mayoral election, Michael R. Bloomberg wrote two checks, totaling $1.2 million, to the state’s Independence Party. Even though the city’s campaign finance board had declared that personal contributions to political committees would soon have to be disclosed, the Bloomberg campaign opted not to report those payments, which only became public months later, when the campaign was over.
On Thursday, after two investigations and a related court case, the city’s Campaign Finance Board, in a 3-to-1 vote, determined that the mayor’s campaign had not violated the city’s campaign finance law, because the disclosure requirement had not yet gone into effect when the payment was made. It rebuked the campaign, however, declaring, "The campaign’s actions contravened the spirit of disclosure" underlying the campaign finance act and board rules.
Countless other news agencies reported the story including Reuters, NY1, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post.
Which news agency chose to ignore the story? Bloomberg. The company that the mayor built and that bears his name did not write about the Campaign Finance Board’s ruling on Bloomberg’s very shady million-dollar contribution on the eve of his election. A search on the news database Factiva did not return a single story from Bloomberg about the Board’s decision.
Perhaps Bloomberg decided that it wasn’t newsworthy despite the fact that every other major news agency in New York City covered the story.