All my financial contributors were vying for payback as well. My goal had been to raise $40 million for the campaign, which, unless you’re a Clinton or a Bush, is an obscene amount to pull out of pockets. You can’t take large sums of money from people without making them specific and personal promises in return. People weren’t shy about saying what they expected for their “investments”—board appointments to the Sports Authority or the New Jersey Economic Development Authority, for example, which were coveted not just for their prestige but because they offered control over tremendously potent economic engines, with discretionary budgets in the tens of millions. The plum was the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey; directors there controlled a multi-billion-dollar budget. I tried to stay as naïve about this horse trading as possible. But I allowed my staff to intimate things to donors. This is the daredevil’s dance every politician faces.

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Can't complain too much (though I tried).  All things considered, I guess $100 fine seems pretty fair for having made $2,000 worth of what the CFB deemed "non-campaign-related expenditures," and for paying on a portion of these commitments one day late, right?

The irony - I was fined for my Dollars for Democracy program, the part of the campaign where I was to put my money where my mouth was. My mouth was saying that instead of just using tax-payer funds to buy-off political club endorsements, why not redirect some of these monies to community organizations that were consistently adding real value to New Yorkers on the ground?

Specifically, I had pledged to redirect up to $3,000 worth of special interest monies that came into my campaign - lobbyists and real estate dollars included - to community organizations; organizations like New Yorkers for Parks, the PTA at PS 15, Gay Men's Health Crisis, the legal fund of the Phipps Plaza West Tenants Association, the Hispanic Federation, etc.

The good news is that these organizations ultimately got the funds.  The bad news is that the larger point was in many ways lost on the establishment, which still would rather enable campaigns to buy off assorted political entities using taxpayer funds (City Council campaigns have an allowance of $3,000 for such expenditures).

When my campaign first introduced Dollars for Democracy, we calculated that if each of the 150+ campiagns running that cycle had redirected their special interest funding under the political committee exemption above, communities across New York City would have been $500,000 wealthier.

But, the policy-makers (and enforcers) just didn't want it to be so...go figure!

Don't know why.  Can't explain it.  But today, Google is throwing many searchers our way.  Guess this happens on the more curious of days...???

So, thought I'd share with you what it is your fellow readers searched (the last 24 of them) to make their way here.

And, again, I leave the deciphering to you.

Num  Perc.      Search Term
2      8.33%    inthevip
2      8.33%    clintonbust
2      8.33%    ellen young for state senate
1      4.17%    nys assembly camara
1      4.17%    room eight
1      4.17%    somnambulism
1      4.17%    nick spano
1      4.17%    lead dog and view never changes and pictures
1      4.17%    police national average pension
1      4.17%    jim owles
1      4.17%    race attack in douglaston
1      4.17%    unless you are the lead dog, the view never changes
1      4.17%    john spencer debate
1      4.17%    georgina bloomberg, photos
1      4.17%    sylvia friedman brian kavanagh
1      4.17%    member of assembly miguel estrella
1      4.17%    articles on rodent infestation on the upper west side
1      4.17%    pataki early retirement incentive
1      4.17%    tristram, custody
1      4.17%    spano working families endorsement
1      4.17%    anthony miranda- male democratic district leader
24     100.00%