BEHAR CLAIMS BUNDLERS OFFERED $200K TO ASSEMBLY RACE TO SWITCH CHARTERS POSITION, Friday, June 18, 2010, City Hall News (NY)
Steve Behar, an attorney mounting an uphill race in Queens for the seat of retiring Assembly Member Ann-Margaret Carrozza, claims that two pro-charter school bundlers have enough faith in his candidacy to have offered to raise him up to $200,000 in exchange for him changing his position on charter schools to support their expansion…
…But in a letter written to the website Queens Teacher, Behar claimed that he was being courted to come out against the charters. [and here]
“In the last few weeks two separate ‘political fundraisers’ promised to raise between $100K and $200K for my campaign if I changed my position to favor charter schools,” Behar wrote. “Since I’m running against a well-funded inexperienced and unqualified candidate (Ed Braunstein) who works for the Albany leadership and is in the pocket of the lobbyists and the special interests, that money would have really helped my campaign. However, keeping to my core beliefs, I refused to change my position and thus refused the money.”
In an interview, Behar said he turned the bundlers down on principle. He declined, however, to give the names of the two bundlers, citing concerns about scaring away future potential fundraisers and donors to his campaign.
All Behar would say is that one of the people he claims was involved approached him three weeks ago at the New York State Young Democrats convention, and the other approached him at a political event a week ago. When asked which event, though, Behar said he could not recall…
The $200,000 supposedly in play here would have increased the size of his war chest exponentially, many times over: according to Behar’s ActBlue fundraising page, he has, as of Thursday night, raised online only $1,015 from 13 supporters for the race.
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