The Washington DC Examiner Newspaper
2007-08-10 14:12:00.0
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Washington DC -

An indication of how serious Gov. Elliot Spitzer is about winning a second term in 2010 was seen just five months after his first-term inauguration when Crain's New York Business reported that his re-election campaign committee and the state Democratic party had jointly signed a five-year lease of 8,800 square feet of space – the ninth and 10th floors – in a Park Avenue office building.

Crain's reported that the lease was at an asking price of $40 per square foot and that a representative of new tenants expected to bring in additional staff during the term of the lease.

The lease raised eyebrows because re-election campaigns typically don't begin renting space barely five months after the candidate takes office. But then re-election campaigns usually haven't raise millions of dollars so soon, either.

The Park Avenue office lease was just one of more than $4.3 million spent by Spitzer 2010 between May 2006 and Aug. 1, 2007. The Spitzer re-election effort raised more than $5.6 million during the same period.

The expenditures reported to the New York State Board of Elections also included $100,000 to retain Acorn Associates, a Brooklyn-based lobbying group associated with ACORN, a radical left-wing community group that developed out of the National Welfare Rights Organization.

ACORN, which is partially funded by shadowy Democratic financier George Soros, specializes in pressuring government agencies to provide more public assistance to low income families and individuals.

Another $60,000 was paid to A-Political, a New York firm that develops television ads, while two other firms in the television advertising business, Buzz NYC and Crew Cuts were paid, respectively, $14,189 and $43,102.

By far the biggest expenditure was to Global Strategy Group LLC, which received a dozen payments totaling more than $3.16 million for television advertising and consulting work.

Such hefty spending on television ads suggests Spitzer plans some sort of major broadcast campaign during his first term, but it could not be learned whether that campaign would focus on rallying public support for the governor's first-term agenda or would somehow be part of the re-election effort.

All questions posed by this reporter to Spitzer 2010 about its contributors and expenditures were passed to the governor's official press office. That office did not respond to a request for information about the re-election campaign.