Lewis-Martin made phone calls to solicit support for the organization and helped select the candidates who would benefit from its largesse, according to four people with knowledge of the entity’s operations who were granted anonymity to discuss behind-the-scenes matters.

State laws are clear. New York City officials are allowed to raise money for political causes — except their own candidacy — provided they do it after hours and do not explicitly trade favors. And there is no evidence Lewis-Martin engaged in any quid pro quos.

However, the previously unreported arrangement alarmed watchdog groups over its potential to create a conflict of interest.

On one side are real estate firms with projects that could benefit from intervention by City Hall, which heavily regulates the industry. In this case, they underwrote the super PAC. On the other side is an official who has the power to nudge agencies toward a particular decision. Since the mayor took office, Lewis-Martin has occupied a perch at the highest level of the administration, affording her broad discretion over city government.

“I don’t think that any New York City resident would question whether the real estate interests were giving this money out of the goodness of their heart, or if they felt they were going to get access in return,” said Susan Lerner, head of Common Cause New York, a good government group.

Indeed, a friend of the administration named Michael Cohen, who was involved with the PAC, and one of the committee’s donors both referred to the organization as a way to curry favor with Lewis-Martin and City Hall decision makers, according to two people familiar with the entity.

Cohen said in an email at POLITICO that he had no knowledge of the the Committee for a Fair New York’s operations and no role in the organization.

City Hall Spokesperson Fabien Levy said Lewis-Martin did not do any fundraising for the organization, and that she otherwise followed rules that prohibit using government resources for political activity.

“We expect all our employees to adhere to the strictest ethical guidelines, including not conducting any political work when on city time,” Levy said. “Ingrid did not fundraise on behalf of this PAC, and the implication that she did is inaccurate.”

Levy added that politics does not factor into decisions made by the Adams administration.

“The personal political activities of members of this administration have not — and will not — have any influence on city operations,” he said.

Regardless, the behind-the-scenes role of a top City Hall aide in the Committee for a Fair New York demonstrates how few guardrails exist for high-ranking officials participating in outside spending operations, according to Reinvent Albany, another good-government group.

“If New York was guided by rules that put the public interest and ethics first,” said John Kaehny, executive director of the organization, “this type of thing would not be allowed.”

The city, for example, places limits on who can donate to a mayoral campaign to prevent conflicts of interest and curtail opportunities to lavish huge sums of money on people in power. Businesses are prohibited from contributing in municipal elections. And donors who appear on a list of entities that do business with the city are held to a lower contribution threshold. Even if real estate interests were to fund a super PAC — as many did during the 2021 mayoral election — those PACs are technically prohibited from coordinating with campaigns.

In this case, however, a member of Adams’ inner circle was working closely with an organization that accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from a single real estate donor, according to state campaign finance records.

“This is just an end run around the limits,” Lerner said. “And it’s wrong.”

Friends of the mayor

While the Committee for a Fair New York was focused on state issues, it also had ties to the Adams administration beyond Lewis-Martin’s involvement.

The super PAC was registered to Elnatan Rudolph, the one-time apprentice of Stone. He received assistance from Cohen who has a long history with Lewis-Martin and Adams, according to a report in the Daily News.

Cohen, a former council member in Englewood, N.J., is a director for a Jewish human rights organization who has participated in discussions with the New York City Council and City Hall about issues affecting the Jewish community.

In a previous political life, he was chief of staff to New York state Sen. John Sampson — a Brooklyn lawmaker expelled from the body over a corruption conviction. Sampson was a staunch ally of then-colleague Eric Adams and Adams’ then-chief of staff, Lewis-Martin. In the years since, Cohen has kept up the relationship.

Last month, he spoke at an Israeli flag raising ceremony hosted by Adams. In 2022, he participated in a discussion about antisemitism with the mayor at City Hall. And the year before that, he was named to the nascent administration’s transition team.

Cohen told POLITICO that, because of his work for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, he is constantly interacting with public officials in New York, and people often reach out to him about issues affecting the Jewish community. If someone asked him about the Committee for a Fair New York, he merely referred them to the organization.

“I did not run the PAC,” he said in an email. “I [have known] Ingrid Lewis Martin for many years and can attest to her being a person of high integrity.”

The donors

Gabriel Bousbib is a principal at Arel Capital, a real estate investment firm with a national portfolio that includes a smattering of residential buildings in New York City. Around half the super PAC’s total haul of $464,000 came from people and entities tied to Arel Capital and Bousbib, state campaign finance and public records show.

In the spring of 2021, as Adams was running for mayor, Bousbib threw a fundraiser at his house with assistance from Cohen, according to an invitation sent March 6 and reviewed by POLITICO. Bousbib set a minimum of $1,000 to attend in person and $500 via Zoom. Donors were encouraged to fill out a contribution card and send it to his Englewood home. The haul from the night ended up being $25,000, according to a follow-up message.

“It was not long ago that many people wondered whether Eric would be successful against far more progressive candidates,” Bousbib wrote to donors after Adams’ general election win. “You did believe in him and your support did make a difference. Thank you!”

Cohen said he did not help with the fundraiser beyond pointing interested parties to Bousbib, who he introduced to Adams.

And Bousbib reaffirmed his support for the mayor in an email to POLITICO, but said he had no knowledge of Lewis-Martin’s involvement with the PAC nor business before the city.

“We haven’t had, do not have and do not plan to have any business in front of the City of New York,” he wrote. “We are not big New York City developers needing help from the city on rezoning, development approvals, or anything of that sort.”

Bousbib added that there was a simple reason he gave to the Committee for a Fair New York.

“Albany is being taken over by progressive socialists whose policies we believe will harm housing in New York City … We believe that the City and the State would be better served by politicians with moderate views, able to articulate more moderate policies, rather than getting bullied by the extreme left as is happening today,” he wrote.

The role of real estate

In recent years, Albany has taken a number of positions anathema to the real estate industry: Lawmakers have declined to renew a tax break dear to rental developers and to relax density restrictions that could unlock development in Midtown Manhattan. Left-leaning members of the Legislature have pushed for a bill that would limit the ability of landlords to evict tenants.

Against that backdrop, an email from the Committee for a Fair New York landed in the inboxes of real estate figures early last year bearing an ominous message.

“With each passing cycle, groups such as the Democratic Socialist and Working Families parties are pouring resources through a number of political/campaign mechanisms to prop up those who they find like-minded and to threaten or actually challenge those legislators who are fair-minded in their world view,” the PAC wrote in the email, which was reviewed by POLITICO.

“In order to protect the investments and ongoing interests of property owners and to bring back the swing of the pendulum to a centrist position (one which returns a sense of normalcy and stability to property ownership), it is incumbent upon us to make a significant effort to challenge those candidates who vilify property owners.”

Along with Bousbib, the committee received donations from a landlord group, several commercial brokers and their family members and $100,000 from the development firm Tavros Capital, which has several projects cooking around the city whose permits and construction would be regulated by the city’s Department of Buildings.

“Tavros made donations to the Committee for a Fair New York PAC solely for the purpose of electing moderate candidates in the State of New York who are interested in doing good for all of our communities,” Barbara Wagner, a spokesperson for Tavros, said in a statement. “There was no involvement with either the mayor or Ingrid Lewis-Martin in regard to the donations.”

The candidates

Using the cash it raised, the Committee for a Fair New York backed three incumbents who were endorsed by the mayor: Assembly members Inez Dickens, Erik Dilan and Nikki Lucas all beat challengers backed by the left-leaning Working Families Party. The committee supported a fourth, Brian Cunningham, who had recently won a special election against a Working Families pick with the endorsement of Adams and cruised to victory in the June primary.

Six challengers who received assistance from the super PAC lost. Among them was a protege of Adams and Lewis-Martin whose race was an unusual one to support because of its long odds of success.

Hercules Reid was an assistant to Lewis-Martin in the Brooklyn borough president’s office during Adams’ tenure, a fixture on the Adams campaign trail and then a short-lived special assistant to Lewis-Martin in City Hall. Reid twice ran for a Brooklyn Assembly seat last year against a candidate who was backed by a broad spectrum of Democratic players from the Working Families Party to the Brooklyn Democratic Party, a county organization led by a moderate and ally of Adams.

The first time, Reid lost a special election by 60 points, despite an endorsement from the mayor. Months later he ran for the same seat against the same candidate, this time with the support of the Committee for a Fair New York. This time, he lost by more than 30 points.

With City Council elections coming up this year and state races again on the horizon in 2024, Lerner, the good government watchdog, argued that Lewis-Martin’s quiet work to get allies elected to state government will turn off voters at home.

“The fact these are city races doesn’t undercut how toxic this is to the principles undergirding our campaign finance laws,” she said.