It's pretty interesting to watch—and note—the way most people got emails that left out the emphatic praise of Sarah Jessica Parker from emails other recipients received.

[RELATED: Why did Newsweek scrap a cover of Obama dressed as Trayvon Martin? Read More.]

For example, 52 people received an email that read:

So I know [Barack Obama] is looking forward to the dinner at Sarah Jessica Parker's house next week in New York, and meeting a few grassroots supporters like you.

By comparison, 39 people received an email with this emphatic endorsement of the Sex and the City star:

Sarah Jessica Parker is a loving mom, an incredibly hard worker, and a great role model. She's one of those people you can't help but admire.

While seven people received an email that had only the above mention ("looking forward to the dinner at...") of Sarah Jessica Parker, four people got an email that simply directs them to a YouTube video of Sarah Jessica Parker.

Only two respondents sent in emails that read:

Sarah Jessica Parker is someone who puts 100 percent into everything she does. Barack and I are honored that, right now, some of that wonderful energy is focused on supporting the campaign.

Those people will never know what a loving mom she is!

Sure, no doubt other political campaigns adjust their emails as well, and this one's only particularly interesting because it involves celebrities (the double-edged sword of using fame to stump for politicos), who Mitt Romney doesn't seem to have among his outspoken fans.

That said, the entire thing is odd and utterly fascinating, and prompts some pretty glaring questions:

Why do certain people get Sarah Jessica Parker praised to them more emphatically than other recipients of the email? How are these people organized? And has the blowback from the Anna Wintour experiment lead Obama's team to more carefully manage and disseminate their messages?

The world may never know, but they will have this ProPublica page where they can read the emails about it in the meantime. Fun!

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

"They assume Cuomo's going to win, so they fork over money in the hopes that when they make a phone call, someone will answer it," Blair Horner of the New York Public Interest Research Group told the Buffalo newspaper.

Today The Observer ran an infographic breaking down all the contributions to Mr. Cuomo's campaign (at right, detail below). This week we also talked with REBNY president Steven Spinola, who runs the city's largest real estate trade group, about the industry's relationship with Mr. Cuomo. "He has said fairly directly that New York City can't afford any tax increases ... What I think he needs to be able to continue that effort is a louder voice from the business community to say, 'We agree,'" Mr. Spinola said.

In the meantime, REBNY and its membership has been working to get money from the federal Department of Transportation to restart plans to extend the No. 7 subway line to West 41st Street and 10th Avenue. Today Crain's reported that the federal government rejected the grant application. Back to the drawing board.

zturner@observer.com

"There are so many ways now that people contribute, through the internet. We vet all of our contriubtions and when something doesn't meet our requirements or a donation exceeds the amount that's allowed by the law, we return it," said Donovan.

Donovan did not dispute the Democrats' charges, which pointed out that Donovan received checks from some donors for the primary and general elections--but never had a primary opponent.

"I've never seen my filings. I've instructed my campaign to review my filings and check and see if any don't comply with state election laws, and return them," he said.

He could not say whether the money had been returned yet.

"Do not send it back to the individual!" said former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, who endorsed Donovan a few weeks ago, and was a special guest on the conference call. "Give it to charity!"

Democrats allege that six of Donovan's donors exceeded the $37,800 general election limit, totaling $75,000, a whopping 20 percent of Donovan's campaign cash on hand.

There would be no way of knowing from the outside that this house is at the center of one of the biggest unfolding scandals of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's 2009 reelection-or that hundreds of thousands of dollars of the mayor's own money ended up here, in what appears to have been intentional skirting of city and state campaign-finance-disclosure laws.

The house belongs to John F. Haggerty Jr., an enigmatic Republican political consultant now facing criminal charges for allegedly stealing money from the mayor. Although it is Mr. Haggerty who may do time, the mayor's actions deserve more scrutiny than they've received so far. An extensive review of records and campaign documents by The Observer, as well as interviews with witnesses, indicate that Mr. Bloomberg funneled money to Mr. Haggerty, who claimed to be a "volunteer," sidestepping the political committee the mayor had promised to use to finance his election campaign. By deploying Mr. Haggerty and an unrelated political party, the the mayor's team avoided drawing attention to a controversial election day tactic.  But even more serious, experts say Bloomberg may have broken campaign finance laws.   

The Observer found that Mr. Haggerty's 2009 efforts for Bloomberg weren't an isolated case: similar tactics were deployed in the mayor 2005 campaign. In both races the Mayor's private funds were quietly routed to Mr. Haggerty.

Just as intriguing, as the criminal case moves forward against Mr. Haggerty, it appears that authorities are not investigating the mayor or his aides, in spite of evidence of possible legal violations.

It is one thing for a billionaire to run the most expensive private campaign in US history, spending a record $109 million. But it is something else to intentionally flout, if not break, financial disclosure laws in the process.

ON JUNE 14, Cyrus Vance, Manhattan's new district attorney, announced the five-count indictment of Mr. Haggerty. Sparked by a story in the New York Post, which noticed unusually large payments from the mayor to the scrappy New York State Independence Party, Mr. Vance argued that the Republican operative had "falsely represented to Mayor Bloomberg's agents and campaign workers that he would arrange for nearly $1.1 million to be spent on an Election Day ballot security and poll watching operation, to be run through the New York State Independence Party."

At 41 years old, John Haggerty is considered one of the city's most adroit backroom Republican fixers. Officially, though, he was only an unpaid "volunteer" during Bloomberg's 2009 reelection push. "He said he didn't want to get paid because he didn't want to be owned by anybody," one Bloomberg worker told The Observer. Volunteer or not, Mr. Haggerty had the mayor's ear and spent long hours with the campaign's war council, including Kevin Sheekey, Patricia Harris and Bradley Tusk.

"Ballot security" operations have a long and sometimes tainted history. At best, they are designed to uncover potential fraud by challenging suspect voters. But, quite often, civil rights historians say, ballot security is a euphemism for voter suppression, particularly within minority and low-income populations. Tactics include in-your-face ID checks, aggressive challenges of voter registration and invasive demands for proof of residency or address.

In 1981, for instance, the Republican Party in New Jersey employed signs labeled: "WARNING THIS AREA IS BEING PATROLLED BY THE NATIONAL BALLOT SECURITY TASK FORCE"; later, the party was sued for harassment.

In the fall of 2009, Mr. Bloomberg's campaign faced a tough challenge from Democrat Bill Thompson, the city's African-American controller. While the mayor's camp decided it "needed a substantial ballot security operation" to fend off his opponent, as one campaign official told The Observer, there was some concern that "ballot security could be construed as racist."

Mr. Haggerty was one of the few people in New York who could pull off such an operation. To get around the red flags raised by the scheme, the campaign and Mr. Haggerty came up with an elaborate plan to obscure his involvement. According to Mr. Haggerty's lawyer, Dennis Vacco, Mr. Bloomberg funded Mr. Haggerty's work by completely bypassing his "Bloomberg for Mayor 2009 Inc." committee and wired $1.2 million from his personal accounts, in two installments, as a "donation" to the tiny Independence Party.

Specifically, the money went to the party's "Housekeeping Account," which is exempt from contribution limits. (While Mr. Bloomberg did not disclose the payments, the party later did.) According to the indictment, the unwritten agreement between Mr. Bloomberg and the Independence Party was that Mr. Haggerty would be paid $1.1 million to oversee ballot security; the leftover $100,000 was meant as a kind of handling fee for the party to keep.

Mr. Haggerty accepted the money through an entity called "Special Election Operations, LLC"-unincorporated until later. It's unclear how much he actually did on Election Day, Nov. 4, 2009. In the DA's recounting of the scheme, Mr. Haggerty spent only about $32,000 of the total $1.1 million on expenses for the operation.

So where did the rest of the mayor's money go? As it happens, Mr. Haggerty's father had recently died, and Mr. Haggerty's family needed to resolve the ownership of that historic house in Forest Hills Gardens. Mr. Haggerty used about $600,000 of the Bloomberg money to buy out his brother Bart's share. (Like his brother, Bart worked for the Bloomberg campaign; unlike
John, he earned a salary.)

Interestingly, the DA's office decided to treat the case as a simple theft, with the mayor cast as victim. "This case is about theft and greed, but it is also about transparency and the integrity of the electoral process," announced Mr. Vance.

Left unexamined in the DA's case were several puzzling issues: Why was Mr. Haggerty, who did political work for a living, an unpaid "volunteer" when Bloomberg was spending a record $109 million on his campaign and doling out huge bonuses? Why did the billionaire mayor channel money to Mr. Haggerty from his personal accounts through the Independence Party, rather than paying it straight through his campaign committee, Bloomberg for Mayor 2009 Inc.? And why the Goldman Sachs-like complexity?

Mr. Bloomberg's representatives insist no laws were broken, since he "contributed" the $1.2 million as an individual rather than as a political candidate, and therefore didn't need to use his campaign committee. "It is perfectly legal for the mayor to make a personal contribution to the Independence Party," said Mr. Bloomberg's chief campaign finance lawyer, Kenneth A. Gross. "We've done everything in compliance with applicable state and city law." Mr Gross also said he believes a temporary loophole in city law made Mr. Bloomberg's actions legal.

When asked about funneling money through the party to Mr. Haggerty, he disputed the term. "When you say 'funneling,'" he said, "it sounds pejorative. There is nothing pejorative about what the mayor did."

Deputy Mayor Howard Wolfson, a spokesman for the campaign,
maintained that if the Independence Party gave Mr. Bloomberg's funds to Mr. Haggerty, then "that was a decision that the party made." So, he said, "that is a question for them." Mr. Wolfson added that "ballot security is a traditional function of parties."

However, sources familiar with the Independence Party said that it had no intention of "ballot security" or "poll watching" until the Bloomberg camp requested that it pass along the mayor's money to Mr. Haggerty. That is, it seems the entire operation was conceived of, paid for and planned by the mayor's campaign, not by the Independence Party.

Another argument central to Mr. Bloomberg's defense is that anything the Independence Party did was not solely for the mayor's campaign but also for other candidates. Jerome Koenig, former chief of staff of the New York State Assembly Election Law Committee, dismisses that. "Even if you accept the argument on face value," he said, "which is ridiculous, part of it was done for Bloomberg. Even if it was done for other candidates, part of it was done for Bloomberg, so it still should have been disclosed."

TO FULLY UNDERSTAND the Bloomberg arrangement is to pick at some old threads from the mayor's 2005 election. Then, the mayor was running as a Republican, rather than an "independent," and spent $78 million to beat out Democratic challenger Fernando Ferrer. It turns out, Mr. Bloomberg funded another ballot security operation-helmed by Mr. Haggerty-in that race as well. In that case, Mr. Bloomberg made two $400,000 donations to the New York State Republican Party's "Housekeeping Account." (Those parallel the two $600,000 donations he would make in 2009 to the Independence Party.) In turn, the Republican Party paid $200,000 in "poll watcher" fees to an apparently unincorporated company called Campaign Resources. Located at 205 Montague Street, in downtown Brooklyn, it used the address of the law office of the late Robert Allan Muir, Mr. Haggerty's attorney and friend.

When asked about Campaign Resources, Mr. Bloomberg's lawyer, Mr. Gross, said that if it was connected with Muir, then it was a John Haggerty operation. In other words, for two consecutive mayoral campaigns, Mr. Haggerty, the officially unpaid Bloomberg "volunteer," was in fact paid very well through unincorporated firms, with funds that had originated in Mayor Bloomberg's private accounts.

NOW MR. HAGGERTY faces criminal charges, but it is Mr. Bloomberg's actions, according to lawyers with knowledge of the case, that may violate city and state campaign-finance-disclosure rules. Mr. Bloomberg's official campaign committee, Bloomberg for Mayor 2009 Inc., was supposed to be the sole manner in which he funded his campaign. That way, voters could look at its filings and know how he spent his money-something he promised to do in a sworn document signed at the time.

So how could Mr. Bloomberg's "donation" to the Independence Party for ballot security-the money that Mr. Haggerty allegedly stole-be exempt? According to the district attorney's case against Mr. Haggerty, it seems to be definitively "related" to the campaign. Consider this phrase used in the prosecutor's filings: "The Campaign needed ballot security and poll watching operations for Election Day."

"This is clearly an attempt to evade the purpose of the law," said John Moscow, a former white-collar prosecutor in Manhattan.

New York City has rules that are separate from, and more elaborate than, New York State's. Political candidates "are required by law to make timely and complete disclosures of all their contributions and all their campaign expenditures," emailed Eric Friedman, a spokesman for the city's Campaign Finance Board, or CFB. Mr. Bloomberg never disclosed his $1.2 million contribution to the CFB.

Since the operation was a "ballot security" and "poll watching" effort, experts say New York City rules are specific: "[T]raining, compensating, or providing materials for poll watchers appointed by the party" are considered a contribution, meaning they must be disclosed.

"The only victim I see here is John Mr. Haggerty, who served the mayor faithfully for nine years and was traditionally paid this way, and now they are using him as a scapegoat," said Thomas Ognibene, a street-smart Republican politician from Queens who tried to run against the mayor in 2005. (It was, ironically, Mr. Haggerty who destroyed Mr. Ognibene's chances. Acting again as a "volunteer" for Mr. Bloomberg, Mr. Haggerty tenaciously used every legal technicality he could find to disqualify the signatures for Mr. Ognibene's nominating petitions.)

Mr. Ognibene, who has since made peace with Mr. Haggerty, says he thinks the DA's case is based on a flawed premise. "I believe the mayor was trying to get money to John for the services he rendered," Mr. Ognibene told The Observer. "And that the mayor was aware that John had needs concerning buying his father's estate, and this was the mayor's way of funneling money to him."

When The Observer asked Mr. Haggerty's defense lawyer, Dennis Vacco, about this point, he responded, "Notice that I'm not answering it."

"I WAS SHOCKED that Cy Vance [the new DA] gave the mayor such a free ride," one veteran former prosecutor told The Observer. "It seems that Vance has decided he doesn't have the stomach for it."

Sources familiar with the investigation say the DA's office did not believe there were actual criminal violations by Mayor Bloomberg's campaign. Because of that, sources say, potential civil violations of campaign-finance law by Mr. Bloomberg were not even officially investigated.

When Mr. Haggerty's trial moves forward, Mr. Vacco hints that secrets will emerge, and mayoral aides will be called to testify. "This case is anything but simple for the DA's office," he told The Observer.

Mr. Vacco says Mr. Haggerty didn't steal any money, because he did run a ballot security operation-and he delivered for his customer. "Mr. Haggerty's company was under contract with the Independence Party," he said. His pointed hint is that Mr. Bloomberg couldn't be portrayed as a victim in all this unless, ironically, he was steering the Independence Party money to Mr. Haggerty for his own campaign. After all, to make a legal contribution, Mr. Vacco emphasized, "you have to make very certain the contribution is not directed in any fashion."

As for that house, Mr. Haggerty's shaded, mansionlike residence in Forest Hills Gardens, where Bloomberg's money ended up? The DA in New York is seeking to forfeit it and seize it from Mr. Haggerty as ill-gotten gains-so he can give the proceeds to Mayor Bloomberg.

editorial@observer.com

Aram Roston is a print and TV journalist and the winner of the 2010 Daniel Pearl Award for Outstanding International Investigative Reporting. Research support for this article was provided by the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute.

The releases have left some scratching their heads, since, even though Lazio worked for JP Morgan for a number of years before taking leave to run for office, the firm has given no indication that it plans to spend heavily on its former employee's most recent undertaking.

But there is a Lazio connection to the Citizens United ruling. His biggest donors are Lawrence and Susan Kadish, Long Island real estate developers who poured $75,000 into his race in the past month alone.

And the Kadishes are big players in Citizens United, thanked, by name, by the group's president, immediately after the ruling. That ruling, you may recall, centered around a documentary called Hillary: The Movie about Hillary Clinton that was considered to be unconstitutional by the F.E.C., since it appeared to be an illegal contribution to the political campaign of one of Hillary Clinton's rivals.

Kadish also funded a documentary about Ronald Reagan that Newt Gingrich had a big part in, was the executive producer of something called, Hype: The Obama Effect, and has another movie out about the financial crisis, which has a pretty scary trailer that can be found here.

Late last month, Lela Goren, a business partner of Extell's who does extensive work with the company, held a fundraiser in the West Village for Council Speaker Christine Quinn that was attended by many executives from Extell. Ms. Quinn is eyeing a run for mayor in 2013.

A spokesman for Extell, George Arzt, said the event was Ms. Goren's, and it also included her friends and other supporters outside of the real estate industry.

"This wasn't an Extell event," he said, although he did acknowledge that numerous Extell executives and others from the real estate industry attended.

Real estate donations are nothing novel in campaigns, but this fundraiser happened at the very time that Extell is seeking zoning approval from the City Council for its mega-Riverside Center residential development, which is envisioned to hold 2,500 apartments.

Of course, this act—real estate developers holding fundraisers as their projects need Council approval—is also customary in the political world, and, indeed, Ms. Quinn has received large bundles of donations from real estate firms like the Related Cos. or Two Trees Management when they have been up for various approvals. Still, it's notable given that the speaker, who reported $2.7 million on hand in mid-July, has made a priority of campaign finance reform. In 2007, she pushed through legislation that limits the amount that those who do business with the city (or seek zoning changes) can give to candidates. 

ebrown@observer.com

After all, it doesn't hurt politically to rail against a system with giant loopholes that effectively allow unlimited soft-money donations to pour in from interested parties, be it the health care lobby, the landlords or the banking industry.

Since 2007, there have been two separate campaign-finance proposals put forth by two separate governors-one of which came close to becoming law, but fell apart amid the troopergate scandal in the Spitzer administration.

So here comes the attorney general, and now candidate-for-governor, Andrew Cuomo, releasing a hefty policy book when officially announcing his campaign over the weekend, and devoting a prominent section to the issue, pledging a major reform.

 "In order to restore trust and accountability in government, we must reform the very foundation of democracy-the ballot box," Mr. Cuomo's 250-page policy tome reads. "Therefore, we must change our antiquated campaign-finance laws. Our current laws amplify the voices of wealthy
individuals and special interests and entrench incumbents at the public's expense."

The principles are clear and ambitious: Reduce limits significantly, close loopholes that allow for soft money, allow for a public financing system of matching funds, and restrict contributions from state contractors and lobbyists.

But it is unclear whether Mr. Cuomo's plan-or, presumably, the plan of his eventual Republican opponent-would go down the same track as every other one during the past 20 years.

"Gubernatorial candidates talk about how to change Albany and one of the top three items is campaign-finance reform," said Dick Dadey, president of Citizens Union, which advocates for such reform. "The fact that it is at the top of his agenda is nothing new," he added, though he noted that Albany's highly visible dysfunction might help, and he praised the specificity in Mr. Cuomo's plan.

Of course, the devil is in those details, and there weren't a lot in Mr. Cuomo's plan. Mr. Cuomo, for instance, pledged to lower limits on donations significantly, but just how much he'd lower them is unclear. He pledged to restrict lobbyists and others who do business with the city, but did not specify just how much they would be restricted.

And, particularly notably, there was no discussion of unions, suggesting they could be exempted from limits. 

"In Cuomo's language, you don't know," said Blair Horner of NYPIRG. "That's a problem. Does it include 501(c)(3)'s? Because that's what unions are. I would hope so. He doesn't highlight it, so a reasonable person could read it and assume that it doesn't. But you just don't know."

This was a major gap in the city's restrictive campaign-finance system, implemented in 2007; it was widely criticized, particularly by those on the other side of unions on many issues (many in the real estate industry, by comparison, are restricted to giving a small fraction of the donations allowed by unions or standard individuals, giving the unions outsize power).

"It just skews the influence of those organizations, and you read about it every day," said Sid Davidoff, a lobbyist who is challenging the city's law for unfairly restricting those who do business with the city.

The good-government types, it seems, are trying to be realistic.

"From my perspective, it's easy to have good ideas, it's hard to get them enacted," said Mr. Horner. "And that's really where the rubber hits the road."

ebrown@observer.com

-Additional reporting by Reid Pillifant

The largest chunk of that money came from business interests and unions, but the following list—compiled by NYPIRG's campaign data guru Bill Mahoney—shows the 115 donors who each gave more than the average per capita income in the state ($23,389). Together, they gave over $6.3 million.

"It's a small number of people giving big checks. So you're starting to see a picture of who funds Albany: it's powerful interest groups, corporations, trade associations, unions and the last part of the picture are big donations, presumably from wealthy individuals," said Blair Horner, NYPIRG's legislative director.

Not entirely surprisingly, the top donor is Michael Bloomberg.

High on the list are lobbyist Patricia Lynch, financier George Soros (and several relatives) as well as supermarket mogul and potential mayoral candidate John Catsimatidis.

Barbara Bartoletti, legislative director of the League of Women Voters, repeated her call to reform campaign finance, but noted that the governor and legislative leaders are "all of one mind" and that with the Democrats controlling all three points of power, "the political excuses no longer exist."

Enforcement of the current laws are very lax, Bartoletti said, noting State Senator Pedro Espada, Jr. is still not in compliance for the last election cycle.

Here's the full list.

The now-consultant's campaign committee sent $5,737 to Maryland-based D.L.A. Piper and $2,757 to the Albany firm of William Dreyer, who is representing Bruno. Bruno has been making these payments for the last several months as the investigation into some of his business dealings drags on.

The Times Union has reported on the F.B.I.'s probe into Bruno, most recently speaking to the SUNY Research Foundation about Susan Bruno, the retired senator's eldest daughter.

Bruno has not been accused of any crime, and it is not clear if he will be.

Here's the equally unsurprising reaction from John McCain communications director Jill Hazelbaker: