Smooth moves. (Reuters)

Normally, when you break into a home, you steal what's inside. Taking a page from hedgehogs and jackrabbits, Shawn McAleese got dig and instead robbed the neighbors, hitting eight different businesses in the wee hours of the morning during a two-month spree this summer.

On August 27, in New York State Supreme Court, the defendant pled guilty to eight counts of burglary in the third degree. Today, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance announced his sentence: a 28 to 56 year stint in state prison. That is stiffer than some murders.

Mr. McAleese, 43, broke into at least eight residential buildings in the Flatiron District, Hell’s Kitchen, the Upper East Side, Murray Hill, and Central Harlem between May 3 and June 30 of this year. Basically, all over town.

“He not only violated the sanctity of private homes by breaking into residences, but also used those apartments as launch pads to steal from nearby businesses," Mr. Vance said in a statement. "Theft from a business doesn’t end at emptying the cash register – it jeopardizes the job security of those who work there because it affects the bottom line.”

The residential buildings for this belligerent burglar, though, were mere gateways to greater things. Mr. McAleese chose his residential targets according to their relative proximity to restaurants and bars. He used them to gain access to alleys or to dig his way through walls into neighboring businesses.

Mr. McAleese’s appetite for thievery saw him raid an array of eateries throughout the city. His foodie inclinations, though, were clearly not the deciding factor when it came to choice of where to cull. Among the places struck were Molly’s Irish Pub and the desert shop Kyotofu in Hell’s Kitchen; chic organic canteen Bareburger in the Meat Packing District; a Chipotle on the Upper East Side; and The Famous Chicken Place in Murray Hill.

One thing we remain unable to gleen from the objects of his offense, is Mr. McAleese’s taste and preference of culinary delight. But at least he should have no problem digging his way out of the slammer.

Prosecutors painted James Lomma, the head of New York Crane & Equipment Corp., as a man who passed on a crucial repair job on the faulty crane in favor of the bottom line.

Wreckage from Upper East Side Crane Collapse.

"They were killed because of one man's greed," said Manhattan District Attorney Eli Cherkasky in his opening statements inside a packed Manhattan Supreme Courtroom Tuesday, according to an Associated Press report.

Mr. Lomma is currently standing criminal trial for the 2008 crane collapse that took place on East 91st Street. The 200-foot crane was working on the 14th floor of a high rise residential development when the top part of the crane broke off. The debris then fell into the building and down below, crushing a sewer company worker, Ramadan Kurtaj, 27. The collapse also nearly beheaded Donald Leo, 30, who was in the crane's cab during the time of the accident. Both men died. A third construction worker, Simeon Alexis, was seriously injured.

In its 2010 indictment, prosecutors said Mr. Lomma, 66, and mechanic Tibor Varganyl used Chinese firm RTR Bearing to replace a cracked turntable on the crane, which allows the upper parts of the rig to swivel.

Mssrs. Lomma and Varganyl were told by two other companies that work on replacing the turntable would take at least seven months and $34,000. RTR Bearing pledged to come up with the part for nearly $20,000 in three months, prosecutors said at the time.

But even RTR Bearing had its doubts about the repair, sending an email that warned "we don't have confidence on this welding," prosecutors said.

Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, Jr. accused Lomma of wanting to speed up repairs to the 25-year-old crane to prevent losing roughly $50,000 in rental fees for leasing out the rig to other companies.

Mr. Varganyi, 65, plead guilty to criminally negligent homicide and is expected to be sentenced in April. He could possibly avoid jail time if he testifies against Mr. Lomma, The Associated Press reported.

"This five week trial will show that James Lomma had acted entirely responsibly, and the prosecution's opening statement was more fiction than fact," Paul Schechtman, one of Mr. Lomma's defense attorneys, told The Commercial Observer yesterday.

This crane accident happened two months after a separate crane collapse in Manhattan killed seven people.

Since 2008, the city Department of Buildings has implemented more than 25 new construction safety laws, created new inspectorial units, and increased training of its employees, said Tony Sclafani, a spokesman for the city agency.

"The Building Department has really clamped down on who is operating, who is responsible, who's got licenses, whether they're trained, I think there has been a vast tightening of the protocols for insuring greater compliance and the penalties for non-compliance, if there are any future incidences," said Barry LePatner, an authority on construction and founder of law firm LePatner & Associates who authored the books "Broken Buildings, Busted Budgets" and "Too Big to Fall."

The new mandates pushed forth by the Department of Buildings, which includes increasing the number of crane parts privy to inspection from 35 to 200, has lead to a 18 percent drop in construction accidents in 2011, added Mr. Sclafani.

"Stricter enforcement and increased industry outreach has created a greater result of safety throughout the industry," said Mr. Sclafani.

That's not to say crane accidents no longer occur in New York City.

Last week, a crane situated atop the 4 World Trade Center development was lifting a load of steel beams when its crane cable popped, sending the steel to fall 40 stories below and on top of a flatbed truck. A construction worker was slightly injured on the scene.

That accident is still under investigation, said Mr. Sclafani.

Drosen@observer.com

“Earlier today, the District Attorney’s Office sent a letter to Andrew Lankler notifying him that we would not be filing charges against his client. We made a similar notification to the complainant. From the moment this matter was referred to this Office, we conducted a thorough investigation, consistent with standard practice. That investigation included interviewing numerous fact and expert witnesses, and reviewing and analyzing multiple items of physical evidence, including, but not limited to, receipts, security logs, text messages, and telephone records. After reviewing all the evidence, we have concluded that the established facts do not constitute a crime under New York criminal law.”

The letter Mr. Kelly's lawyer Andrew Lankler received was essentially the same, except signed by Martha Bashford, chief of the Sex Crimes Unit in the D.A.'s office.

Joe Pompeo at Capital New York has a statement from Mr. Kelly, in which he thanks, among others, his publicist Ken Sunshine and Good Day NY co-host Rosanna Scotto.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Greg Kelly

The accusations against Mr. Kelly were reported after his accuser's boyfriend became angry with her following the revelation of relations with him. Since then, the New York Post reported that the accuser had a 48-hour "marathon" of sexting with Mr. Kelly within the timeline of the alleged rape (the Post also yielded a column by Andrea Peyser in which she derided Mr. Kelly's anonymous accuser). Needless to say, this all created bold fodder for the city's tabloids.

This isn't exactly the first time in recent memory Manhattan D.A. Cy Vance has been handed a high-profile sex scandal involving powerful figure—in August, rape charges were dropped against former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn—and far from the first time he'd met Mr. Kelly, whose show he had been on only days before the investigation into the charges began.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Tell me that's not art.

As we reported last week, New York is one of the few states where the sport of mixed martial arts is still illegal. The Ultimate Fighting Championship, MMA's biggest league, has lobbied for years to get this changed so they could hold lucrative live events at venues like Madison Square Garden.

But so far they have had no luck with politics. So today Zuffa, the league's parent, took a different tack. The UFC sued New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. to overturn that state's 1997 law banning Mixed Martial Arts on the grounds that the ban violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

"This is mixed martial arts, emphasis on the arts," said Barry Friedman, the Jacob D. Fuchsberg Professor of Constituional Law at NYU. "The reason these atheletes are suing is because they have been prevented from their self-expression on some of the biggest stages in the nation." 

Prof. Friedman says that this is the first time, to his knowledge, that an athlete has brought a case to protect his sporting performance as a first amendment right. "The UFC has tried for years to get this done in the legislature. And it's not that they've lost, but they simply cannot get it to a vote. So now we are taking it to court."

The UFC got New York State fighters like Jon Jones and Matt Hamill to sign on as plantiffs, along with a certified American hero, former Marine Brian Stann. "Performing MMA live in front of a crowd is an unrivaled experience and allows me to speak to my fans,” Mr. Stann said in the press release from the UFC. “I was attracted to MMA during my time in the Marine Corps, after I returned from my first deployment to Iraq in 2005 and was looking for a path that allowed me to stay motivated, and inspire others, particularly fellow veterans."

Violence as art, sport as self expression. Will the courts buy it? No way Cy Vance is going to concede this without a fight.

Cy Vance will lot let Samoas-stealers go unpunished.

It's not every day an email about the Girl Scouts arrives in our inbox. And, hey, it's still 67 days until cookie season, according to the up-to-the-second countdown on the company's website. Why, then, did we receive a Tagalong-flavored dispatch on this day? And why is Cy Vance quoted in it?

Turns out former director of finance Yaasmine Hooey stole $310,000 from the Girl Scout Council of Greater New York.

OK, that's a lot of hard-earned cookie-buyer cash, but our dear district attorney is still able to smile a little about it. Might as well, right? I mean, like, Samoas. You ever really thought about what's on those things? Hilarious! So funny looking!

“Nonprofits are not personal cookie jars,” said District Attorney Vance. “But that is how the defendant is charged with treating the accounts of the Girl Scout Council of Greater New York. The defendant’s charged crimes not only violated the trust of the Girl Scout organization, but the trust of the girls that the organization serves.  The District Attorney’s Office will continue to aggressively investigate and prosecute crimes against nonprofit organizations.”

Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar, Cy? Well, apparently it's Ms. Hooey, but there's no conviction yet, and it's your job to get one. And do it fast! That amount can buy more than 89,000 boxes of Thin Mints. Justice needs to be served.

Via Getty.

Yesterday afternoon, news broke that the Manhattan D.A. office was going to request that all criminal charges of sexual assault against former I.M.F. chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn be dropped. This followed a meeting with Mr. Strauss-Kahn's accuser, Nafissatou Diallo, and her lawyer, Kenneth Thompson. Mr. Thompson had requested yesterday that a special prosecutor be appointed to the case; his request was denied this morning. Moments ago, Dominique Strauss-Kahn sat down in a courtroom in Lower Manhattan, and received a verdict on his long-contested innocence: the case against him has collapsed. He is a free man, and the conclusion of his long, strange, epic entanglement with the American judicial system has officially began.

The motion to drop the charges against Mr. Strauss-Kahn—a French presidential would-be, prior to the allegations against him—came in the form of a 25-page confession that detailed the Manhattan D.A.'s case unraveling following what they report as inconsistencies and suspect motives in Ms. Diallo's case. Among them were a story about what Ms. Diallo reportedly characterized as rape at the hands of soldiers in her native Guinea and a denied motive to profit from the case (despite what prosecutors noted as a recorded conversation with her fiance—detained in an Arizona holding jail for immigrants—discussed profit motive).

In an unusual moment of commentary, The New York Times noted the D.A.'s statement as something maintaining a stripe of broadcast intended for readers outside the judicial system:

The prosecutors’ treatise on the case seemed meant for an audience beyond Justice Obus. The case has attracted worldwide attention, largely because of Mr. Strauss-Kahn’s stature, as the leader of the fund and the front-runner for the Socialist nomination for French president, and the lurid story line of a privileged man being accused of taking advantage of a hotel housekeeper. In laying out the circumstances in such detail, [Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance] also was giving a domestic audience, including Manhattan voters, an explanation for his decision. He may also have sought to address criticism from black leaders and women’s groups that he should proceed to trial.

Mr. Vance won an election in the middle of the trial; this is the second high-profile sexual assault case in Manhttan involving a controversial acquittal this year (the first was that of the infamous "rape cops" of the NYPD). The meeting between Ms. Diallo and the Manhattan D.A.'s office during which she and her lawyer were informed that a motion to drop the charges would proceed lasted a reported 30 seconds.

Mr. Strauss-Kahn's indictment was nothing if not a firestorm from the start: tabloids sought to convict him with strong language alluding to his reportedly sordid past of womanizing (another sexual assault accusation aimed at Mr. Strauss-Kahn stemming from a 2003 incident involving French journalist Tristane Banon has come to light since his arrest).

The arrest, "perp walk," and subsequent prosecution of Mr. Strauss-Kahn—reaction to which ranged from surefire conviction to reluctance to outright conspiratorial charges against Manhattan prosecutors—renewed a tension to Franco-American relations otherwise latent since the days of 'Freedom Fries' (yet, here in Manhattan, French sexual mores took a backseat to unwieldy real estate porn over where the accused would reside: a gauche Tribeca townhouse). In the beginning of July, the prosecution's case started to become unhinged: details of his accuser began leaking out along with what were reported as deep inconsistencies and questionable motives in her story. Mr. Strauss-Kahn—then under house arrest on a $1 M bail and a $5 M bond—was released on his own recognizance.

A few days later, the New York Post—who only a few weeks prior had all but characterized Dominique Strauss-Kahn as a sociopathic sex fiend who should be reputationally and, why not, physically castrated—used a single source to run a cover story alleging that Ms. Diallo was prostituting herself while under police protection. She responded by suing the New York Post for libel.

Towards the end of July, Ms. Diallo—once an otherwise anonymous maid at midtown Manhattan's Sofitel hotel—took her case to the press, with a Newsweek cover story and a three-part ABC News special interview to go with it.

The strategy backfired: it was another breaking point for both prosecutors (spurned by a plaintiff who's taken her case to the press, and a civil lawyer ever-outraged at their shortcomings) and defense lawyers for Mr. Strauss-Kahn (ever eager to find inconsistencies in her case, be they microscopic or glaring).

Since then, public support for the office of Manhattan D.A. Cyrus Vance has backfired—today, protesters waited for him outside the courtroom where Mr. Strauss-Kahn's final criminal hearing in the matter took place—while judicial support of Ms. Diallo's case (which now includes a civil suit) has not fared much better. On Monday afternoon, when the motion to dismiss charges was announced, it would seem the case against Mr. Strauss-Kahn came to a head. Her lawyer, Kenneth Thompson, noted the prosecutors' motion to dismiss the charges as "a hatchet job on Ms. Diallo’s credibility."

This morning, in Manhattan Supreme Court, at 11:57 AM, Justice Michael J. Obus had heard enough. All criminal charges against Dominique Strauss-Kahn were ordered to be dropped. While he still faces a civil suit against him in The Bronx and the claims of Tristane Banon in France (to which his lawyers responded with a counter-suit of slander), the former I.M.F. chief's most heinous criminal charge is no longer; he is free to return to France, albeit a job and a surefire presidential run later. The memory of the Manhattan D.A.'s early hubris and unilateral conviction of Mr. Strauss-Kahn's guilt, its subsequent collapse—both of the procedural and emotional stripe—and Ms. Diallo are likely to remain in New York City far longer than he.

For how long and with what strength is anyone's guess.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

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.

Gerson, a Democratic Council incumbent facing a competitive primary, at one point was heard telling one senior, "I'll get re-elected, then I'll get married."

Gerson, who lives at home with his parents, repeated the line to me, and said, "My mother is still hoping."

Silver, the powerful Assembly speaker, who has the luxury of approaching today as a pure spectator, said turnout may be light because there's not much of a mayoral primary to speak of. (Expectations are that Bill Thompson will kill, then be killed.) When I asked if the issue of term-limits extension would drive some indignant voters to the polls to express their displeasure--as a number of Council challengers are hoping--Silver said probably not.

"I don't think it's significant,” he said. I haven't heard that on the streets. I think last April, May, June, there was more of that sentiment."

The other main factor in the elections is the Working Families Party, whose Get Out the Vote operation is being tested today (along with their ability to account accurately for it.)

Silver paid respect to the W.F.P., telling me, "I think they're good at organizing voters and constituents. There's no question they have issues. They've stood with their issues and they've done a good job."

Morgenthau, who is retiring after running the Manhattan district attorney’s office for 34 years, told me "it feels good" not being on the ballot. When I asked him about the Working Families Party, which is not supporting his hand-chosen successor for district attorney, Vance, he deadpanned, "Who are they?"

People around us starting laughing, and I felt bad, so I began explaining, when I realized that he was smiling and the laughter was directed at me.

On our way out of the senior center, all four men surrounded one woman who was walking into the building, politely reminding her to vote.

Across the street, a woman was handing out fliers for Leslie Crocker Snyder.