Bruce Blakeman campaign filing shows thousands of duplicate contributions

ALBANY — Neil Greenberg says he bought tickets for himself and his wife to a Bruce Blakeman for governor fundraiser on Sept. 18 at a Roslyn tavern for $1,000 a head.

But Greenberg’s contribution was reported three separate times by Blakeman in his recent campaign-finance report filed with the state, listing him as making not two but rather six $1,000 contributions.

"That is an error," said Greenberg, of Dix Hills.

Greenberg's appears to be one of thousands of transactions that were double- or triple-reported in Blakeman's filing, where the same person is listed as giving the same contribution amount multiple times on the same day, according to a Newsday analysis. All of the same-day donations to Blakeman were for individual donors, rather than businesses, corporations or other political committees.

The possible duplicate contributions raise questions about how much money the Republican has raised and how much he has in the bank in his campaign against Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul.

The total from the possible duplicate donations tops $460,000, according to the report filed Friday. If the contributions were only counted once, the total from that pool of donors would be about $168,000. The duplicate reporting ranges from $1 donors to donors who gave more than $5,000.

Blakeman reported raising about $6.3 million since mid-July, a total that includes the contributions in question. He reported spending more than $10 million. He has just $178,000 in his campaign account going into the final month of the campaign, according to his finance report.

Blakeman's fundraising includes $300,000 from the GOP state committee and $1.6 million from the Nassau County GOP Committee. The county committee has given Blakeman more than $3 million total since he announced his run for governor.

Hochul, a Democrat now in office five years, has $18.5 million in cash on hand, according to her campaign finance report. She reported raising $12.8 million, buoyed by a $10 million transfer from the New York State Democratic Committee. She had spent $14.8 million since July.

A campaign watchdog group said the repetitive entries raise questions about the Blakeman fundraising report.

"In campaigns of this scale, everyone is collecting (fundraising) information electronically. Software mistakes could happen or two people could enter the same information," Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause, a group that studies campaign contributions and election laws. "But for it to happen thousands of times? That’s alarming. That’s something that should have been caught if it was a software glitch. It raises a real question of how much cash do they actually have on hand."

Madison Spanodemos, a spokeswoman for Blakeman's campaign, blamed the state Board of Elections' filing system for the errors and said the campaign would be filing an amended report.

"The Board of Elections required the campaign to split its most recent finance report into multiple files since it included so much data, causing some contributions to appear multiple times," she said.

The state Board of Elections did not return a request for comment.

Blair Horner, senior policy adviser with New York Public Interest Group, said his concern was that many of the contributions fell within the limit for the state’s matching funds program.

To receive matching funds, a candidate for governor must raise a total of $500,000 from at least 5,000 state residents who give $1,050 or less. The first $250 of those contributions are matched six to one by taxpayers, for a maximum payout of $3.5 million.

For Blakeman that means a $250 donation nets the campaign an additional $1,500. If the state Public Campaign Finance Board failed to catch triplicate donations that qualify, it would mean an extra $3,000 for that one $250 donation.

"It could threaten to trigger a problem," :Horner said. "That’s the real peril Bruce Blakeman faces."

Newsday's Anastasia Valeeva and Yancey Roy contributed to this report.