Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, one of the most powerful people in New York, is a man of sundry interests. He loves cars, he loves bail reform, he loves his dog, he LOVES Prince. And he really loves sports. Specifically, the strange combination of the Dallas Cowboys, the Boston Celtics, and the New York Yankees.
As New York Focus reported this week, you can find evidence of Heastie's sports mania in the campaign finance filings of the Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee, which, since Heastie became speaker, has spent upwards of $1 million on sports-related expenses including luxury box tickets, meet-and-greets, and lavish concessions. And Heastie's social media is full of honestly envy-inducing sports experiences.
The DACC is supposed to be a fundraising mechanism for Assembly Democrats, and Heastie has claimed that the sporting events were fundraisers. "That story is beyond pointless," Heastie's spokesperson Mike Whyland wrote in an email to Hell Gate. "Those sporting events raised more than $10 million and after Tuesday it looks like it was money well spent." Heastie responded to the New York Focus story on Instagram, writing in part, "For years this newspaper has been trying to insinuate illegal and unethical things…It’s called fundraising stupid." But it's not always clear how the luxury tickets benefited any New York assemblymembers' campaigns—especially when some took place at Boston's TD Garden. In its filings, the committee characterized much of its sports spending as "office expenses."