The Daily News has a report out on State Senator Brian Benjamin’s questionable expensing and financial dealings, including:
- using Senate campaign money to pay for “constituent services” at a Harlem jazz club
- sitting on the board of a company led by a shady Wall Street executive — a job he stepped down from after it was reported in the Daily News
- returning more than a dozen contributions after people listed as donors claimed they never gave to him
- spending more than $3,000 for Delta airlines to send volunteers to Georgia to campaign for Stacey Abrams
- spending more than $1,200 at a Norfolk, Va., auto body shop
- spending $1,000 at a Shell gas station in Providence, R.I. (Senator Benjamin is a trustee at the Corporation of Brown University but it’s not entirely clear how travel to Providence is connected to his campaign or his work as a state senator
In the article, David Grandeau, a well-known ethics consultant and the former head of the New York State Lobbying Commission, notes that such activities often serve as a bellwether for corruption down the road.
“When you abuse your campaign account, that is a gateway drug to further political corruption,” he said.
Rachael Fauss, a senior research analyst at the good government group Reinvent Albany, suggested that Benjamin’s pattern of spending warrants further scrutiny.
To read more and the Senator’s responses, see: