Kiryas Joel, Monroe, NY – Village Trustee Solicited Campaign Cash For Someone Who Isn’t In A Campaign

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    Kiryas Joel, Monroe, NY – Howard D. Mills, New York State’s superintendent of insurance, accepted $15,000 in campaign contributions last year even though he is not running for office, campaign filings show.

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    The campaign filings show that on Aug. 24, Mr. Mills’s campaign account received $2,500 donations from Abraham Rubin, Lipa Rubin and Malky Landau, all of Brooklyn. A month later it received a fourth $2,500 donation, from Joshua Steinberg, also of Brooklyn. None had contributed to his Assembly campaign before.

    Mr. Mills, a former Republican state assemblyman from Orange County, continues to use his old Assembly campaign account to pay for meals, cellphone bills, flowers, and more, the filings show.
    Mr. Mills left the Assembly in 2004 after mounting an unsuccessful campaign to unseat Senator Schumer. After Mr. Mills lost in a landslide, Gov. Pataki appointed him to the $127,000-a-year insurance post, where he is responsible for regulating about a thousand firms that hold more than $2 trillion in assets.

    In an interview, Mr. Mills said that while he is not running for any office this year, and does not expect to seek office before 2008, he has kept his campaign account active because he plans on being a candidate again someday.

    But such fund-raising by an appointed official would be illegal in New York City, where department heads are not allowed to solicit campaign contributions even if they are running for office.

    Rabbi Jacob Freund, a village trustee from Kiryas Joel Monroe, NY, said in an interview that he solicited the donations for Mr. Mills. He said the Brooklyn donors all have ties to Kiryas Joel.
    Rabbi Freund said that Mr. Mills had not asked him to solicit the funds, but that he had wanted to do so to thank him for his service as an assemblyman, and because he thinks Mr. Mills will be a rising political star. He said he would only solicit donors who do not have business before the Insurance Department.

    “He’s not 100 percent kosher, he has to be 110 percent,” Rabbi Freund said.


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