John DeStefano might have just finished hitting up contractors and employees all across town to win his 10th two-year term as mayor, but that doesn’t mean they’re off the hook for 2013.
The mayor sent around an invitation to his “birthday party,” which for almost two decades now has come to mean “campaign fundraising opportunity.”
Tickets cost $500 for a one-hour “cocktail reception” with the mayor, then $150 for the “general reception.”
“It is time for a party — in fact, my annual birthday party in support of DeStefano for Mayor 2013,” the mayor’s “Dear Friend” letter reads in part. “So, as I begin my re-election campaign, I ask that you join with me to celebrate our shared interest in the continued growth of our city. Attached is an invitation to the Birthday Party Fundraiser, which will be held on May 9, 2012 at Anthony’s Ocean View. I look forward to seeing you there and working with you to continue improving New Haven. As always I appreciate your help.”
Click here to read the letter.
DeStefano filed the form to create his 2013 campaign committee on March 27 to enable fundraising to begin. An official reelection announcement would not come until 2013.
DeStefano has held these birthday-party fundraisers since the mid-‘90s. In recent years he proposed and played by the rules of a voluntary public-financing system for mayoral elections that limited fundraising; in 2011, facing what promised to be his first serious challenge in a decade, he ditched that system and hit business leaders and government contractors and employees for the maximum contributions allowed by law. He outspent his general-election opponent approximately 20 – 1.
When can we get money out of politics? No surprise this was announced after the removal of Occupy New Haven.