On Thursday afternoon a friend text with a photo of a mailer he just received at home.

“I’ve never heard of Restore Sanity NYC?” he shared. What’s the deal with this?

The LaGuardia Airport love was the first clue that this could be loosely affiliated to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s mayoral campaign. It’s his big flashy example of the leader he is, a major renovation of a place famously called “third world.” It stuck with Cuomo, saying in a speech at a giant terminal back in 2016 to break ground on the renovation that it would help the city get its “mojo” back. We have the new airport, which makes sure you get 15,000 steps in just trying to leave it, but how else have things improved?

LaGuardia Airport groundbreaking, 2016. Someone emailed me after this to say it was the best politician/shovel photo they’d ever seen, which clearly stayed with me.

Besides the airport photo, it didn’t take long for me to see ties to his campaign. The group’s board includes Rep. Greg Meeks’s daughter, a lobbyist who also lobbies for DoorDash, which just dumped $1 million into a PAC for Cuomo. And then once I saw the corporation papers, I saw everyone’s address was listed to the same building as the Tusk Strategies offices. And oh, look who’s the registered agent, it’s Chris Coffey, head of Tusk and informal advisor to the Cuomo campaign. Not just a smoking gun but a whole cannonball. The type of story that makes reporting seem easy (it isn’t.)

But who’s funding the whole thing? As a 501( c) (4), Restore Sanity isn’t required to disclose who donates or pays into it. Feel free to share your wildest guesses.

And the campaign denied any ties to the group, and Coffey said he was automatically added as the registered agent because of his role at Tusk. But given the investigation into potential coordination with his PAC — which is forbidden — it seemed newsworthy.

You can read the whole story here.

Other interesting stories (mostly from THE CITY)

Journalists barred from Brooklyn College protests to sue CUNY [THE CITY]
What’s the deal with all those election texts? [THE CITY]
These prices make me want to fire up my own pizza stone [GRUBSTREET]
A lovely profile of the Dance Parade [THE CITY]
MEET YOUR MAYOR IS BACK! TAKE THE QUIZ! [THE CITY]

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