From the New York Times

In Consulting Group, Hints of How Albany Works
By NICHOLAS CONFESSORE
Published: September 28, 2008
Gov. David A. Paterson was three months into his tenure when he gathered with about 50 of the city’s top business executives, lawyers and public relations gurus for cocktails and shrimp skewers at an airy loft office on Broadway in the Flatiron District. The host that June evening was the Global Strategy Group, one of New York’s leading consulting and polling firms, and Mr. Paterson — Global’s highest-profile client — was the guest of honor.
From left, some of Global Strategy Group’s top leaders: Jefrey Pollock, Ryan Toohey, Jeffrey Plaut and Jon Silvan. Global is now a ubiquitous presence in New York’s circles of power.
For Mr. Paterson, the reception was a chance to mingle with some of his most influential constituents, such as the developer Larry A. Silverstein, a former Yankees broadcasting executive Leo J. Hindery Jr. and a famed publicist, Ken Sunshine.
But for Global’s partners, never shy about self-promotion, the gathering spotlighted the firm’s proximity to the state’s top elected official, and underscored the intertwined — and occasionally vexing — political and business relationships that have fueled Global’s rise.
Started in 1995 as a boutique polling firm, Global is now a ubiquitous presence in New York’s circles of power, with close to $20 million in annual revenues. The firm has been at the forefront of a Democratic resurgence in the state, helping to guide the successful 2006 campaigns of former Gov. Eliot Spitzer and of Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo.
Today it advises not only Mr. Paterson and the state Democratic Party, but also a large chunk of New York’s Congressional delegation and Democrats in the State Senate, who hope to win control of the Senate this fall for the first time in decades.
“They’re very good at what they do,” said William T. Cunningham, a former consultant to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg. “They have carved out the niche of being the premier Democratic political polling firm.”
But Global is also one of New York’s top consultants to corporations and other special interests. Collectively, those clients contribute millions of dollars to New York’s elected officials. More than two dozen clients have business before state officials; just under half of them retained the firm after Mr. Spitzer began running for governor.
Global has drawn scrutiny in the past: Several years ago, the state lobbying commission slapped Global with one of the largest fines the commission had ever imposed, after finding that the firm had failed to report some lobbying activities.
In 2006, Global shut down what had been a growing lobbying practice, at the request of Mr. Spitzer, who ran for governor on a platform of ethics reform. Executives there say they now do no lobbying work, instead offering clients “strategic consulting”: in Global’s case, a mix of polling, political advice and media relations work.
“Business is terrific,” said Jon Silvan, one of Global’s founding partners. “We’re helping companies that have a problem in the public arena.”
But that help, critics point out, is ineluctably informed by Global’s relationships with the elected officials it also works for.
“This is all too typical of the incestuous political system that we have here in New York,” said Susan Lerner, the executive director of Common Cause New York. “It combines access and influence, and the kind of cross-fertilization that comes below the radar.”
Global’s wide-ranging interests may be especially thorny for the Paterson administration. Few outside advisers are more closely involved with the administration than the Global Strategy Group, where three partners — Mr. Silvan, Ryan Toohey and Jefrey Pollock — consult regularly with the governor and his senior assistants.
When Mr. Paterson was Mr. Spitzer’s running mate in 2006, Mr. Pollock and Mr. Silvan prepped him for his debate. When he was lieutenant governor, Global advised Mr. Paterson on how to make the most of a traditionally low-profile job. And when Mr. Paterson was abruptly vaulted into the governor’s office after Mr. Spitzer resigned, his aides summoned Global to help with the transition.
Shortly after he was sworn in, Mr. Paterson hired Risa B. Heller of Global as his communications director, and the governor’s fund-raising consultant worked out of Global’s offices until this month. Now the firm is helping shape Mr. Paterson’s strategy as he seeks to lead New York through the state fiscal crisis and, in the process, solidify his own political position.
Mr. Paterson and the state Democratic Party each pay Global a retainer of $15,000 per month, plus the costs of political advertising and polling handled by the firm. In a statement, Errol Cockfield, the governor’s press secretary, said that “Global’s relationship with the administration has no influence on the treatment of clients of the firm who may be doing business with the state.”
But while even competitors praise the political acumen of Global’s partners and the quality of the firm’s polling and research, even friends note that Global has benefited greatly from its association with powerful politicians, especially Mr. Spitzer, at his peak one of the most famous governors in the country. (Mr. Toohey worked as his campaign manager in 2006 before being hired by Global.)
At one point last year, Global was featuring Mr. Spitzer’s name and picture on its Web site so prominently that the governor’s aides intervened, asking the firm to tone things down. It also held a reception for Mr. Spitzer in 2007 similar to the one it held this summer for Mr. Paterson.
“When other people in the government world, whether politics or doing business with government, find out that you are the pollster for the governor, it makes you a more important person,” said Norman Adler, a campaign consultant who has worked closely with Global. “Everybody wants to know the people that know the people.”
In interviews, Mr. Silvan, Mr. Toohey and Mr. Pollock said that Global was well-established in Democratic politics even before Mr. Spitzer and Mr. Paterson became governors. They said the firm’s revenues had climbed no faster before those relationships than after, and provided a list of all their clients from 2006 on, except for a few that required confidentiality.
Those clients who have lobbied the governor’s office or other state officials have included financial giants like Goldman Sachs and nonprofits such as the Alliance for Quality Education, which lobbies for more school spending in New York State. Global also works for the Ultimate Fighting Championship, which recently started a large-scale effort to have its tournaments — derided by critics as “human cockfighting” — legalized in New York.
Global’s work for some clients involves far more than just polling. Take Mr. Silverstein, the real estate developer who has been locked for years in a series of negotiations with city and state officials, community groups and insurers over the redevelopment of Lower Manhattan. As the leaseholder of ground zero, and as the developer of several new buildings on the site, Mr. Silverstein has hundreds of millions of dollars at stake there.
Last year, the state insurance superintendent, Eric R. Dinallo, forged a major settlement between insurance companies and property owners at ground zero over claims related to the Sept. 11 attacks. Mr. Silverstein received $1.13 billion, a substantial sum, though less than he had sought.
Though a law firm handled the formal negotiations for Mr. Silverstein, a senior official at the State Insurance Department said that Global partners attended some of the negotiating sessions and occasionally contacted Mr. Dinallo — a Spitzer appointee and longtime friend — on behalf of Mr. Silverstein.
An official involved in the redevelopment of ground zero said that Global executives also regularly contact officials at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, including the executive director, Christopher O. Ward, who was installed in that job in May by Mr. Paterson.
Both officials requested anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the communications publicly.
Global executives declined to comment on their work for Mr. Silverstein.
“What we do for our clients is private, and we are not going to go into the specifics of what we do for any one of them,” Mr. Pollock said.
But on the firm’s Web site, Global described its effort for Mr. Silverstein as “message guidance, public opinion research, press events, educating decision-makers, Web site development and a Lower Manhattan grass-roots outreach campaign.”
Another Global client, American Stevedoring, won a fight for its life this April when it persuaded the Port Authority to grant it a new 10-year lease on the container port it runs in Brooklyn, defeating the Bloomberg administration, which had sought to evict the company.
In some cases, clients hire Global to provide market research or customer surveys unrelated to the clients’ lobbying work. Those clients who did lobby state officials usually retained registered lobbyists as well as Global; American Stevedoring, for example, retained Patricia Lynch Associates, a major Albany firm.
But Global has run afoul of state lobbying laws in the past. In 2001, Global partnered with the Mirram Group — a consulting firm run by Roberto Ramirez, the well-connected former Bronx Democratic chairman — to form Mirram Global, a lobbying venture. That enterprise was soon hired for a successful 15-month campaign to pressure Cablevision, a major cable provider, to carry a new sports channel launched by the Yankees, known as the Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network.
A later investigation by the state lobbying commission, however, revealed that the Yankees had illegally provided free game tickets to dozens of elected officials without disclosing the gifts to the commission. The commission also ruled that Global had failed to properly register some lobbying associated with the campaign.
In 2003, the Yankees, the YES network, and Global agreed to pay fines totaling $275,000. In a statement, Mr. Pollock described Global’s failure to file properly as a “technical error” that was quickly fixed.
Global dissolved the lobbying partnership with Mr. Ramirez in 2006. The Mirram Group still operates out Global’s Broadway headquarters, however, and Mr. Silvan said the two firms work together on projects from time to time.
According to state records, the Mirram Group has registered to lobby for more than 30 clients over the past two years. Several of them, including Mr. Silverstein, have also been recent clients of Global.
Mr. Toohey said the firm’s partners were diligent in both steering clear of lobbying activities for which they had not registered and of managing the separate interests of their many different clients.
“We provide the best advice and counsel to all of our clients with any issue that they come to us with,” Mr. Toohey said.
Charles V. Bagli and Griff Palmer contributed reporting.
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