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A super PAC formed by the powerful city teachers' union paid more than $370,000 to an apparently fictitious political consulting business, which was actually the well-known New York firm the Advance Group, records and interviews show.
The listing of the phony firm, Strategic Consultants Inc., in campaign filings, obscured that the Advance Group was being paid both to promote candidates for the United Federation of Teachers' independent political action committee and to be the main campaign consultant for several of those same candidates. Super PACs have no spending limit but can't coordinate with individual campaigns. UFT President Michael Muigrew (above) denied wrongdoing in an interview with WNYC last week but could not explain the fake name of the firm. (Photo omitted)
The teachers' union's payments raise new questions about potentially improper coordination between outside spending efforts run by the Advance Group and the firm's own clients.
In August and September, the teachers' union's super PAC, United for the Future, paid more than $370,000 to Strategic Consultants, which produced mailers touting candidates in races across the five boroughs. But there is no corporate record in New York for a firm of that name, nor has such a firm ever been paid before in a New York election. A Google search yielded no results for such a company.
In state campaign finance records, however, there is a Manhattan address listed for Strategic Consultants: 39 Broadway, which is also the address of...