In one email, Glenwood’s chief political strategist, Richard Runes, who testified at Mr. Silver’s trial, wrote to a lobbyist for Glenwood, “Please send me the list of senators Dean asked us yesterday to help before the next filing date.” The lobbyist wrote back with the names of seven candidates and the amounts to be donated, totaling $92,300. The names were forwarded to Mr. Dorego a week later, under the subject line “List from Skelos”; the donations were made.
Several weeks earlier, Mr. Runes had written to Mr. Dorego with a similar request, seeking $100,000 for the New York State Senate Republican Campaign Committee, $30,000 for Mr. Skelos’s campaign committee and more than $50,000 divided among five other candidates. A copy of a printout of the email listed the individual LLCs that ultimately made the donations.
The contributions seemed to pay dividends for Glenwood and the real estate industry as a whole in the form of a seat at the table — sometimes quite literally.
With a law that governed rent regulations set to expire in 2011, Mr. Dorego testified that he and other real estate executives were called to two meetings with state leaders in June, one at the governor’s office in New York City and one at his office in Albany.
At the meeting in Albany, Mr. Dorego testified, he and other executives met first with Mr. Cuomo in the governor’s office. And then they were summoned by Mr. Skelos, who sought to reassure them. Everything, Mr. Skelos said, “seemed to be falling in line.”