The New York Post reports:
The state’s newly minted Assembly Speaker, Carl Heastie, accepted cash from a mobster convicted of racketeering and steered thousands more to a man who did time for manslaughter, records show.The sad moments of New York politics.
Between 2003 and 2008, more than $2,800 flowed into the Bronx Democrat’s campaign coffers from Tri-State Employment Services and its top executives, including reputed Bonanno associate Neil Messina, who was sentenced to 18 years in prison last April in connection with a 1992 home-invasion murder.
Heastie also directed at least $250,000 to the Bronx Business Alliance. The now-defunct non-profit’s head, John Bonizio, was convicted of manslaughter in 1982 for bludgeoning a man to death with a baseball bat. Bonizio also made a plea deal after being indicted in the same year for trying to bribe an NYPD detective.
“Associations like these seriously undermine his attempts to show that the Assembly Democrats have turned the page,” a Democratic operative said of Heastie.
