Two Madison Square Garden-related super PACs and the venue’s billionaire owner James Dolan have been boosting an independent challenger to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg in the general election to the tune of more than $140K.
Before the primary election, in which Bragg beat out his Democratic challenger with over 70% of the vote, the Dolan-connected PACs unleashed a flurry of spending in support of an independent run from Diana Florence, a former Manhattan assistant district attorney who is running against Bragg in the general election.
Florence, a practicing sports attorney, resigned from the DA’s office following allegations she withheld evidence under Bragg’s predecessor Cy Vance. She is running on her own ballot line four years after she ran against Bragg as a Democrat in the 2021 primary.
In doing so, since April she has pulled in a trove of support from Dolan in a personal payment and from a super PAC run by his company, MSG Entertainment Corp. In May, Dolan cut Florence’s campaign a check for $49,295, according to her July campaign finance filing. Her campaign also recorded raking in another $49,125 from the Madison Square Garden Political Action Committee.
In a separate filing, another PAC backed by Dolan, the Coalition to Restore New York, reported spending $25K in in-kind donations for TV advertisements — at least some of which have aired on MSG’s TV network — and an additional $19,555 in other independent expenses on Florence’s behalf. The Coalition and the MSG PAC did not respond to an inquiry from amNY Law.
“I’m thrilled to announce that this past month, we had the largest fundraising launch in Manhattan history for an independent candidate!” Florence wrote on Twitter/X in June. Of the $151,533 her campaign reported receiving, nearly $100K came directly from Dolan and the PAC.
An ad that aired on the network during a Knicks game on the MSG network asserted that under Bragg “common sense policies have been scrapped and a radical agenda has been put in places that puts us all at risk.”
Florence is one of two candidates challenging Bragg. Maud Maron, a former public defender conservative education activist, is the Republican candidate.
“Diana Florence resigned in disgrace from the Manhattan DA’s office for failing to turn over evidence in a major corruption case and for creating a toxic work environment internally,” Richard Fife, Bragg’s campaign consultant wrote in a statement. “No amount of campaign rhetoric or special interest money from Florence’s rich, powerful patrons will be able to hide her scandal-scarred history…”
Florence hit back accusing Bragg of trying to use her record to distract from rising subway crime.
“Since ‘Day One’ Bragg has focused on playing politics instead of prosecuting criminals — and it’s why New Yorkers want a proven independent prosecutor as district attorney, not an empty suit,” Florence wrote in a statement.
Her campaign also pointed out that the withheld evidence she resigned over was in the first few weeks of the rollout of the state discovery law in 2019, which Bragg just recently advocated for changing.
In the 2021 Democratic primary, Florence came in a distant fifth place with about 5% of the vote, but at his primary election party Bragg cautioned his supporters not to take general election for granted.
“There is a super PAC with a lot of funding already with ads up against us,” he said. “It just means we have a lot of work to do.”
The Dolan-affiliated Coalition to Restore New York PAC is not just targeting the district attorney’s race. It spent cash on City Council races in the primary — both on incumbent councilmembers such as Darlene Mealy, Eric Dinowitz and Simcha Felder as well as first-time candidates like Dermot Smyth and Maya Kornberg.
As the executive of Madison Square Garden, Dolan’s economic interests intersect with city politics. MSG will need the support of the City Council to renew its special operating permit at its location over Penn Station in 2028. The venue had sought a 10-year renewal in 2023 but ended up securing only a five-year extension.
That permit does not fall under the purview of the Manhattan District Attorney, but the 2023 Council vote to approve it coincided with scrutiny over Dolan’s use of facial recognition technology to ban offending parties from his venues. Attorneys belonging to firms that were involved in litigation with Madison Square Garden were ejected from the venue, and Dolan disinvited Manhattan state Assemblyman Tony Simone from an event after the legislator criticized this practice.
The controversy included Bragg when his office told the Daily News that they were examining Dolan’s use of facial recognition as a violation of state Civil Rights Law 40-b. In the heat of the controversy, Dolan appeared on a morning talk show and attacked bail reform, a policy that Bragg has supported during his tenure.
Bragg’s office declined to comment on an inquiry about whether he is still pursuing that investigation.
