Julie Menin's Campaign Treasurer and Dem Club President Running Two Dark Money Entities
Untangling the web.
The 2025 NYC Mayoral election reshaped the national political discussion. It had barely ended before finding myself at Eon Huntley and Jabari Brisport’s campaign launched at Bed-Stuy’s Therapy Wine Bar on 11/11/26. One historic campaign had ended. Many more were about to begin. As the months went on, I made donations to every single NYC-DSA slate member as they announced. Despite all this, I still wasn’t sure just how involved I would get. Would I donate and like posts from the periphery? Maybe do a canvass, or two? I really didn’t know. That all changed on April 3rd, 2026.
Nick Garber published an article in New York Focus about the creation of a dark money entity called “Moving Harlem Forward” (Acronymed as MHF from here on out) being run by longtime Cuomo-aligned operative, Charlie King. MHF would target Conrad Blackburn in NY Assembly District 70, who was endorsed by NYC-DSA. Blackburn, a young and charismatic public defender, was running against incumbent Assemblymember, Jordan Wright. Son of Manhattan Democratic Party Chair Keith Wright, grandson of well-known judge Bruce Wright, and recently elected President of the Manhattan Young Democrats, Manhattan politics flows in Jordan Wright’s veins. He had endorsed disgraced former Governor Andrew Cuomo in the 2025 Mayoral primary. He cited long-time family connections. Meant to mobilize the distraught remnants of Cuomo’s 2025 campaign against Conrad, something profound happened for me upon reading this. As someone with a deep knowledge of campaign finance systems from being a campaign treasurer nearly two dozen times (both unpaid and paid), I felt an insatiable need to explore what was happening here.
Over the next two months, MHF raised close to $90K and counting. The tangible result in Harlem has been regular people inundated with mailers and ads attacking Conrad Blackburn. Attacks he and his volunteers are forced to spend their time and resources refuting, instead of talking about the struggles people face to live a dignified life in Harlem. The bulk of those funds, $75K, were raised from 3 donors: EMU Health CEO Daniel Lowy, Solidarity PAC Founder Adeena Rosen, and the union 32 BJ ADF. While I extensively researched each of these individuals and entities, they are most easily summarized as either zealous supporters of Israel in American elections or longtime allies of Andrew Cuomo’s apparatus.
My research on Moving Harlem Forward and another dark money entity called United for Progress (UFP), led me to revelations about people and entities aiming to control our political system far beyond Harlem and will be covered in a number of forthcoming pieces. These findings have directly resulted in the creation of this Substack and the information on MHF and UFP is being published in this article, serving as the launch for State of the Left.
Moving Harlem Forward
In January 2026, MHF created an account on X. The account remained dormant, until April, and has only ever posted two videos. One of them was an attack ad against Conrad. The ad referenced a two-month, unpaid internship over the summer of 2016 that Conrad did as a young law student in the Florida Attorney General’s office. The Attorney General was, at that time, the now-infamous Pam Bondi. It implied that in his placement as a summer intern, he was Pam Bondi’s right-hand enforcer, while ignoring the years he’s spent since law school fighting for justice in every form. The disingenuousness ate at me. In my experience, an X account for a specific independent expenditure campaign committee is a bit unusual. Typically, they might have just a website with an email address that leads into the ether. A social media account meant there was a real person sitting behind the keyboard, posting this ad.
Garber had written in his article that the “contact” of MHF was one Daniele Campbell. However, it wasn’t clear if that meant she was the treasurer of the campaign committee, meaning she would need to know the intimate details of all expenses to properly report them. On May 7, I decided to file a FOIL (Freedom of Information Law) request for the founding documents of MHF.
The turnaround time was impressively quick. Upon viewing the CF-02, I confirmed the treasurer of Moving Harlem Forward was, indeed, Daniele Campbell. Having established the person behind the financial-reporting-curtain, I endeavored to learn what else Campbell had been involved in. After submitting another FOIL request, I learned she is the sitting campaign treasurer for the committees of Pat Timmons, Eddie Gibbs, and Corinne Arnold. Timmon’s committee was for a 2025 Manhattan DA candidacy (committees will often be left open after races have concluded) while Gibbs and Arnold have active races this cycle.
Having completed the search for all state level campaigns, I moved on to city campaign committees. Finding another fairly extensive list of Campbell’s work for city candidates in 2025, I scrolled through the campaigns that made expenses to Campbell for her treasurer services. A number of vaguely familiar names came up. “Gibbs, Edward, City Council 2025”, “Santana, Raymond, City Council 2025”, “Smyth, Dermot, City Council 2025”, “Bondy, Faith, City Council 2025”, but then……
“Menin, Julie, City Council 2025.”
City Councilmember Julie Menin was elected in 2021 and represents Manhattan’s District 5 (Upper East Side, District 5) as a committed centrist, zionist Democrat. Recently elected speaker of the city council, she has emerged as one of the opposition leaders to the Progressive reform movement of New York’s left, even attempting to organize a protest of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s 100 day celebration rally. I expanded my search to Campbell’s whole city work history and found her very first campaign treasurer work.
“Menin, Julie, City Council 2023.”
Before we get ahead of our skis with unspoken assumptions, it could be possible this is someone Menin simply pays to do a job. The responsible practice is to take that as the truth until proven otherwise. Wondering if there were more connections to centrist Democratic operators, I set-out to see if Daniele Campbell had social media profiles. Sure enough, I found a Daniele Campbell who seemed to fit the bill on X. It was only a matter of minutes before I came across many posts praising Council Speaker Julie Menin. I found one from 2023, the first time Campbell was ever paid for any treasurer work as far as I could tell. Then one from 2020, when Menin launched her first city council campaign. But then, they went back even further, all the way to the first ever mention of Julie Menin on Campbell’s page in 2016. As a matter of fact, not only was Campbell promoting Menin over the last 10 years before she was ever elected, Julie Menin is one of the only political figures Campbell has ever posted about in the whole history of her timeline, other than a few generic videos of Hillary Clinton, Kamala Harris, and a couple other national Democratic figures.
As if it was even a question, I decided to look at donations Menin had received next. You’ll be shocked.
Okay. I’d seen enough. At the very least, they obviously knew each other in a capacity beyond Campbell simply being hired for a job. I suddenly had a timeline that made sense. Unless Campbell was nothing more than an online super-fan of Julie Menin before she was ever elected, Campbell and Menin seemed to have known each other for at least a decade. Menin runs for council in 2021 with Campbell’s support and donations. In 2023, Menin hires Campbell for her first-ever paid treasurer work. By the end of 2025, Campbell’s side business as a treasurer explodes to around half-a-dozen- separate clients/candidates running for city and state office (including Menin), totaling well over $40K by the end of the year. Every campaign was a Manhattan-based, centrist, Democratic candidate.
The result suggests two likely pathways for how Campbell went from an associate of a council member who got hired for a job in 2023 to raking in $40K by the end of 2025: Menin began recommending Campbell to her associates in the Manhattan political world, Campbell used the clout from working for Menin to successfully expand her business totally on her own, or, the most likely option, a combination of both.
Which brings us to an interesting question we’ll almost certainly never have a definitive answer to: who directly connected Daniele Campbell to Moving Harlem Forward? Campbell taking on MHF marks a turn in her work as her first independent expenditure committee. All her previous treasurer work was on what are known as “single candidate committees”, the legitimate vehicles of candidates for their races. They exist in the light. Moving Harlem Forward is not a single candidate committee, but an “independent expenditure (IE)” committee with no contribution limits. These are overwhelmingly used for the purpose of allowing wealthy donors to circumvent the contribution limits imposed by state law on single candidate committees. While IEs don’t necessarily have to be negative, their secondary function is often utilizing the huge sums raised to go on offense against another candidate, which gives the person they are actually supporting plausible deniability that they are involved with the attack. In this case, the sole purpose of Moving Harlem Forward is trashing Conrad Blackburn with a twisted narrative. This exists in the dark.
Let’s game it out. While we can’t confirm it’s Charlie King, someone approaches Campbell in early 2026 asking if she would take on new work. As they talk it out behind the scenes, the “someone” explains this isn’t going to be a standard job as treasurer of Jordan Wright’s legitimate single candidate committee. They explain this is going to need a totally unconnected name from the Wright family as they want nothing to do with these ugly smears, because they are, well…. UGLY. See: Keith Wright saying he “knows nothing about“ MHF. This nameless operator tells Campbell there’s going to be huge donations coming in that fall outside the normal contribution limits, so that also has to be accounted for in how the committee is set-up.
Here’s where Campbell comes in: They need her help to figure out literally what are the proper forms to submit. Most campaign committees use the CF-02 form, however, there are many different types of CF-02s. Single candidate campaign committees use the CF-02 Type 1. Political Action Committees use the CF-02 Type 2. Constituted and Party Committees use the CF-02 Type 3-7. It goes on, with Independent Expenditure committees using the CF-02 Type 8 (I’ve gotten well-acclimated to the Ballot Issue Committee form, CF-02 Type 9B). It would shock many of you how little even the most high-level political operatives know about the mundane details of how this all works, forcing them to find and rely on a small number of people who care about this, or… make a business out of it. The proper forms to use, correct way to report reimbursements, when you do and don’t have to itemize certain transactions, the fact you can’t report PO boxes instead of street addresses for donors without it being considered a “deficiency” that often comes with a letter from the compliance unit, are all things these high-level operatives simply don’t feel like figuring out themselves.
Believing I had found much of what there was to find, I dropped an abridged version of my findings on X the morning of May 28th, 2026.
And then, this story took another turn. As a result of my post, all sorts of people were commenting. One of them was someone I’d never heard of before, Al Freedman. He was rather angry with me, writing the following reply on my post.
I was genuinely confused Al said I blew up Campbell’s address, because I had redacted it. I even had someone defending me in confusion, reiterating that the treasurer’s address was not visible. Whereas PDFs on a desktop browser mostly show one page at a time, PDFs viewed on a phone can show a quarter of the second page at the very bottom of the screenshot. Unbeknownst to me, it was right there the address was listed for a second time. Days later, Daniele Campbell reached out to me explaining it was way down at the bottom of the form I had posted the screenshot of. I apologized to her upon realizing she was right, in my first ever mistake handling a story. Lesson learned. She asked me to delete the photo, and after playing around with it for a while, I realized there isn’t actually a way to replace or delete just one photo on X after a post has been up for more than an hour. I would have to take the whole post down. Even though I don’t support the role Daniele is playing in this endeavor and despite the fact your address as a treasurer is easily FOILable by any curious person coming with this territory, I deleted the whole original post upon publication of this article, out of good faith.
What Al Freedman did make me realize though is I hadn’t actually researched Daniele Campbell nearly thoroughly enough. All I did was look at her social media and that was it. I tried looking into his claim about Menin and Campbell being “friends from college,” but it seems Menin went to Columbia University and Campbell went to University of PA for their undergrads. Perhaps he means they became friends during their college years, but not because they were at the same college. No matter which it is, Al Freedman’s claim only puts Menin even personally closer to Campbell - and this story. Not only is it now confirmed that New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin’s campaign treasurer is the same person running a dark money entity smearing Conrad Blackburn in AD70, but a real life, human person has now claimed, publicly, Menin is actually friends with this individual going back, potentially decades.
Also, who the heck is Al Freedman? Turns out he’s the Senior Vice President of the well-known and high-powered consultant entity, Mercury Public Affairs, and somehow, he knows Daniele Campbell. Al said in his post that Daniele Campbell is a “Democratic club leader.” I would like to thank Al for teaching me an invaluable journalistic lesson about doing the most basic of searches on people of interest because, yes, I have confirmed Daniele Campbell is indeed the President of the Samuel J. Tilden Democratic Club in Gramercy Park. Per her LinkedIn, she became president of the club in January 2026.
Not only is Campbell the leader of this club, I found this perusing the website of the SJTDC.
Let’s break this down. The Samuel J. Tilden Democratic Club was founded in 1953. Well-known as a place aspiring politicos in the general Lower East Side and Midtown vicinities make practically mandatory pilgrimages to (if you want to “make it”), it covers roughly the neighborhoods of East Mid-Town, Murray Hill, Kips Bay, Gramercy Park, Stuy Town, East Village, Union Square, and South Flatiron. They honored Julie Menin at a gala in February when her district, the Upper East Side and all of Roosevelt Island, is not even in their general club area. Additionally, on their own club website, they list all the elected officials covering the club area’s general boundaries, and Menin’s district is not there. They could honor Virginia Maloney, Harvey Epstein, Kristen Gonzalez, or any of the other borough-wide, city-wide, or state-wide figures who represent them. Instead, for some reason, Julie Menin was chosen. Now, yes, I know. She is the Speaker. Theoretically, any club anywhere in the city could now honor her and it would *technically* make sense. Speaker is a quasi-citywide role. But also, they’re represented by Jerry Nadler! They aren’t going to honor a legend of the congressional delegation at one of the last galas they may ever be able to before he retires? Tough love from the East Side to the West, I guess. Yet another person who makes a lot more sense on paper, but got passed over for some reason. I’ve been a part of Democratic Party event planning discussions like these many times in my past life as a Democratic Party officer and operative. Broadly speaking, if the leader of the group really wants a specific person honored… that’s the way it goes.
Believing I had, once again, arrived at the end of the road on this story, I was preparing for not only the publication of this article, but the launch of a Substack. This is all way too long for X. It was right at that moment a new piece of information was brought to my attention by someone I’ve been in contact with: Not only is Daniele Campbell the treasurer of Moving Harlem Forward, she is also the treasurer of a newly registered federal super PAC called United for Progress, responsible for attack ads against the surging, DSA-backed, NY-13 congressional candidate, Darializa Avila Chevalier. Per the most recently available FEC filings on 4/14/26 (federal reporting requirements are a bit more opaque, in my view), United for Progress has not raised or spent any funds. This also means that, as of all currently available state and federal information reviewed by me, Daniele Campbell has not been paid for her work on either Moving Harlem Forward or United for Progress. One could argue taking a job is not an expression of support, but volunteering most certainly is.
City and State’s Heard Around Town newsletter recently reported that United for Progress is being run by dark money enthusiast, Charlie King. Given that King is confirmed to be running both Moving Harlem Forward and United for Progress with Daniele Campbell serving as treasurer of both entities, it’s clear Daniele Campbell and Charlie King now have their own relationship. Which leaves us with one, final, lingering question: who connected Daniele Campbell to Andrew Cuomo’s personal operator, Charlie King, for this work in the first place? We are left with no choice, but to wonder. Especially since both Daniele Campbell and City Council Speaker Menin did not return my requests for comment.
Few better examples than this story illustrate the deep mistrust between a generation of young Progressives, now grown into their 30s and 40s and increasingly well-organized, and the entrenched Democratic party centrist apparatus. If they cannot hold onto power themselves, the next best option for the centrist apparatus is being able to pass it on to younger faces that will uphold the same old way of doing business. Stepping back from the connection between Speaker Menin, her campaign treasurer Daniele Campbell, and dark money operative Charlie King, it’s remarkable on its own that the leader of a historic Democratic Party Institution on the East Side is also treasurer of shadowy PACs to crush not one, but two surging, young, DSA members, Conrad Blackburn and Dariliza Avila Chevalier. Do they really want Citizens United overturned?
I wish I could write this is simply a disagreement between two factions that will come together after the primary….. but that is not the truth. This is a full-fledged war for the future of the Democratic Party. A battle to determine whether access and control of our institutions runs through the DSA, where a grassroots mass movement of working class people is itself the source of power, or through figures like Charlie King, where the source of power is dark-monied corporate interests, seeking to hand down control from a senior Keith Wright to a younger Jordan Wright.
One outcome I am certain of though: If New York State Assemblymember Conrad Blackburn or U.S. Congresswoman Darializa Avila Chevalier ever want to attend a Tilden Dems dinner gala, it’ll sure make for an awkward meal.
Many thanks to: Ceilidh Erickson