Attorney General Candidate Was Active Political Donor
The Wall Street Journal
August 9, 2010
Sean Coffey, a Democrat running for his party's nomination as attorney general, has made more than $150,000 in state-level campaign contributions nationwide over 10 years, directing most of the money to candidates and party committees where his then-law firm pursued lucrative contracts to represent public pension funds in shareholder lawsuits.
A review of his political contributions to statewide candidates and parties between 2000 and mid-2009 shows that Mr. Coffey, who left his job in October as a securities litigator to run for office, donated nearly $20,000 to New York Comptrollers Carl McCall and Alan Hevesi. The office hired his firm, Bernstein, Litowitz, Berger & Grossmann, to represent the state's pension fund in three major cases, splitting a total of more than $400 million in fees with another firm.
His donations spread beyond New York to Rhode Island, Mississippi and Ohio, among other states.
