Office of the Governor

Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos

New York City has been graced/cursed with an entertaining array of politicians over the years: the dapper and reserved David Dinkins, the furious Rudy Giuliani, the polarizing Mark Green. One thread links all of them: They received lots of campaign donations from Leonard Litwin, the real-estate titan whose name and company, Glenwood Management, have surfaced in stories about a federal investigation into business dealings involving Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos and his son.

The questions about Skelos are just questions—not even accusations, as far as we know—at this point. But the mention in press accounts of a Glenwood connection, which also surfaced in some stories on the Sheldon Silver mess, raises a peculiar issue: Given how ecumenical and generous Litwin has been at every level of campaign for at least two decades, prosecutors may face a challenge in establishing that any sort of special relationship existed between the building management titan and the Senate Republican leader.

Litwin has donated at least $400,000 to city campaigns since 1989. Available records of state campaign contributions indicated more than $1.1 million given on that level. Litwin’s federal donations come in at $817,000, according to the Federal Election Commission database. Litwin’s late wife Ruth is credited with more than $100,000 of her own contributions at both the state and the city level. As the Daily News and others have reported, those amounts are dwarfed by what companies associated with Litwin has donated at the state level thanks to an absurd loophole in campaign-finance laws.

Given Litwin’s perennial place on city lists of top campaign givers, it’s remarkable that so little has been written about him or his company—which, according to the local lobbyist database, spent $192,000 lobbying city government last year.

Below, a look at Litwin’s personal donations over time and the candidates who received the biggest cumulative Litwin money.