One of Mayor Giuliani’s biggest political fund-raisers is now helping rake in big bucks for one of the mayor’s biggest enemies – Public Advocate Mark Green – The Post has learned.
Millionaire car dealer Howard Koeppel, a friend of Giuliani who has raised tens of thousands of dollars for him, hosted a fund-raiser for Green last week.
The event at Koeppel’s Manhattan home on Jan. 10 collected about $30,000 for Green’s mayoral campaign.
“Just because they don’t agree doesn’t mean they’re not good people,” Koeppel said of Green and Giuliani.
“Green is very principled,” Koeppel told The Post. “He’ll scratch and claw until he gets what he wants. He reminds me of the mayor in many ways.”
Koeppel said he had not discussed his fund-raising for Green with Giuliani – who has ripped the public advocate as unworthy of following him into City Hall – but didn’t think the mayor would mind.
Koeppel was one of Giuliani’s top fund-raisers for his 1997 re-election campaign in 1997, and also raised cash for the mayor’s aborted U.S. Senate run last year.
Also yesterday, fund-raising reports for some candidates for citywide office were released by the city’s Campaign Finance Board, revealing:
* City Council Speaker Peter Vallone raised $773,629 over the last six months for his mayoral campaign – and spent $131,000 on political consultants. Among his contributors was New York Times chairman Arthur Sulzberger ($250), the politically connected law firm of Fischbein, Badillo & Harding ($3,000) and executives of several bus companies that have city contracts ($17,000). Vallone has $2.53 million in his campaign war chest.
* Mayoral candidate and Bronx Borough President Fernando Ferrer spent $247,130 over the same period, including $58,665 on political consultants. Among his contributors was John Zaccaro ($1,000), husband of former Rep. Geraldine Ferraro.
* Green spent $179,739 during the same period – including just $41,251 on consultants.
* Public-advocate candidate Norman Siegel has the most star-studded list of contributors. Music mogul David Geffen – who went to high school with Siegel – helped raise $88,300 for the activist lawyer who is on leave from his job at the New York Civil Liberties Union. Among some of Siegel’s famous donors are Woody Allen ($250), Mel Brooks ($1,000), Steven Spielberg ($4,500) and Barbra Streisand ($1,000).