A Wall Street investment banker bought nearly 150 friends and co-workers memberships in an East Side political club so he could become its president, giving him a platform for an expected race for state Assembly this year.
Gus Christensen wrote checks totaling more than $2,600 to cover the dues of his pals who joined the Lenox Hill Democratic Club, according to records provided by club sources to the Daily News.
With his supporters packing the membership rolls — including some who neither live on the East Side nor belong to the Democratic Party — Christensen last week beat M.J. Dillon in the club’s election for president.
Christensen declined repeated interview requests, and a spokesman would not directly address club members’ complaints that Christensen stacked the deck before the club’s vote.
Now that he is its president, the Lenox Hill Democratic Club is expected to endorse Christensen for the seat now held by embattled Democratic Assemblyman Micah Kellner.
Lenox Hill’s previous president, David Menegon, who also is eyeing a run for the Assembly, called Christensen’s victory in the race for club president tainted.
“I don’t think Gus needed to do this,” he said.
“A club should be built over time as a process (for) getting people engaged,” said Menegon, a businessman who decided not to seek reelection as club leader to focus on his campaign for Assembly. “I think paying for people to join the club to execute your will is wrong.”
Dillon, a data analyst and Menegon ally, said he intends to form a new club with like-minded party members. He questioned how much support Christensen will get from the fractured Lenox Hill organization in an Assembly race.
“I’m not certain what being president brings to (Christensen’s) Assembly campaign,” he said. “If anything, I think it’ll be a distraction. … Being president is its own part-time job.”
John Halebian, a district leader who supports Christensen, dismissed the griping of the Dillon camp as sour grapes.
When it comes to people angry about how many new Christensen supporters signed up before the club vote, “the thing they really resented is that somebody did it better than they did,” said Halebian, who claimed the banker could have become club president without having stacked the deck.
“Gus can’t deny that he subsidized a bunch of people, (but) at the end of the day, (Dillion) would have lost anyway.”
Kellner has been accused of making sexually inappropriate comments to aides and is appealing a finding by the Assembly Ethics Committee that he created a hostile work environment for his staff. He had no comment on the Lenox Hill club controversy. It is not clear whether he will seek reelection.
