Pay to play works REALLY well, until it doesn’t. Kathy Hochul is in hot water over the Covid test contract that landed a small firm with BIG money in a no-bid contract. But now that small firm is suing New York.

A New Jersey company tied to an alleged $637 million pay-to-play scheme involving Gov. Hochul is now suing her administration — accusing Albany of wrongfully denying it additional business.

Dayton, NJ-based Digital Gadgets claims the Department of Health violated its own contract rules by negotiating a deal for rapid COVID-19 tests last spring before opening up the bidding to other businesses who could not offer goods of the same quality.

There’s a whole lot to this story. First, Digital Gadgets ended up with the initial contract in a no-bid situation. Which netted them millions. The state of New York paid BIG money for these Covid test kits. How much? 45% more than what California was paying for their test kits. 

The Times Union reported last week that Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration bought 52 million of the “Carestart” tests, manufactured by the New Jersey-based firm AccessBio, for $637 million — paying an average of $12.25 per test.

California paid just under $7 per test while New York paid twice that. Oh but wait, there is definitely more to this story. 

You see, it really does look like a pay-to-play scheme gone south. The owners of Digital Gadgets donated a metric ton of money to Hochul’s campaign, BEFORE the contract was awarded. 

In July, the Albany Times Union published that around the time the state was negotiating those contracts, Hochul received $300,000 in donations to her election campaign from the firm’s owner, Charlie Tebele, and his family. Hochul has said she did not know the Tebele family and wasn’t aware of a specific purchase order with Digital Gadgets.

The lawsuit alleges that between the months of April and June, state officials, including Bray, were in the process of negotiating another order with the firm. Between those talks, Tebele and his spouse gave another $40,000 to Hochul’s campaign.

But on July 12, the Department of Health posted an invitation for bids, or IFB, “virtually identical” to the constraints being negotiated among Digital Gadgets and the state just one month before, the firm’s complaint says.

You know, if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck… But now, the relationship has evidently soured. Perhaps it’s because rumblings of this issue regarding the donate to win contracts scheme has seen the light of day. Kathy Hochul is on record claiming she never knew about the donations. 

“My directive to my team was, ‘The only way we’re going to get kids back in schools is to amass as many test kits from wherever you need to get them. Just go do it,’” Hochul said on September 23rd. “That was my only involvement.”

The governor says “no contribution has ever had an effect on any public policy decision” in her administration. And she says she “follows all the rules.”

Let me tell you something. If a political campaign receives nearly $350K in donations from a single donor, you can damned well bet that the candidate is told, personally signed thank you letters are sent out, and the donor receives some sort of major gimme in return. I’ve been around a LOT of campaigns and know this to be true. So for Kathy Hochul to claim she didn’t know about those donations or that they were from the owners of Digital Gadgets is gaslighting on every level. 

Furthermore, it’s not just Digital Gadgets that made out like a bandit.

For anyone trying to keep up with Kathy Hochul’s mounting pay to play scandals, this Medicaid issue is on top of her $600M+ no-bid contract to Digital Gadgets, a top campaign donor, for COVID tests that cost New York taxpayers twice the going rate. https://t.co/h60XfEBN1m

— Lee Zeldin (@leezeldin) September 22, 2022

Yet NOW, because Digital didn’t get the rest of the contract, they got mad and decided to sue. 

Digital Gadgets says it’s not having a fair opportunity to contest the bid for the latest covid test contracts, if it was held under normal procurement rules.

At stake is millions of dollars in contracts, but also a question of consistency on procurement.https://t.co/z1cD4sVfZB

— Josh Solomon (@therealjsolo) December 29, 2022

A final tally of campaign donations this election cycle from the family of Charles Tebele, who owns Digital Gadgets: roughly $800,000.

About $290,000 went to Hochul and $235,000 to the state Dems. Cuomo, de Blasio and DA Gonzalez also received money.https://t.co/z1cD4sVfZB

— Josh Solomon (@therealjsolo) December 30, 2022

Keep in mind, Digital Gadgets is also being scrutinized for their supposedly shoddy contracts regarding ventilators.

Kaehny says the company also has a history of questionable transactions. Former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio contracted with Digital Gadgets to supply ventilators earlier in the pandemic. Company owners also gave large donations to de Blasio’s 2020 campaign for the presidency . Some of those contracts were scrapped after the company failed to deliver on the ventilators.

Supposedly Kathy Hochul broke the glass ceiling by winning the gubernatorial campaign. 

Does breaking the glass ceiling include various pay-to-play schemes?? It’s New York, so anything goes!

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Feature Photo Credit: Covid test vial result via Pixabay, cropped and modified