‘Skyline-gate': Private group's invite for Kraft campaign fundraiser includes graphic of Midtown Manhattan
Josh Kraft is hosting a fundraiser/cocktail party at the UMass club tomorrow night, per invite.
One of the hosts appears to be a Romney alum, suggested contribution for attendees is $250+
— Kelly Garrity (@kellygarrity3)
Garrity later posted an
A Kraft campaign spokesperson did not immediately return a request for comment.
The fundraiser was organized by Rishi Shukla,
Shukla said he and Leffler designed the invite graphic, and the Kraft campaign had 'zero to do with it.'
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'If anybody were a fly on the wall, what they would have seen is Josh [Leffler] and I sitting around a table on a Saturday, going through Paperless Post and saying, 'Search, skyline templates, select, add detail, go,'' he said. 'That's literally the decision tree.'
Shukla said that neither him nor Leffler have endorsed Kraft. The two expect to hold a similar event with Mayor Michelle Wu's campaign in the future, he said.
'Our view is that, in a democratic process, both platforms should have the microphone for equal amounts of time to make their case,' Shukla said. 'And then, may the best man — or woman, in this case — be standing at the end.'
It was simply an accident of timing that the New York graphic was used for the Kraft event, rather than the one planned for the Wu campaign, which has not been scheduled yet, Shukla said.
'We don't have the bandwidth to run two campaign trains at the same time,' he said. 'So we were going to do one [event] first, get Josh [Kraft] out of the gate here, and then do one with the Mayor. ... That was the thinking.'
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Leffler previously served in the administration of Governor Mitt Romney, and worked on Romney's 2008 presidential campaign, according to his LinkedIn profile.
Shukla said he hadn't expected the outcry over what he called 'Skyline-gate,' but found
'For the record, as a lifelong Bostonian, let's just be clear that the only skyline that I care about is Boston's,' he said. 'I have one allegiance only, and it'll never change. I've lived in a two-mile radius for 25 years. I am not a New Yorker.'
Camilo Fonseca can be reached at
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