Celtics Suites, Yankees Legends: Donor Cash Funds NY Speaker Carl Heastie’s Sports Outings

In March, New York Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie and at least four of his staffers enjoyed a luxury suite at a home game of Heastie’s favorite basketball team, the Boston Celtics.

“Team Heastie road trip to the Boston Gahden!” he posted on Instagram at the time.

The suite package was worth $13,800, but Heastie didn’t have to pay. The seats, food, and drinks were a donation from the hospitality and gambling giant Delaware North to the Democratic Assembly Campaign Committee, or DACC, a group Heastie helps lead. 

Less than three months after the Celtics game, the annual New York state budget — which Heastie, as Assembly speaker, has a powerful role in shaping — included a tax break that could save Delaware North over $18 million.

The 2026 Celtics trip wasn’t the first time Heastie got suite access from Delaware North, which owns the TD Garden, where the Celtics play. He and his staffers enjoyed similar packages from Delaware North in 2024 and 2025, and even got to walk onto the court and pose for pictures. In 2024, Heastie was photographed with three retired NBA stars, including Hall of Famer Dominique Wilkins. The total value of the donations was nearly $37,000.

“It looks corrupt,” said David Grandeau, a lawyer who served as New York’s top lobbying regulator. “At best, it’s just business as usual. At worst, it’s a bribe.”

Heastie’s mingling of his public role with his sports fandom goes far beyond the Celtics.

Since he became Assembly speaker and honorary chair of DACC in 2015, the group has paid over $1 million to teams, stadiums and sports-related companies including the Yankees, Mets, the Buffalo Sabres, Barclays Center, Madison Square Garden, and Long Island’s UBS Arena.

Purchases have included two Subway Series games at the Mets’s Citi Field and two Knicks playoff games, including one during their electrifying 2026 championship run. The committee has also spent six figures on a company that offers meet-and-greets with retired Yankees stars.

DACC exists to support Democratic state Assembly candidates across New York, and is mostly funded by donations from major corporations and unions, including many that lobby Heastie and other lawmakers.

The committee averaged less than $5,000 per year in sports spending in the decade before Heastie became speaker.  Since then, that number has rocketed to nearly $90,000.

State ethics law bans giving gifts to politicians if the gifts seem intended to win influence, but campaign donations — like the suite packages from Delaware North — aren’t considered gifts under state regulations.

New York law also forbids politicians and political committees like DACC from using campaign donations for personal benefit. The law specifically prohibits using campaign resources to attend a sports game, unless it is connected to a campaign, party role, or job duties. 

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Since 2015, DACC has classified more than half of its sports-related spending as fundraising expenses. But much of it had no explanation, and over $154,000 in sports-related payments were categorized as “office expenses.”

If that money “is being used primarily for personal benefit, then it’s a misuse of funds and probably illegal,” said Richard Briffault, a Columbia Law School professor who chaired New York City’s Conflicts of Interest Board. “A lot’s just going to turn on how much of this is fundraising and how much of this is not.” 

Delaware North spokesperson Glen White defended the company’s donations. “Delaware North was asked to donate our suite,” for the three Celtics games “so it could be used to host political fundraising events,” White said. He did not answer when asked who specifically made the request.

“Our government affairs team and lobbyists always operate within applicable lobbying and campaign finance laws,” White added, and said the company did not discuss political matters with Heastie or his staff at the games.

Heastie’s office and DACC did not respond to detailed requests for comment.

It’s not clear how many games the $1 million in spending has paid for. Many of the transactions are lump sums that likely reflect bulk purchases for multiple games, such as a $90,000 payment to the Yankees on April 20 of this year. Most of the larger expenditures were labeled “fundraising.”

New York Focus was able to pinpoint seven specific days that Heastie attended sporting events likely paid for by DACC, based on social media posts and campaign account spending on stadium concessions. That number is almost certainly an undercount, since spending data doesn’t show every game paid for by the fund. 

On all of those occasions, Heastie attended in box seats or a suite  — generally among the most expensive seats in stadiums. DACC or Heastie’s own campaign account also spent money on concessions at sports venues on 12 other occasions since 2015.

Some of those dates corresponded with bursts of donations to DACC, but in other cases, donations slumped in the days surrounding the game.

New York Focus interviewed a former DACC employee who attended several Yankees games with Heastie in suites paid for by DACC. “People just kind of hung out and drank a lot,” he said. “It really didn’t feel like a donor-focused event.”

Heastie would “work the room,” talking to all the guests, and “was always in a good mood” at the games, the employee said. DACC staff and elected Democrats were freely offered tickets before games, and while donors did attend, they appeared to be outnumbered by politicos, he said.

“They would just have a ton of tickets available,” he said, “Any of the Assembly members could get a ticket and go.” Once, the guest list included Heastie’s girlfriend at the time, lobbyist Rebecca Lamorte, he said.

Food and drink were free for guests, and retired Yankees players would often show up and sign autographs.

DACC also covered travel and hotel costs for Albany-based staff who came to New York City for the games, the former employee said. DACC’s financial records appear to back this up. For example, in August 2024, DACC spent $624 at a hotel near Citi Field the day after dropping $4,286 on stadium concessions at a Mets game. In September 2025, the group spent $432 at a Bronx hotel the day after Heastie attended a Yankees game and DACC sent $22,121 to the Yankees.

It’s not unusual for New York politicians to use sporting events as a way to woo donors, but no other campaign account in the state comes close to rivaling DACC’s spending. And it’s hard to know how many of the games were actually fundraisers; the photos of Heastie, for instance, feature his staff, friends, and occasional sports stars, but no known donors. Reports from a nonprofit government watchdog show that DACC hosted several fundraisers at Yankee Stadium in the 2010s.

In the past decade, DACC’s counterpart in the state Senate, the Democratic Senate Campaign Committee, has raised nearly as much money while spending less than a tenth as much on sporting events.

All of the sports purchases were made from DACC’s “housekeeping” fund, which can accept unlimited contributions to pay for party expenses, but can’t spend money supporting specific candidates or campaigns.

Ethics watchdogs have long complained that housekeeping accounts effectively serve as party slush funds, and have called for limits on the donations that such accounts are allowed to accept.

“Housekeeping accounts are important because they allow contributions for non-political operating expenses,” said Sarah Steiner, an election law attorney in New York City. “But there isn’t much oversight, and the use of them is very flexible.”

The official head of DACC is Assemblymember Jeffrey Dinowitz, who represents the northwest Bronx. He did not respond to requests for comment. David Waterman, the group’s executive director, hung up when reached by phone. 

Dinowitz has previously minimized his role, telling New York Focus in 2024 that he’s “not the person who signs checks” for the group and that he’s not familiar with what it spends money on. 

Heastie’s influence on DACC’s spending isn’t limited to sports. For instance, despite a near-total lack of competitive elections in the Bronx, DACC has in recent years funneled nearly $700,000 to the Bronx Democratic Party, which Heastie once chaired.

Besides being a Celtics fan, Heastie, a native Bronxite, is also a hardcore Yankees supporter. So it’s not surprising that the majority of DACC’s sports spending since 2015 has gone to the Bronx’s hometown team. DACC didn’t buy Yankees tickets before Heastie became speaker, but since then, the group has paid the team over $588,000.

Since 2015, DACC has also paid over $117,000 to Wish You Were Here Productions, a company that books retired Yankees players for events. The payments have occurred every year in that span except for 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic curtailed in-person gatherings.

Last September, Heastie posted a picture with legendary Yankees outfielder Bernie Williams, who was part of four World Series-winning teams between 1996 and 2000. The same day, DACC paid Wish You Were Here Productions $19,538.

In June, Heastie posed for a photo in a Yankee Stadium suite with retired pitcher David Cone, who was Williams’s teammate for the four World Series wins, pitched Major League Baseball’s 16th-ever perfect game in 1999, and works with Wish You Were Here to schedule appearances. Days later, DACC paid the company $22,420.

“What an amazing guy,” Heastie gushed in a Facebook post showing him with Cone. The two “actually talked more about my work in the state than we did baseball,” he added.

Delaware North is a regular and generous donor to New York politicians, but according to state campaign finance records, it hasn’t provided any other free suite packages.

The company operates gambling, sports, and dining venues from Buffalo to Long Island and is a major force in state politics. From 2016 to 2023, it employed Governor Kathy Hochul’s husband, William Hochul, as a senior vice president. It spends freely on lobbyists: In each of the three years that it donated suites for Heastie’s Celtics trips, it also reported lobbying Heastie or his staff on multiple issues.

This year, it won big.

In the weeks after the 2026 Celtics game, lobbying records show meetings between Heastie himself and both Delaware North’s in-house lobbyist, Shannon Patch, and lobbyists representing the company from the firm O’Donnell & Associates. They focused on Finger Lakes Gaming & Racetrack, a slot machine parlor and horse racing track owned and operated by Delaware North, and potential changes to the high tax rate that slot parlors pay to the state.

The meetings came at the height of New York’s annual state budget process, when the governor, state Senate leader, and Assembly speaker spend weeks negotiating how the state will spend its funds. The budget is generally the only piece of legislation each year that contains tax rate changes, so it was Delaware North’s best chance to get relief for its Finger Lakes facility. 

It wasn’t obvious that Delaware North would succeed. There were no changes to the slot machine tax rate in Governor Kathy Hochul’s 2026 budget proposal, which was released in January, nor in the Senate’s and Assembly’s response proposals, which came out in early March, just days after the Celtics game.

But when lawmakers approved the final budget in late May, the Finger Lakes facility and other gaming venues around the state scored. The budget contained a significant boost to slot parlors’ commissions, allowing them to keep more money as profit and pay less in taxes. 

For Finger Lakes, this benefit could be worth over $18 million by the time it expires in mid-2029, according to New York Focus’s analysis. Some gaming facilities not owned by Delaware North may benefit even more.

Other gambling companies also lobbied on slot parlors’ tax rates this year, including MGM Resorts, the Malaysian company Genting, and Saratoga Casino Holdings. But Delaware North was the only one whose lobbyists reported meeting with Heastie personally.

Heastie isn’t the first New York politician whose sports loyalties have raised ethical questions. In 2007, former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani came under scrutiny for owning four Yankees World Series rings, which the Yankees claimed to have sold him for $16,000 — a small fraction of their market value. 

And in 2010, then-Governor David Paterson was fined $62,125 for soliciting and accepting free World Series tickets from the Yankees, and lying under oath during a subsequent investigation. 

Neither was charged with a crime.

Using campaign funds for sports tickets is an old habit for Heastie, who was elected to the Assembly in 2000. In 2005, his campaign paid the Yankees $380 and spent $1,176 on tickets to the Meadowlands football stadium.

In the mid-2010s, the Moreland Commission, which was investigating corruption in state politics, identified him as one of 28 state lawmakers whose campaign reports showed more than $10,000 going to unclear recipients, and subpoenaed the campaign’s bank account. A memo prepared by commission staff said the spending “raises questions about whether campaign funds are being used for personal expenses instead of permissible election purposes,” The New York Times reported in 2015.

The Times also found that year that Heastie’s campaign had covered restaurant bills, tabs at night clubs and karaoke bars, football games, and gas and car repair bills. Heastie was never accused of wrongdoing, and then-Governor Andrew Cuomo disbanded the anti-corruption commission in 2014. 

When Heastie became the leader of the Assembly and honorary chair of DACC, his campaign’s sports spending didn’t jump dramatically, but DACC’s did. In May 2015, just months after he grasped the speaker’s gavel, DACC paid the Yankees for the first time: $30,190.

Heastie’s political role has also gotten him discount tickets without campaign fund involvement. In 2023, he attended a Buffalo Bills home game against the Dallas Cowboys, his favorite football team. He sat in a VIP state-owned box with guests including Governor Kathy Hochul; Patrick Jenkins, a powerful lobbyist and Heastie’s close friend and college roommate; and Rebecca Lamorte, a lobbyist that Heastie was dating. Despite official guidelines that state officials pay or donate the same amount as the “general public” for their tickets, the Bills set ticket prices for the public officials at just $177, far below market cost. Heastie, who attended with Lamorte as his guest, gave $370 to charity.

In September, Heastie and Jenkins traveled to Rio de Janeiro to watch the Cowboys take on the Baltimore Ravens. It’s not clear who paid for that trip, during which the two men went to a party hosted by retired Cowboys Hall of Famer Charles Haley.

Back home in New York, DACC appears to have spent large sums to send Heastie to Mets and Knicks games. In October 2024, during the Mets off-season, DACC paid the team $77,152, listed as fundraising. On July 6, 2025, Heastie enjoyed box seats to a Subway Series game at Citi Field with four of his former colleagues in the state Assembly, including US House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and US Representative Grace Meng. 

That day, DACC paid $1,262 to Aramark Citi Field, the Mets’s food vendor. Two days after the game, Jeffries’s campaign paid Citi Field $2,724. It’s not clear how or whether Meng, whose office did not respond to requests for comment, paid for her ticket.

The other two former Assembly members who joined that day were Rubén Díaz Jr. and Marcos Crespo, both of whom are now executives at Bronx healthcare giant Montefiore Einstein. Crespo and Díaz Jr. are personal friends of Heastie’s and frequently appear in his social media posts. A Montefiore spokesperson said that both attended in their personal capacity, not as Montefiore representatives. 

Two months earlier, Heastie, an old friend of his, and a staffer went to Madison Square Garden to watch the Knicks face the Celtics. This wasn’t just any game: It was the second round of the playoffs, where individual tickets for prime seats can sell for thousands of dollars.  The previous month, DACC had paid the Garden $47,500, and on the day of the game, another $2,877.

The stakes were high. The Knicks had won the first two games of the series in Boston, and Heastie’s beloved Celtics were fighting not to fall further behind into a 0-3 hole. 

In a photo taken during a pause in the game, Heastie is standing with his back to the court, smiling for the camera. It’s not hard to understand why: The Celtics were winning. That day, they would go on to trounce the Knicks, 115-93.