The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee dropped $813 for an Air France ticket on June 21, 2021 — just weeks before the committee chairman jetted off for a fabulous vacation in France and Italy.
New York Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-Cold Spring) began posting photos of his vacation with husband Randy Florke to Instagram in mid-August.
The DCCC is funded through donations and is tasked with electing Democratic House candidates and helping incumbents keep their jobs. Campaign finance law forbids DCCC funds from being used for personal use.
The pair posed for a smiling picture together in Nice on Aug 10 with the city’s historic lighthouse in the background.
Three days later Maloney stood with a shirtless Florke surfside. “Daddy stop teasing me!” reads a top comment. More photos indicate the pair stopped by the Villa et Jardins Ephrussi de Rothschild in Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat for the wedding of Haley Plourde-Cole, a frequent donor to his campaign.
“Sean and Randy have been close friends since I worked on Sean’s first campaign as a college student in 2006, and as a staffer serving two governors. I am honored they were able to join us for our wedding,” Plourde-Cole told The Post.
Other Instagram posts on the trip later placed them in Puglia, Italy, where they visited the art studio of Sudesh Prasad.
“Thank you Sudesh for allowing us a peak at your latest work,” Florke said in an Aug 15 post.
A rep for the DCCC told The Post the Air France ticket was purchased “to conduct DCCC business with Americans living overseas” and that they didn’t pay for Maloney’s trip. The committee, however, declined to offer any specifics about what DCCC business was happening in Europe or who used the plane ticket.
“It’s something that should raise red flags,” Ann Ravel, a former Democratic chairwoman of the Federal Election Commission told The Post. She laughed at the committee’s cryptic explanation.
“There are expatriates all over the world. They should be flying to San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. There are a ton of expats there,” she said. “I just think it would be incumbent on them to perhaps be more transparent about it.”
Maloney — whose tenure has been marred by stumbles — has an uphill battle to save Democrats’ fragile House majority. Moderates facing tough GOP opponents were unamused by the expenditure.
“Buying flights to France seems pretty incongruous with our goals of protecting difficult seats and protecting our majority, especially given the reporting that some battleground members have been threatened with having their DCCC support pulled just for working to get an infrastructure bill passed,” one staffer to an embattled House moderate griped to The Post.
The DCCC has more than $49 million in its coffers, their most recent filings show.