The Trump-backed Republican running for governor of New York has funnelled more than $4.2 million of campaign cash to an advertising agency that ran the 2017 ad campaign for Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).
The campaign of Bruce Blakeman, who is Jewish, also paid a firm founded by a convicted fraudster, the Daily Mail can reveal.
Blakeman’s campaign spent more than $4.2 million on online ads by Harris Media, filings from the New York State Board of Elections show.
Harris Media was responsible for the AfD’s 2017 federal ad campaign, which portrayed long-time chancellor Angela Merkel as a terrorist, DER SPIEGEL reported.
One Harris Media employee reportedly also pitched the slogan ‘Germany for Germans’ to the AfD, which was rejected by a party staffer for being too nationalistic.
The agency worked for the party in the same year that Björn Höcke, the AfD’s leader in Thuringia, launched an infamous attack on Germany’s culture of Holocaust remembrance.
He called Berlin’s Holocaust memorial a ‘memorial of shame’ and demanded a ‘180-degree turn in the politics of memory’. Even Alice Weidel, now the party’s co-leader, said the speech echoed the vocabulary of Adolf Hitler.
Harris Media has also worked for UKIP in Britain and Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud in Israel. In the US its clients have included Senator Ted Cruz, Sarah Palin and the pro-Trump Right for America PAC.
Republican Bruce Blakeman paid more than $4.2 million for ‘fundraising’ and ‘online ads’ to Harris Media, which pitched a campaign slogan for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) considered too nationalistic by its own members
The Trump-backed candidate also paid more than $11,600 split into 800 installments to the fundraising firm of a convicted fraudster, Jack Daly, who pled guilty to committing mail fraud and lying to the Federal Election Commision after scamming elderly voters and veterans
Daly was sentenced to four months in prison and two years of supervised release in 2023
Blakeman’s campaign also gave more than $11,600 to Better Mousetrap Digital split into almost 800 payments between April and October 2026 for ‘fundraising.’
The firm was founded in 2023 by Jack Daly, who in the same year was sentenced to prison for four months and two years of supervised release over the creation of a scam political action committee (PAC), according to the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Wisconsin.
Daly’s PAC raised more than $1.6 million by telling donors their money would persuade a sheriff in Wisconsin to run for the US Senate.
Investigators found Daly falsely suggested Clarke was likely to run and lied about his own role in the PAC.
‘Daly targeted vulnerable victims, including a woman with Alzheimer’s and elderly veterans,’ a press release from the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Wisconsin said.
Daly pleaded guilty to conspiring to commit mail fraud and to lie to the Federal Election Commission.
The same year in which Harris Media did ad campaign work for the AfD, the party’s state leader Höcke held a speech that resembled ‘vocabulary from Adolf Hitler,’ AfD co-chair Alice Weidel said. Blakeman, who is Jewish, decided to commission the same agency that did not shy away from working with Germany’s far-right to do his own ad campaign
Kathy Hochul is running for re-election as New York Governor on November 3. The Cook Political Report currently ranks the state’s gubernatorial battle as Democratic leaning
Last year he tried to have his conviction thrown out, claiming his previous lawyer had given him ‘substantively incorrect advice.’ Judge JP Stadtmueller denied the motion. Daly’s supervised release ended in June.
Better Mousetrap advertises itself as ‘the premier digital fundraising consulting firm for Republicans’ with experience ‘spanning from state house campaigns to the White House.’
It also lists Donald Trump for President, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the Republican National Committee among its clients.
Reached by phone, a spokesperson at Blakeman’s campaign headquarters told the Daily Mail they don’t have ‘anything to say.’ The Daily Mail also emailed the campaign for comment.
Blakeman trails Hochul by 14 points in the latest Quinnipiac poll ahead of the November 3 election and the Cook Political Report still ranks New York’s gubernatorial battle as Democratic leaning.
New York State Democratic Party spokesperson Addison Dick told the Daily Mail: ‘Bruce Blakeman paying millions to these people to craft his campaign message fits right in with his never-ending embrace of far-right extremists.
‘Blakeman has more than earned his “100% MAGA” title, and New Yorkers are about to reject him for it.’
The Daily Mail contacted Harris Media, Better Mousetrap and Daly’s attorney for comment.
