Murphy Accuses Harckham of Corruption Link in Wild Campaign Week

State Sen. Terrence Murphy renewed his attempts to link his Democratic rival Peter Harckham to a convicted former aide of Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

On Monday, Murphy’s campaign released testimony from the corruption trial of Joseph Percoco last winter that revealed that Harckham spoke to four area school superintendents about getting Percoco’s wife a teacher’s job in 2012.

Percoco was convicted in March of taking $320,000 in bribes from businessmen, which involved payments to his wife, Lisa. He was sentenced in September to six years in prison.

“Peter Harckham bent over backwards to help his political kingpin, who it turns out, was on the take,” said Murphy’s campaign spokesman Martha Ruiz Jiménez. “He will say and do anything to hide the fact that he was an eyewitness to the pervasive corruption and fraud that as Preet Bharara said, ‘infected state development projects,’ where bids ‘were rigged, the results preordained; companies got rich and the public got bamboozled.”

Harckham’s testified that he first met Percoco in 2002, when Harckham was Bedford Democratic Committee chairman. Harckham later moved to South Salem and Percoco bought a house in 2011 about a half-mile down the road. That’s when Percoco reached out to Harckham.

He also testified that he contacted superintendents in Katonah-Lewisboro, Somers, Bedford and Yorktown.

“Joe first called me and said he was looking up in that area, and I offered to be a resource if he needed help,” Harckham said on the witness stand. “And then a while later, I got a call that they had bought a house in South Salem and his wife Lisa was looking for a teaching job closer to their new home, and did I have some connections that I could help introduce them to.”

Harckham’s campaign manager Lloyd Trufelman dismissed the Murphy campaign’s attempt to draw a connection between the Democratic challenger and Percoco as a desperate move. He said the Westchester Fair Campaign Practices Committee cited Murphy’s attempt to link Harckham’s jobs with two state authorities between mid-2015 and April 2018 with Percoco as “corruption by association.”

“This comes five days after the Fair Campaign Practices Committee found that all this about Percoco and Pete is a lie,” Trufelman said. “He went and challenged that and they ruled (Murphy) was definitely lying.”

But Jimenez said there is a tangled web that involves Harckham.

“Peter Harckham has so many intimate connections to entities involved in or convicted of the Percoco pay-to-play that it is nearly impossible to keep track of,” she said. “He worked to obtain special favors for them and it seems was also the beneficiary of such favors himself. Wouldn’t we all love to have a neighbor like that?”

Monday’s accusation was the latest in a series of spats and bizarre occurrences as the race enters the home stretch. First, a 38-year-old Peekskill man was arrested for arson after he set a Murphy lawn sign on fire on Route 6 in Cortlandt the previous weekend.

Then the Murphy campaign accused Harckham of unlawfully surveilling his district office in Shrub Oak after a deer camera was found affixed to a nearby utility pole.

Trufelman said the camera was set up to try and catch the culprit or culprits who have been stealing Harckham’s lawn signs throughout the district, particularly the “No Murphy/Trump” signs, one of which was placed near the district office. Yorktown police determined the camera was not filming the building.

“Trump-Murphy signs are getting stolen as fast as they are getting put up and it’s a lot of money,” Trufelman said.

“We’ve actually filed a police report about it but there’s nothing you can do unless you can prove it.”

Then Murphy’s campaign posted a press release on its website equating the Harckham campaign’s camera to last week’s mailing of pipe bombs around the country.

“Amid news of a potential terrorist ring or serial bomber mailing suspicious packages to elected officials, serious concerns were raised over the installation of a spy camera by State Senate candidate Peter Harckham’s campaign, just days after an individual was arrested for arson after burning lawn signs from the campaign of State Senator Terrence Murphy,” Murphy’s statement read.

Harckham immediately fired back.

“Senator Terrence Murphy’s statement desperately trying to connect me to today’s mail bomb attacks within our district and around the country is disgraceful,” he said in a statement. “In the midst of a serious emergency, his response is to issue a false, slanderous and incoherent, conspiracy-laden missive trying to leverage this act of domestic terrorism to help his re- election effort. Apparently there’s no level he won’t stoop to in this campaign.”

The following day the post was removed from Murphy’s website.