Liu's "Computer Savvy" Consultant

Sometimes, it can be more interesting to look at where the money is spent, rather than who raised the most.

The New York City Campaign Finance Board released a [summary] of campaign activity for the 2009 citywide elections today, and possibly the biggest news is that Queens City Councilman John Liu has raised more than $1 million for an as yet undecided citywide campaign.

A look at Liu's expenditures also reveals that he has paid out a significant sum to consultant Chung Seto, the former executive director of the New York State Democratic Committee. Seto is perhaps best known for her role as campaign manager for C. Virginia Field's mayoral campaign in 2005, which saw her steward the campaign through the self-inflicted wound that the photo here represents: campaign literature featuring obviously photoshopped Asians dropped into the scene. Read more [here] and [here](http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F40611FA3C540C738DDDAE0894DD404482) (subscription required).

The incident, which saw the push for diversity in political campaigns pushed to a ridiculous extreme, more or less represented the end of Field's already struggling campaign and started a "he said, she said" war over who was to blame between Seto and direct mail guru Joe Mercurio. A full discussion of the controversy, with both Seto and Mercurio represented, can be found [here], starting on page 34.