You might be surprised to learn that the New York State assemblyman who helped to craft a bill designed to protect nail salon workers, which Governor Cuomo signed into law earlier this year, has now decided that this law (especially the provisions pertaining to wage fraud) is bad. Then again, you might not be so surprised when you learn that, according to the New York Times’ Sarah Maslin Nir—whose investigative reporting on the nail salon industry in New York prompted Cuomo to take those “emergency measures”—salon owners have been sending tens of thousands of dollars in political donations the assemblyman’s way.

Ron Kim, a Democrat, represents Flushing, a predominantly Asian neighborhood in Queens. Over the course of the summer, the Times reports, after championing the labor bill and celebrating its signing into law, Kim came to criticize it:

As it turns out, while Mr. Kim’s position on the law was evolving, nail salon owners, previously a largely disconnected group, were rapidly organizing. They started a surprisingly sophisticated effort to fight the law.

They argued the law was discriminatory and overly burdensome on immigrant-run businesses, and contended it unfairly lumped responsible nail salon owners in with those who are mistreating workers.

But Mr. Kim came to play a critical role in the owners’ battle, helping them strategize and connecting them to a lobbying firm where he used to work. Among the firm’s first tasks was to help with public relations around a lawsuit filed by the owners challenging the legality of portions of the law.

The Korean American Nail Salon Association and the Chinese Nail Salon Association of East America, a newly formed group, sued the governor and the State of New York in September. “He said that in order to do the lawsuit, you also need to hire a P.R. firm to do press conferences and to get the articles into newspapers and radio and TV,” the director of the Korean American Nail Salon Association, Donald Yu, said.

In July, a fund-raiser, co-hosted by the president of the Korean American Nail Salon Association, Sangho Lee, donated nearly $25,000 to Kim. Subsequently, Lee said, the industry has raised another $60,000 for the assemblyman.

In fairness, Kim has returned at least $7,000 in donations from nail association groups. (“I didn’t want to give any impression to anybody that I did this because they were at one point donating to my campaign...even though I don’t think that there was anything illegal in what that was.”) However, he has kept at least $17,000 in contributions from individual salon owners:

In an interview, Mr. Kim said he did not know the affiliations of the industry donors, even though several donations in July were from salons themselves, and labeled in records, in one example, as “Think Pink Nails I Inc.” In response to questions, Mr. Kim said that his staff would be looking into whether more money should be returned.

Kim now claims ignorance that the labor law was about nail salons at all. “I genuinely did not think they were applying it to only nail salons,” he said. Ostensibly, Kim believed that the bill also applied to hair dressers, waxing parlors, and other “appearance enhancement” businesses.

“I am confused that he is confused,” the governor’s chief counsel, Alphonso B. David, said, going on to suggest that anyone who would claim ignorance of the bill’s contents and application “has either been blind to the materials we have issued, or is actively disingenuous.”

Hmm!

Photo via AP Images. Contact the author of this post: brendan.oconnor@gawker.com.