His Dear Friends  More than a few local politicians had reason
to cringe last week when a photo of one of the metro area's
biggest campaign donors showed up on the New York Post's front
page alongside the headline "SEX TRAP." New Jersey real estate
tycoon Charles Kushner, federal prosecutors charge, used hookers
to try to blackmail potential witnesses against him in a tax
fraud case.  Before that story broke, Kushner was someone
politicians used their sharpest elbows to get next to. A golden-
giver with the deepest of pockets, Kushner was someone whose
generosity was mostly aimed at Democrats. The hooker-bust
stories focused on a whopping $369,000 that Kushner funneled,
via family and aides, to his friend and patron, New Jersey
governor James McGreevey. But the governor is only the most
recent of Kushner's political projects. In October 2002, he cut
a personal check for $1 million to the national Democratic
Campaign Committee; a dozen other checks written by family and
business aides from 2001 to 2003 added an