The 11 News I-Team has dug through campaign donations that flowed to Gov. Martin O'Malley at the time the big Convention Center hotel in Baltimore was being debated and approved.

While the deal has turned out to be a burden for taxpayers, it seemed to have helped O'Malley in his bid for governor, I-Team lead investigative reporter Jayne Miller said.

The 2005 debate over building the Hilton Hotel at the Convention Center was controversial and heated. Critics argued against it, but O'Malley pushed it through. In doing so, campaign finance records showed it helped build his nest egg as he launched his run for governor.

"At that time he was a hero -- a big hero with us for doing that," said Ernie Grecco, the local leader of the AFL-CIO. Because O'Malley pushed for the city to own and operate the hotel, the city could also call key shots, including having union labor build the hotel and union workers run it, Miller said. The union checks started flowing as the hotel deal neared approval.

In a three-week span in early summer 2005, O'Malley's campaign got a $4,000 donation from United Food and Commercial Workers, $1,000 from a plumbers and steamfitters union, $1,000 from the steelworkers' union and $500 from the ironworkers' union, financial records show.

O'Malley got an even bigger bonus with the message his hotel deal sent, Grecco said. "When a politician does that for a couple different unions, the other unions see that – the steelworkers, the machinists, AFSCME. If he's going to do that for organized labor, then they've got a pretty good chance," he said.

The health care workers union, Service Employees International, gave O'Malley $5,839 in 2005, the records show. Hotel and restaurant employees gave $2,000, communications workers gave $5,000, and the carpenters union gave $1,000.

Businesses involved in the hotel deal contributed, too. Colorado-based Hensel Phelps, which was part of a City Hall news conference in September 2005, was picked by the city to build the hotel. It beat out another bidder, both of which donated to O'Malley's campaign. Losing bidder Faulkner USA donated $2,000 in 2005. Hensel Phelps and one of its executives each gave $4,000 -- the maximum allowed -- in June that year, records showed.

Checksalso came from local companies that got part of the construction job, Miller reported. Four small companies donated a total of $11,000 to O'Malley's campaign, and $4,000 came from a company related to Ron Lipscomb, a contractor and developer who was former disgraced Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon's ex-boyfriend.

More donations rolled in from McGuire Woods, the law firm the city paid to oversee the sale of the bonds that paid for the hotel. From late November 2004 through mid-2006, the firm and one of its lawyers contributed $5,500 to O'Malley's campaign.

"It was a huge project for him," said Marta Mossburg, of the Maryland Public Policy Institute. She is a critic of the hotel deal.

"He doesn't have to pay for this -- taxpayers do. So what he does is give this huge project to people who are going to vote for him and then bring more money into his campaign," she explained to Miller.

Before the hotel plan, O'Malley received no contributions from plumbers unions, according to campaign records. Since the deal, they have contributed nearly $39,000.

"I don't believe anyone would argue the reason for building that hotel had to do with trying to find a way to raise more campaign dollars," O'Malley told Miller recently. "Whatever contributions I have received are all public. They've long been public. They were public years ago when this hotel was built."

The 2005 contributions were actually unknown to the public that year, Miller reported. Due to the state's reporting schedule, nothing was disclosed until the following year, well after the hotel deal was debated and approved.