Hochul Amassed a Campaign Fortune. Here's Who it Came From.

Last November, when many of Manhattan’s skyscrapers sat half-empty, Gov. Kathy Hochul made a high-stakes wager on New York City’s commercial real estate industry: She vowed to move ahead with a marquee plan to restore Pennsylvania Station and erect new office towers around it.

For Manhattan’s mega-rich real estate developers, the announcement signaled Ms. Hochul’s support for the kind of grand projects that foretell a windfall, and some found a concrete way of showing their approval to the new governor.

In the weeks that followed, Ms. Hochul’s campaign received checks for $69,700, the legal limit, from some of the city’s biggest real estate executives, including Steven Roth of Vornado Realty Trust, which is positioned to directly benefit from the project that he once called a “Promised Land.” Other checks trickled in from developers, builders, engineers and even some who opposed it.

The campaign contributions flowed from a broader spigot of cash turned on last fall by New York’s varied special interests, from real estate and building trades to hospitals, labor unions and gaming companies, directed toward Ms. Hochul’s election campaign.

The donations included $200,000 in checks from the family behind a major construction firm with millions in state contracts, $47,000 that was tied to a gaming giant leaning on the state to expand legal gambling, and $41,000 traced back to a single Albany lobbyist.

The funds helped Ms. Hochul, a moderate Democrat who unexpectedly ascended to office last August, assemble a record-setting $21.6 million war chest, and claim a steep advantage heading into June’s Democratic primary and November’s general election.

People and industries with financial interests before the state have long been reliable donors to top elected officials, showering them with money that, at times, can pose ethical and legal problems.

There has been no evidence that the contributions from Mr. Roth and other developers were directly related to Ms. Hochul’s Penn Station plan, but those and others may still prompt scrutiny about her decision-making as she negotiates the state’s $216 billion budget.

“It’s not like this isn’t a problem, but it is a well-trod path,” said Blair Horner, the executive director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, which pushes for tighter campaign finance laws. “She’s just running through it instead of walking.”

More than 95 percent of the funds she collected came from donors who gave $1,000 or more, according to a review of publicly available campaign filings, despite the Hochul campaign’s claims of success in pulling in small donations. Dozens of people wrote the governor checks for the legal maximum.

Jerrel Harvey, a spokesman for Ms. Hochul’s campaign, pointed to contributions from every county in the state and said that the campaign was proud that her agenda “has resonated with a diverse coalition of supporters.”

“In keeping with the governor’s commitment to maintain high ethical standards, campaign contributions have no influence on government decisions,” he said.

Many of her donors are fixtures in New York politics and were stalwart supporters of her predecessor, Andrew M. Cuomo, who collected tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions by often using the same tactics Ms. Hochul is employing. But where Mr. Cuomo had years to build those relationships and fill his campaign coffers, Ms. Hochul has done so in a matter on months.

Few industries gave more — and frequently in large amounts — than real estate, where large developers are keenly watching how Ms. Hochul will not only approach large, state-funded capital projects but the future of the state’s affordable housing law.

Douglas Durst, who oversees a multibillion dollar real estate empire and chairs the influential Real Estate Board of New York, gave her $55,000. The family of Scott Rechler, a top donor to Mr. Cuomo whose RXR Realty controls millions of square feet of commercial real estate, gave $60,000. Members of the Rudin, Tishman and Speyer families — whose names dot buildings across the city — collectively contributed more than $400,000. Top executives at Related Companies, the group behind Hudson Yards, maxed out.

The new governor, who has cast herself as pro-business and greenlighted a rash of expensive capital projects amid an influx of federal funds, also quickly began collecting funds from the state’s construction industry. Hundreds of thousands of dollars came from unions, trade groups and executives representing bricklayers, sheet metal workers, engineers, elevator constructors, machine operators, construction companies and even a law firm that specializes in construction accidents.

Hospitals, nursing homes and other health groups, who scored significant victories in Ms. Hochul’s budget, including retention bonuses for frontline health workers, gave hundreds of thousands of dollars, as well. Over two days in October and December, for example, more than 60 LLCs associated with nursing or rehabilitation homes all gave $1,000 or more apiece.

Three family members associated with the Haugland Group, a Long Island construction and energy firm with lucrative state contracts at Kennedy Airport and with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, gave more than $200,000 altogether.

The political arm of the gaming giant, Genting, which operates facilities in New York State, contributed $47,100. Gaming companies have pushed the state to expand legal gambling for years and now stand to benefit from Ms. Hochul’s plan to accelerate the opening of three new casinos, likely in the New York City area.

Two PACs associated with the influential Hotel Trades Council, a group whose members will benefit from Ms. Hochul’s plan to pump hundreds of millions of dollars into the tourism industry, gave nearly $150,000.

In total, Ms. Hochul took in $3 million from hundreds of political action committees set up to influence state policy on matters as broad as Medicare spending and as narrow as winter recreation. The New York State Snowmobile PAC, a group dedicated to “educating the State Legislature and administration on the magnitude snowmobiling has on the state economy,” wrote a $5,000 check.

Many of the donations were steered into Ms. Hochul’s account by Albany lobbying firms, some of which either hosted events for the governor or directly contributed to her campaign. Among them was David N. Weinraub, one of Albany’s leading lobbyists who contributed $25,000 of his own money, hosted a fund-raiser and directed a $16,000 in contributions from a PAC associated with his firm, Brown and Weinraub.

Large checks also came in from a rash of well-known Democratic donors from business and entertainment, like the comedian Jerry Seinfeld, the former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, and a founder of LinkedIn, Reid Hoffman, who each gave $50,000 or more. Barry Diller, the media mogul, and his wife, the fashion designer Diane von Furstenberg, gave the governor $75,000 between them.

Some were less well known. Ms. Hochul received $67,500 from John P. Courtney, a retired Florida man who is also her father.

Ms. Hochul’s spending was more modest, according to the filings. With no costly outlays for television or radio ads, the campaign spent around $2.3 million, leaving Ms. Hochul with more than $21 million in cash in the bank.

Most of the funds went to paying staff and raising yet more money, including $228,000 directed to Authentic Campaigns, a firm that manages Ms. Hochul’s digital fund-raising, and another $70,000 to Tucker Green Consulting, the governor’s primary high-dollar fund-raiser. Ms. Hochul paid the Global Strategy Group, a research firm that also worked for her predecessor, $123,000 to conduct polls.

Some spending was glamorous. The governor dropped $31,986.10 at the El San Juan Hotel in Puerto Rico, where she hosted a lavish oceanside soiree in November during the New York political world’s annual junket to San Juan. And the weekend before she took office, she charged $19,000 on the campaign’s accounts to charter a private jet between political events in the Hamptons and Buffalo, her hometown.

Other expenses, less so. Ms. Hochul has also spent $4,500 on thank you gifts, mostly in the form of flowers, and $720 on Covid testing.

Dana Rubinstein and Katie Glueck contributed reporting.