Hochul Outpaces Foes by Raising Record-High $21.6 Million for Campaign

Five months after ascending to New York’s highest office, Gov. Kathy Hochul plans to submit filings on Tuesday that show her election campaign has already raised nearly $21.6 million, a record-smashing sum that positions her as the prohibitive favorite to win a full term as governor this fall, and likely the most dominant figure in New York State politics.

The filings were expected to show that Ms. Hochul, a Democrat from Buffalo who is the first woman to lead the state, took in roughly $140,000 per day, on average, between her swearing-in last August and last week. She has more than $21 million in cash on hand, according to her campaign.

Ms. Hochul’s fund-raising strength has already helped drive her most competitive foil, Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, from the race entirely, and likely played a role in the decision by Bill de Blasio, the former New York City mayor, to announce Tuesday morning that he would forgo a run for governor after months of flirting with it.

But the source of some of her donations may also prove to be a liability for Ms. Hochul, complicating the image of a governor who took office in the shadow of Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s sexual harassment scandal with a pledge to enact ethics reforms and bring about “a new era of transparency” in Albany.

Behind the stunning sums are expected to be a cast of New York’s most well-financed special interest groups, in many cases the same multimillionaires, labor unions and business groups whose checks have bankrolled Democratic politicians, including Mr. Cuomo, for decades and pulled some of them into an ethical morass.

Albany lobbying firms jockeyed to hold private fund-raisers for the governor within weeks of her taking office, and have steered clients with business before the state to do the same. Many of the state’s largest landlords have cut five-figure checks. So have builders reliant on massive state-funded infrastructure projects.

As if to underscore the threat, the campaign finance reports were due the same day that Ms. Hochul plans to reveal her first budget as governor, a plan that is expected to swell to around $200 billion and include proposals sought by politically active hospitals, the state’s largest health care union, and even the trade group representing liquor stores.

A poll of the race released by Siena College on Tuesday showed Ms. Hochul with a commanding lead ahead of June’s Democratic primary and relatively strong reviews from voters for her attempts to overhaul the governor’s office, jump-start New York’s lagging economic recovery, and manage a resurgent outbreak of the coronavirus.

Forty-six percent of Democrats said that they would support Ms. Hochul in the primary, compared to 11 percent who said they would back Jumaane Williams, the city’s left-leaning public advocate, and just six percent who said they would support Representative Thomas Suozzi, a Long Island moderate. Twelve percent had said they would support Mr. de Blasio, a progressive with eight years’ worth of experience running the nation’s largest city, before he announced that he would not run.

Mr. Williams had not yet disclosed his fund-raising figures as of Tuesday morning. But Mr. Suozzi, who is aggressively challenging Ms. Hochul from her right flank, plans to report on Tuesday that he raised more than $3 million since entering the race in November, and transferred another $2 million from his congressional campaign account, according to Kim Devlin, his senior adviser.

Though he trails in the polls, the funds indicated that Mr. Suozzi would have the resources he needs to mount a primary challenge in the near term, and his campaign said it was prepared to announce a slew of new hires.

And Republicans, benefiting from a national backlash against Democrats, believe they have a shot at winning a statewide race — something they have not done in New York since 2002.

Representative Lee Zeldin, a Long Island Republican, appears to be his party’s current front-runner and was expected to announce a multimillion fund-raising haul on Tuesday. He is competing against Rob Astorino, a former Westchester County executive, and Andrew Giuliani, the son of Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York City mayor.

The candidates, and any political groups supporting them financially, are required to file a detailed list of their contributions and expenditures with the state’s Board of Elections by the end of Tuesday. Several campaigns, like Ms. Hochul’s, previewed top-line numbers before submitting the paperwork, making it difficult to assess where their money was coming from or how it was being spent.

Ms. Hochul’s campaign, for instance, initially trumpeted that more than 87 percent of contributions had come from New York State. But it did not indicate the average size of donations or how many were under $200, numbers that typically help gauge the level of grass-roots support for a campaign.

Under New York law, Ms. Hochul’s campaign can accept up to $69,700 from a single person, among the highest limits in the country for states that regulate campaign cash.

Those limits, along with a compressed campaign calendar and Ms. Hochul’s business-friendly image, helped her cruise past high-water marks set by her predecessors, including Mr. Cuomo.

Ms. Hochul’s fund-raising pace easily surpassed the previous record for a single filing period that has stood since 2002, when Gov. George E. Pataki, a Republican running for a third term, raised $12.8 million in the first six months of the year.

Just as instructive is a comparison to Gov. David A. Paterson, a Democrat who, like Ms. Hochul, unexpectedly ascended to the governorship after the downfall of his predecessor. In the four months following Mr. Spitzer’s resignation in 2008, Mr. Paterson collected $3.3 million for his election, a sum considered unexpectedly formidable at the time. (Mr. Paterson dropped out of the race in February 2010, less than a week after formally announcing his candidacy.)

Ms. Hochul raised large portions of the money at the dozens of fund-raisers held across the state this fall and winter, where she often walked away with $250,000 in pledges after an hour or two of conversation with donors.

The campaign’s fund-raising tactics have already landed the governor in trouble, particularly after Ms. Hochul’s public schedules suggested that she had used state-owned aircraft to travel to private meetings with donors or other political events without reimbursing taxpayers.

After The Albany Times-Union identified several flights that appeared to have run afoul of state ethics law, prompting criticism from her rivals, the governor’s spokeswoman said the campaign would reimburse the state for some of the costs of the trips and vowed stricter ethical controls.