Gov. Kathy Hochul has used her fund-raising edge to spend more than $1.5 million a week since Labor Day on an aggressive television ad campaign.Since she took office last year, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s voracious fund-raising apparatus has been a source of curiosity and concern among various factions of New York’s political and business elite.But with just a month left in one of the nation’s marquee governor’s races, it has given Ms. Hochul an increasingly clear payoff: a financial advantage over her Republican opponent, Representative Lee Zeldin, as she seeks to become the first woman to be elected governor of New York.Ms. Hochul raised $11.1 million, or about $133,000 a day on average, from mid-July to early October, according to campaign filings made public late Friday that showed numerous high-dollar events in the Hamptons and Manhattan. She will enter the homestretch of the race with nearly $10.9 million in cash at her disposal — two and a half times as much money as Mr. Zeldin.As independent polls show Ms. Hochul, a Buffalo Democrat, with a fluctuating lead, she has poured most of the cash into an unrelenting ad campaign to try to highlight Mr. Zeldin’s opposition to abortion rights and support for former President Donald J. Trump. It is not cheap: Records show Ms. Hochul has spent more than $1.5 million a week since Labor Day to blanket New Yorkers’ televisions and smartphones.Mr. Zeldin’s fund-raising total represents a fraction of the kinds of campaign hauls being put together by other Republicans running for governor in big states this fall as the party tries to make major gains nationwide.But unlike other recent Republican nominees in New York, Mr. Zeldin has seemed to put together enough money to remain competitive in the race’s final weeks. His campaign reported raising $6.4 million during the three-month period, including large hauls at events featuring Mr. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Mr. Zeldin has roughly $4.5 million in cash, a figure that surprised some Democrats.“Lee Zeldin is raising enough money to run a more competitive race than the last few Republican gubernatorial nominees,” said Evan Stavisky, a leading New York Democratic strategist. “However, and this is a big however, money isn’t the only reason Republicans haven’t won a statewide election in 20 years, and Zeldin is still going to be vastly outspent by Kathy Hochul.”There are more than twice as many registered Democrats than Republicans in the state — a margin that underscores Mr. Zeldin’s challenge.Notably, a pair of Republican super PACs, largely funded by a single conservative billionaire cosmetics heir, have stepped in to help narrow the financial gap: The two groups, Safe Together NY and Save our State NY, have collectively spent close to $4 million in recent weeks on ads echoing Mr. Zeldin’s attacks on Ms. Hochul, according to AdImpact, an ad tracking firm. The ads accuse the governor of being soft on crime and weak on the economy.Unlike campaign committees, the groups can accept unlimited donations, allowing wealthy individuals to exercise huge amounts of influence on the race. In the case of the governor’s race, Ronald S. Lauder, the cosmetics heir, has already committed close to $4.5 million to the two PACs, a number that is expected to grow in the coming weeks.Ms. Hochul, who took office last year after the resignation of Andrew M. Cuomo, does not have a similar super PAC aiding her campaign. But she has raised millions of dollars from wealthy donors with business interests before the state, an arrangement that, while common among her predecessors, has nonetheless drawn scrutiny from good governance watchdogs who worry that it is creating conflicts of interest.Though Ms. Hochul’s campaign touted that 60 percent of its contributions were for less than $200, the vast majority of her funds came in far larger increments, including more than 100 contributions of $25,000 or more, the filings showed.More than $2 million came directly from corporations, unions and political action committees, including Eli Lilly, Lyft, Charter Communications and Pfizer. The personal injury law firm Gair, Gair, Conason and the medical malpractice firm Kramer, Dillof, Livingston & Moore each funneled $100,000 to the campaign.Ms. Hochul also received large contributions from members of prominent New York families who have supported Mr. Zeldin. Ronald Lauder’s nephew, William P. Lauder, for example, gave Ms. Hochul $40,000. Haim Chera, a real estate executive whose family hosted the Zeldin fund-raiser attended by Mr. Trump, gave her $47,100. Mr. Chera is an executive at Vornado Realty Trust, a colossal firm that stands to benefit from Ms. Hochul’s plan to redevelop the area around Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan.Mr. Zeldin’s campaign took in about a third as many large checks, but it is benefiting from special interests, too. Two PACs associated with the Rent Stabilization Association, a pro-landlord trade group, gave a combined $89,000. Arnold Gumowitz, a real estate developer who has given to Ms. Hochul but is fighting the Penn Station project, contributed $47,100. Altogether, close to $500,000 came in from corporations, PACs and other special interests groups.Despite lending his presence to a fund-raiser, Mr. Trump has not cut a check to Mr. Zeldin, a longtime ally, nor has any group the former president controls.Other Republicans seeking to challenge statewide Democratic officeholders in New York are more clearly struggling to assemble the resources they need to compete.While Letitia James, the Democratic attorney general, reported $2.75 million in cash on hand, her opponent, Michael Henry, had just $146,000. Thomas P. DiNapoli, the Democratic comptroller, reported having $1,998,366 on hand, roughly 630 times as much as the $3,173.14 in the bank account of his opponent, Paul Rodriguez.Despite the millions being spent, the race for governor of New York is actually shaping up to be relatively cheap compared to other, more competitive contests in big states like Texas, Georgia and Wisconsin, which could cost well over $100 million each. In Georgia, the candidates for governor announced raising a total of nearly $65 million during the last three months. More

A South Texas community, mostly made up of SpaceX employees, voted 212 to 6 in favor of establishing a new city called Starbase.Members of a South Texas community that has served as the hub of Elon Musk’s rocket launch company, SpaceX, voted on Saturday to formally establish a new city called Starbase, fulfilling one of Mr. Musk’s long-held dreams.All but six of the 218 people who voted supported incorporating the city of Starbase, according to Cameron County, which administered the vote.There were 283 eligible voters, said Remi Garza, the elections administrator for the county.The community, known to locals as Boca Chica, covers about 1.5 square miles on a spit of land that brushes up against the Mexican border.SpaceX broke ground in the area in 2014, and it has since become the company’s central hub and launch site, as well as home to hundreds of its employees.On his social media platform, X, Mr. Musk has referred to the area as Starbase more than a dozen times in the past four years.“My primary home is literally a ~$50k house in Boca Chica / Starbase that I rent from SpaceX,” Mr. Musk wrote in June 2021. “It’s kinda awesome though.”In December, people living around the company offices and launch site filed a petition to officially establish the city of Starbase, Texas. More

As Kamala Harris visited a church in Detroit on the last Sunday of the campaign, Donald J. Trump told supporters that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House after the 2020 election.It was the final Sunday of the campaign for president, and Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald J. Trump were continuing to race across battleground states in their search for support. But in message and demeanor, Ms. Harris, the Democrat, and Mr. Trump, the Republican, could not have been more different.Ms. Harris began her day at a Black church in Detroit where she told congregants that the nation was “ready to bend the arc of history toward justice,” invoking the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Mr. Trump began his at an outdoor rally at an airport in Pennsylvania where, his shoulders slumped and his voice subdued, he threw out his prepared remarks to tell supporters that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House after his loss to President Biden in 2020.The dueling scenes offered a contrast that captured just how differently these two candidates were using the final days of a campaign that a last round of polls suggested remained as tight as it was when their contest began in August.Mr. Trump went to Lititz, Pa., where, after announcing he was discarding his prepared speech so the “truth” could come out, he proceeded to deliver dark, rambling and at times angry remarks in which he attacked polls, assailed Democrats as “demonic,” and suggested he would not mind if reporters were shot.“To get to me, somebody would have to shoot through fake news, and I don’t mind that much, ’cause, I don’t mind. I don’t mind,” he said as he called attention to the bulletproof glass barriers that have surrounded him at outdoor rallies since he was shot in July in an assassination attempt in Butler, Pa.Vice President Kamala Harris stopped at a Black-owned barbershop in Pontiac, Mich., on Sunday.Emily Elconin for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

According to the latest campaign filing numbers, there is little question that Representative Lee Zeldin faces an extreme uphill battle in his effort to unseat Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York.Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, has a better than seven to one fund-raising advantage over Mr. Zeldin, a conservative Republican congressman from Long Island, heading into their general election showdown.Ms. Hochul reported $11.7 million in the bank as of mid-July, compared with just $1.57 million for Mr. Zeldin, reports filed late Friday show.But perhaps the starkest example of the governor’s fund-raising advantage — and, perhaps, her confidence of victory in November — was the nearly $1 million that her campaign transferred to the state Democratic Party, more than half of it before she won her primary election in late June.The $950,000 transfer outpaced the little under $900,000 that Mr. Zeldin reported in the latest period (June 14-July 11), about 60 percent from donors who gave in chunks of $5,000.The largest single source of contributions listed on Mr. Zeldin’s financial disclosure report wasn’t from an individual donor, however — it was from unitemized donations, which have no names attached.Campaigns are not required to report the names of donors who give no more than $99. Many campaigns do so anyway; Ms. Hochul, for example, has listed no unitemized donations in reports going back to August of last year.Representative Lee Zeldin accepting the Republican nomination for governor in February. Johnny Milano for The New York TimesMr. Zeldin has taken the opposite tack. In the last year, the congressman has reported at least $897,636 from unitemized donors, representing 10 percent of the total haul for the Zeldin for New York campaign committee during that time, records show. Mr. Zeldin’s campaign did not immediately respond to questions from The New York Times.In the latest report, Mr. Zeldin reported receiving $72,546 from unitemized donors.Ms. Hochul raised over $2 million from mid-June through the beginning of last week, about $1.8 million (86 percent) of which came in chunks of $5,000 or greater. She shattered previous records for a single state reporting period in January, and she has far outpaced her rivals in both parties ever since.Ms. Hochul’s campaign is hoping to raise as much as $70 million for her race at a time when Democrats nationally are facing headwinds because of sky-high inflation and President Biden’s sagging approval ratings. She has already accumulated half that ambitious amount, with about $35 million raised since she was sworn in as governor on Aug. 24 last year, after Andrew M. Cuomo resigned amid allegations that he had sexually harassed multiple women. More

A 6-foot-4 halfback and flanker, he was a tall, reliable target for Browns quarterback Otto Graham as Cleveland rolled to titles in the late 1940s and ’50s.Dub Jones, an All-Pro running back and flanker for Cleveland Browns championship teams of the late 1940s and ’50s and one of four N.F.L. players to score six touchdowns in a single game, died on Saturday at his home in Ruston, La. He was 99.His son Bert, a former N.F.L. quarterback, confirmed the death.Playing in an innovative offensive scheme devised by Paul Brown, the founder and coach of the Browns, Jones was a double threat. He was an outstanding runner at right halfback and caught passes out of the backfield as a flanker, a position introduced by Brown to spread the field for passes uncorked by the future Hall of Fame quarterback Otto Graham.On Nov. 25, 1951, Jones scored four touchdowns running from scrimmage and two on passes from Graham in the Browns’ 42-21 rout of the Chicago Bears at the cavernous old Cleveland Stadium, tying the six-touchdown record set by the Chicago Cardinals’ Ernie Nevers in a 1929 game. Only Gale Sayers, with the 1965 Bears, and Alvin Kamara, with the 2020 New Orleans Saints, have matched them.Brown used rotating guards as “messengers” to bring in plays, although he allowed quarterbacks to call an “audible,” changing his play if they saw a vulnerable defensive alignment. Late in the Browns’ 1951 romp of the Bears, Brown stuck with that procedure.“With Cleveland safely ahead, I sent in a running play,” he recalled in an autobiography, “PB: The Paul Brown Story” (1979, with Jack Clary). “Otto knew that Dub Jones had already scored five touchdowns and needed only one more to set a record, so he discarded the call and selected a pass. Dub scored on the play, and I said nothing about it because the play had been successful.”Jones ran for 116 yards on nine carries and caught three passes for 80 yards in that game, including Graham’s climactic 43-yard touchdown toss.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More