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      MAGA Voters Send a $50 Million G.O.P. Plan Off the Rails in Illinois

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      Republican leaders think a moderate nominee for governor could beat Gov. J.B. Pritzker. But the party’s base seems to prefer a far-right state senator — and he is getting help from Mr. Pritzker.LINCOLN, Ill. — Darren Bailey, the front-runner in the Republican primary for governor of Illinois, was finishing his stump speech last week at a senior center in this Central Illinois town when a voice called out: “Can we pray for you?”Mr. Bailey readily agreed. The speaker, a youth mentor from Lincoln named Kathy Schmidt, placed her right hand on his left shoulder while he closed his eyes and held out his hands, palms open.“More than anything,” she prayed, “I ask for that, in this election, you raise up the righteous and strike down the wicked.”The wicked, in this case, are the Chicago-based moderates aiming to maintain control over the Illinois Republican Party. And the righteous is Mr. Bailey, a far-right state senator who is unlike any nominee the party has put forward for governor in living memory.A 56-year-old farmer whose Southern Illinois home is closer to Nashville than to Chicago, he wears his hair in a crew cut, speaks with a thick drawl and does not sand down his conservative credentials, as so many past leading G.O.P. candidates have done to try to appeal to suburbanites in this overwhelmingly Democratic state. On Saturday, former President Donald J. Trump endorsed Mr. Bailey at a rally near Quincy, Ill.Mr. Bailey has sought to respond to grievances long felt across rural Central and Southern Illinois toward Chicago, which he once proposed removing from the state.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesMr. Bailey rose to prominence in Illinois politics by introducing legislation to kick Chicago out of the state. When the coronavirus pandemic began, he was removed from a state legislative session for refusing to wear a mask, and he sued Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat, over statewide virus mitigation efforts. Painted on the door of his campaign bus is the Bible verse Ephesians 6:10-19, which calls for followers to wear God’s armor in a battle against “evil rulers.”He is the favored candidate of the state’s anti-abortion groups, and on Friday he celebrated the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade as a “historic and welcomed moment.” He has said he opposes the practice, including in cases of rape and incest.Mr. Bailey has upended carefully laid $50 million plans by Illinois Republican leaders to nominate Mayor Richard C. Irvin of Aurora, a moderate suburbanite with an inspiring personal story who they believed could win back the governor’s mansion in Springfield in what is widely forecast to be a winning year for Republicans.Mr. Bailey has been aided by an unprecedented intervention from Mr. Pritzker and the Pritzker-funded Democratic Governors Association, which have spent nearly $35 million combined attacking Mr. Irvin while trying to lift Mr. Bailey. No candidate for any office is believed to have ever spent more to meddle in another party’s primary.The Illinois governor’s race is now on track to become the most expensive campaign for a nonpresidential office in American history.Public and private polling ahead of Tuesday’s primary shows Mr. Bailey with a lead of 15 percentage points over Mr. Irvin and four other candidates. His strength signals the broader shift in Republican politics across the country, away from urban power brokers and toward a rural base that demands fealty to a far-right agenda aligned with Mr. Trump.For Mr. Bailey, the proposal to excise Chicago, which he called “a hellhole” during a televised debate last month, encapsulates the grievances long felt across rural Central and Southern Illinois — places culturally far afield and long resentful of the politically dominant big city.An audience in Green Valley, Ill., listened to Mr. Bailey speak. Polling shows him leading the Republican primary by double digits.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York Times“The rest of the 90 percent of the land mass is not real happy about how 10 percent of the land mass is directing things,” Mr. Bailey said in an interview aboard his campaign bus outside a bar in Green Valley, a village of 700 people south of Peoria. “A large amount of people outside of that 10 percent don’t have a voice, and that’s a problem.”That pitch has resonated with the conservative voters flocking to Mr. Bailey, who seemed to compare Mr. Irvin to Satan during a Facebook Live monologue in February.“Everything that we pay and do supports Chicago,” said Pam Page, a security analyst at State Farm Insurance from McLean, Ill., who came to see Mr. Bailey in Lincoln. “Downstate just never seems to get any of the perks or any of the kickbacks.”The onslaught of Democratic television advertising attacking Mr. Irvin and trying to elevate Mr. Bailey has frustrated the Aurora mayor, whose campaign was conceived of and funded by the same team of Republicans who helped elect social moderates like Mark Kirk to the Senate in 2010 and Bruce Rauner as governor in 2014. Their recipe: In strong Republican years, find moderate candidates who can win over voters in Chicago’s suburbs — and spend a ton of money.Richard C. Irvin speaking to employees at a manufacturing plant in Wauconda, a suburb north of Chicago. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesMr. Irvin, 52, fit their bill. Born to a teenage single mother in Aurora, he is an Army veteran of the first Gulf War who served as a local prosecutor before becoming the first Black mayor of the city, the second most populous in Illinois.Kenneth Griffin, the Chicago billionaire hedge fund founder who is the chief benefactor for Illinois Republicans, gave $50 million to Mr. Irvin for the primary alone and pledged to spend more for him in the general election. Mr. Griffin, the state’s richest man, will not support any other Republican in the race against Mr. Pritzker, according to his spokesman, Zia Ahmed. Mr. Griffin announced last week that his hedge fund and trading firm would relocate to Miami.While Mr. Irvin, a longtime Republican who has nevertheless voted in a series of recent Democratic primaries in Illinois, expected an expensive dogfight in the general election, he is frustrated by the primary season intervention from Mr. Pritzker, a billionaire who is America’s richest elected official.“This has never happened in the history of our nation that a Democrat would spend this much money stopping one individual from becoming the nominee of the Republican Party,” Mr. Irvin said in an interview after touring a manufacturing plant in Wauconda, a well-to-do suburb north of Chicago. “There are six Republican primary opponents — six of them. But when you turn on the television, all you see is me.”Mr. Griffin said that “J.B. Pritzker is terrified of facing Richard Irvin in the general election.”He added, “He and his cronies at the D.G.A. have shamelessly spent tens of millions of dollars meddling in the Republican primary in an effort to fool Republican voters.”Mr. Pritzker said that ads emphasizing Mr. Bailey’s conservative credentials had the same message he plans to use in the general election. He said he was not afraid of running against Mr. Irvin or of the millions Mr. Griffin would spend on his campaign.“It’s a mess over there,” Mr. Pritzker said in an interview on Friday. “They’re all anti-choice. Literally, you can go down the list of things that I think really matter to people across the state. And, you know, they’re all terrible. So I’ll take any one of them and I’ll beat them.”Gov. J.B. Pritzker, the country’s richest elected official, has poured money into the primary, attacking Mr. Irvin while trying to help Mr. Bailey. Pat Nabong/Chicago Sun-Times, via Associated PressThe primary race alone has drawn $100 million in TV advertising. Mr. Pritzker has spent more money on TV ads than anyone else running for any office in the country this year. Mr. Irvin ranks second, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm.Far behind them is Mr. Bailey, whose primary financial benefactor is Richard Uihlein, the billionaire megadonor of far-right Republican candidates, who has donated $9 million of the $11.6 million Mr. Bailey has raised and sent another $8 million to a political action committee that has attacked Mr. Irvin as insufficiently conservative.Presidential politics for both parties loom over the primary.Mr. Irvin won’t say whom he voted for in the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections and, in the interview, declined to say if he would support Mr. Trump if he ran for president in 2024. He called President Biden “the legitimate president” and said former Vice President Mike Pence had performed his constitutional duty on Jan. 6, 2021.Mr. Bailey would not say if the 2020 election had been decided fairly or if Mr. Pence did the right thing.Mr. Pritzker’s motivation to help Mr. Bailey in the primary may be informed not only by his desire for re-election but also by what many see as potential aspirations to seek the White House himself. Last weekend he addressed a gathering of Democrats in New Hampshire — a stop only those with national ambitions make in the middle of their own re-election campaigns.Mr. Bailey, 56, is a farmer with roots in Southern Illinois. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesAs the primary draws near, establishment Republicans across the state are fretting about the prospect of Mr. Bailey dragging down the entire G.O.P. ticket in November.Representative Darin LaHood predicted an “overwhelming” Bailey primary victory in his Central Illinois district, but warned that he would be toxic for general-election voters.“Bailey is not going to play in the suburbs,” said Mr. LaHood, who has not endorsed a primary candidate. “He’s got a Southern drawl, a Southern accent. I mean, he should be running in Missouri, not in suburban Chicago.”Former Gov. Jim Edgar, the only Illinois governor from outside the Chicago area since World War II, said Mr. Bailey’s rise showed that party leaders “don’t have the grasp or the control of their constituents like they did back in the ’80s and the ’90s.”Mr. Bailey’s supporters say the real fight is for the soul of the Republican Party. To them, winning the primary and seizing control of the state party is just as important, if not more so, than triumphing in the general election.Thomas DeVore, left, a candidate for Illinois attorney general who has “Freedom” and “Liberty” tattooed on his arms, with Mr. Bailey in Lincoln.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesRunning for attorney general on a slate with Mr. Bailey is Thomas DeVore, his lawyer in the pandemic lawsuits against Mr. Pritzker. On the campaign trail, he wears untucked golf shirts that reveal his forearm tattoos — “Freedom” on his right arm, “Liberty” on his left.“Whether or not Darren and I win the general election, if we can at least get control within our own party, I think long term we have an opportunity to be successful,” Mr. DeVore said at their stop in Green Valley.And David Smith, the executive director of the Illinois Family Institute, an anti-abortion organization whose political arm endorsed Mr. Bailey, said the G.O.P. race was about excising the party’s moderate elements.“This primary,” he said, “has got to purge the Republican Party of those who are self-serving snollygosters.”Catie Edmondson More

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      Hochul Has Raised $34 Million So Far. Her Goal May Be Double That.

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul’s fund-raising pace could make her run for a full term the most expensive campaign ever for governor of New York.It was the night after the first debate among the major Democrats running to be New York’s governor, and the favored incumbent, Gov. Kathy Hochul, was in a fund-raising mood.As Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline” played on the sound system at Hush HK, a gay bar in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood of Manhattan, Ms. Hochul worked the crowd of well-connected guests who had paid $500 to $25,000 apiece to attend the June 8 event.As voters prepare for the Democratic primary on Tuesday, Ms. Hochul appears to be a prohibitive favorite over her rivals, Representative Thomas R. Suozzi of Long Island and Jumaane D. Williams, New York City’s public advocate.That has not stopped her from raising campaign cash at a furious pace: Ms. Hochul, who had already collected roughly $34 million in political donations as of Thursday, has set a target of raising a total of $50 million to $70 million by Election Day, according to three Democrats familiar with her plans.“The stakes of this election could not be higher and Governor Hochul is proud of the widespread support for her campaign,” Jen Goodman, a spokeswoman for Ms. Hochul’s campaign, said in a statement. “The governor will continue to build momentum from now until November, connecting with voters across the state and working tirelessly to deliver results for all New Yorkers.”Ms. Hochul and her team have exhaustively pursued contributions from all corners of the donor class: real estate and health care, cryptocurrency and gambling.And she shows no signs of letting up: On Monday, the day before the primary, Ms. Hochul plans a rooftop fund-raiser on Manhattan’s Far West Side. Admission costs a minimum of $100. Hosts are asked to give or raise $25,000.Should Ms. Hochul achieve her desired fund-raising goal, she may be in the running for most expensive campaign for governor in New York history — rivaling only the billionaire Tom Golisano’s failed bid to unseat Gov. George E. Pataki in 2002, an effort with an estimated cost of $54 million to $74 million. She will also put herself in league with similarly expensive campaigns for governor in Virginia and California.Ms. Hochul’s fund-raising effort is somewhat rooted in Albany tradition, with governors often gathering money from donors with business before the state even while the State Legislature is in session.“This is essentially an open seat, so I can understand the logic for why she wants to raise as much as she does to ward off significant competition,” said Blair Horner, the executive director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, a government watchdog. “On the other hand, where does the money come from?”A Guide to New York’s 2022 Primary ElectionsAs prominent Democratic officials seek to defend their records, Republicans see opportunities to make inroads in general election races.Governor’s Race: Kathy Hochul, the incumbent, is expected to handily win against Jumaane Williams and Tom Suozzi in the Democratic primary on June 28. But some allies worry her low-key approach comes at a cost.Lieutenant Governor’s Race: Ms. Hochul’s handpicked candidate is facing a sharp challenge from the Democratic Party’s left wing.Maloney vs. Nadler: New congressional lines have put the two stalwart Manhattan Democrats — including New York City’s last remaining Jewish congressman — on a collision course in the Aug. 23 primary.15 Democrats, 1 Seat: A newly redrawn House district in New York City may be one of the largest and most freewheeling primaries in the nation.Offensive Remarks: Carl P. Paladino, a Republican running for a House seat in Western New York, recently drew backlash for praising Adolf Hitler in an interview dating back to 2021.Ms. Hochul became the state’s first female governor last August after Andrew M. Cuomo resigned amid allegations of sexual harassment that the state’s attorney general deemed credible.Many of her donations have come from the gambling industry, which is eagerly awaiting the issuance of up to three new licenses for casinos in and around New York City.In recent months. Ms. Hochul has raised more than $200,000 from donors with direct interests in gambling. More than $100,000 of that sum came from contributors associated with Hard Rock, a company that wants to open a casino in New York City, records show.Donors tied to Hard Rock gave Ms. Hochul $80,000 from June 18 to June 23, building on the nearly $40,000 they have given her since she became governor. Jim Allen, Hard Rock International’s chairman, was the largest single donor associated with the company. He gave Ms. Hochul $25,000 on June 20 after contributing almost $13,000 to her campaign in January, the reports show.In addition, Edward Tracy, the chief executive of Hard Rock Japan LLC and a former chief executive at the Trump Organization, gave Ms. Hochul $25,000 on Thursday.A Hard Rock representative declined to comment on the contributions and referred questions to Ms. Hochul’s campaign.Ms. Hochul smashed previous fund-raising records when she announced a $21.6 million haul at the beginning of the year, by far the largest amount any New York candidate had reported for a single filing period.She has continued pulling in money at a dizzying clip, in some cases raising hundreds of thousands of dollars in a single day. She reported taking in $340,000 on Tuesday and another $200,000 on Wednesday, campaign finance records show. That is more than Mr. Suozzi raised in the previous three-week reporting period, which ended in mid-June.Ms. Hochul’s campaign team believes she needs a large campaign war chest to help ensure victory in an election cycle that is widely expected to favor Republicans. While she has been largely absent from the campaign trail, she has been a far more frenetic presence on the fund-raising circuit.On Wednesday, the chief executive of CLEAR — whose biometric technology is used to screen passengers at New York airports — hosted a fund-raiser for Ms. Hochul at Zero Bond, a nightclub often frequented by Mayor Eric Adams. Tickets cost $5,000 to $25,000, according to one invitee.In the most recent filings, which trickle in daily and include contributions since June 14, Ms. Hochul had already exceeded $1 million by Friday, with an average donation of about $10,000 and two new donors giving her the maximum $69,700. Since taking office, at least 10 percent of her cash has come from donors giving the maximum.Real estate interests, still smarting from their loss of a lucrative tax break that lapsed this year, continue to pour money into Ms. Hochul’s campaign. Two members of the Cayre real estate family, which controls the Midtown Equities firm, donated the maximum this week, bringing the family’s total to more than $400,000 since November.The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Several real estate titans have found a way to keep on giving even after hitting their limit with Ms. Hochul’s campaign: contribute to her running mate, Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado, instead. In the last few days alone, Mr. Delgado has picked up several five-figure checks from real estate industry contributors who had already maxed out to Ms. Hochul, pushing his total from all donors since June 16 to almost $600,000.Mr. Delgado succeeded Brian Benjamin, who resigned after prosecutors indicted him on federal bribery and fraud charges. The night before the indictment was announced, Ms. Hochul was at a fund-raiser in Midtown Manhattan that featured a performance of Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” by a former governor, David Paterson.“The lyrics for ‘Dock of the Bay’ are quite existential,” Mr. Paterson said in an interview this week before reciting them to a reporter. More

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      Andrew Gillum Indicted on Federal Charges of Conspiracy and Fraud

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      The former Democratic nominee for Florida governor was indicted in a criminal case stemming from his time as Tallahassee mayor and statewide candidate.MIAMI — Andrew Gillum, the Democrat who lost the 2018 Florida governor’s race to Ron DeSantis, surrendered to federal authorities in Tallahassee on Wednesday after he and a close associate were charged with conspiracy and 19 counts of fraud over how they raised and used funds when he was mayor of Tallahassee and a candidate for governor.Mr. Gillum, 42, was also charged with making false statements to the F.B.I.He pleaded not guilty in a court appearance on Wednesday afternoon. Mr. Gillum, dressed in a navy suit with a dark tie and face mask, was cuffed around his wrists and ankles, with a chain around his waist. Inside the courtroom were some of his friends and a gaggle of news reporters. He left the courthouse after his release and gave no comment to the cameras and microphones waiting outside.The once-ascendant Democrat, Mr. Gillum came within 32,000 votes of the governorship in 2018 — which would have made him Florida’s first Black governor and a future White House hopeful — only to lose his political direction and face personal struggles. In 2020, the police found him in a Miami Beach hotel room where another man was suffering from a possible drug overdose.Mr. Gillum entered rehab to seek treatment for alcoholism shortly after. He later came out as bisexual in an interview that also featured his wife.The charges appear to stem from a federal investigation into Tallahassee City Hall that began in 2015 and involved undercover F.B.I. agents posing as developers. Revelations from the investigation, including that Mr. Gillum had socialized with the undercover agents in New York, where they took a boat ride to the Statue of Liberty and saw the hit Broadway musical “Hamilton,” were an issue in the 2018 campaign. Mr. DeSantis, a Republican, said at the time that Mr. Gillum could not be trusted to run the state.Mr. Gillum, who did not disclose the gifts at the time as required by state law, paid a $5,000 Florida ethics fine in 2019.The 21-count indictment against Mr. Gillum shows that a grand jury filed the charges against him on June 7. Also charged was Sharon Lettman-Hicks, 53, a confidante of Mr. Gillum’s since he was in college. According to the indictment, she used her communications company to disguise fraudulent payments to Mr. Gillum as part of her payroll.In a statement, Mr. Gillum said he had run all of his political campaigns “with integrity.”“Make no mistake that this case is not legal, it is political,” he said. “There’s been a target on my back ever since I was the mayor of Tallahassee. They found nothing then, and I have full confidence that my legal team will prove my innocence now.”Ms. Lettman-Hicks, who is running as a Democrat for a State House seat in Tallahassee, was in a wheelchair when she appeared in court on Wednesday and pleaded not guilty. She declined to comment.The indictment covers events involving Mr. Gillum and Ms. Lettman-Hicks from 2016 to 2019. The false statements charge against Mr. Gillum is related to his interactions with the undercover agents.According to the indictment, beginning in 2016, Mr. Gillum and two unnamed associates solicited campaign contributions from the undercover agents for Mr. Gillum’s newly formed Forward Florida political action committee. To keep the agents’ names private, the associates promised to funnel the contributions in other ways, including through Ms. Lettman-Hicks’s company, P&P Communications. In exchange, they were promised “unencumbered government contracts,” according to one of the unnamed associates.Mr. Gillum told one of the undercover agents that he “should separate in his mind the campaign contributions and the Tallahassee projects,” the indictment says, adding that Mr. Gillum also “indicated he looked favorably on” the undercover agent’s proposed development projects.The indictment says that when Mr. Gillum voluntarily spoke to F.B.I. agents in 2017, he “falsely represented” that the undercover agents posing as developers never offered him anything and that he had stopped communicating with them after they tried to link their contributions to support for potential Tallahassee projects.The fraud and conspiracy charges are related to Mr. Gillum’s dealings with Ms. Lettman-Hicks with regards to P&P Communications and Mr. Gillum’s campaign.In 2017, when he became a candidate for governor, Mr. Gillum resigned from his position with People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group whose Tallahassee office was leased from Ms. Lettman-Hicks. Mr. Gillum lost his annual $122,500 salary, and Ms. Lettman-Hicks lost $3,000 in monthly rent. Mr. Gillum was also paid about $70,500 a year as mayor, a position he held from 2014 to 2018.Mr. Gillum then became an employee of P&P Communications, where he was given a monthly salary of $10,000. According to the indictment, hiring Mr. Gillum was “only a cover used to provide him funds that he lost” after his resignation from People for the American Way.When Mr. Gillum and Ms. Lettman-Hicks solicited $50,000 in grant funding from two unnamed organizations, the money was intended to be used for the Campaign to Defend Local Solutions, an effort by Mr. Gillum to fight state efforts to pre-empt local governments’ power. Instead, according to the indictment, that money ultimately went to P&P Communications to pay Mr. Gillum.In 2018, the indictment says, Mr. Gillum and Ms. Lettman-Hicks defrauded an unnamed campaign donor who had given $250,000 intended for Mr. Gillum’s campaign. Instead, $150,000 of that was diverted to Mr. Gillum’s political action committee and to P&P Communications.According to the indictment, in November 2018, $130,000 from the campaign was supposed to go to “get out the vote” efforts. Instead, $60,000 went to P&P Communications and was used in part to pay Mr. Gillum $20,000 in “bonus” payments from Nov. 20 to 29, 2018.Eventually, it was listed falsely in Mr. Gillum’s campaign finance report as a reimbursement for “Get Out the Vote Canvassing.”Alexandra Glorioso More

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      Who Is Financing Trump’s ‘Big Lie’ Caucus? Corporations You Know.

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      Immediately after the Jan. 6 attack, hundreds of corporations announced freezes on donating money to Republican lawmakers who had voted against certifying Joe Biden’s victory. “Given recent events and the horrific attack on the U.S. Capitol, we are assessing our future PAC criteria,” a spokesperson for Toyota said a week after the attack.For many corporations, that pause was short-lived.“By April 1, 2021, Toyota had donated $62,000 to 39 Republican objectors,” the journalist Judd Legum wrote in his newsletter, Popular Information. That included a donation of $1,000 that Toyota gave to Representative Andy Biggs, a Republican from Arizona who is a close ally of Donald Trump and a fervent devotee of the “big lie.”In July 2021, Toyota reversed course and announced another hiatus from donating to lawmakers who voted to overturn the election results. Six months later, the money started to flow again. The company, in a statement to The Times, said it donates equally to both parties and “will not support those who, by their words and actions, create an atmosphere that incites violence.” (Corporations aren’t allowed to give directly to campaigns but instead form political action committees that donate in the name of the company.)Giving equally to both parties sounds good. But what if a growing faction of one political party isn’t committed to the rule of law and the peaceful transfer of power?In the year and a half since the attack, rivers of cash from once skittish donors have resumed flowing to election deniers. Sometimes tens of thousands of dollars. Sometimes just a thousand. But it adds up. In the month of April alone, the last month for which data is available, Fortune 500 companies and trade organizations gave more than $1.4 million to members of Congress who voted not to certify the election results, according to an analysis by the transparency group Accountable.US. AT&T led the pack, giving $95,000 to election objectors.Of all the revelations so far from the hearings on the Jan. 6 attack, the most important is that the effort to undermine democratic elections in the United States is continuing. More than a dozen men and women who participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection or the rallies leading up to it have run for elected office this year. Supporters of Mr. Trump have also run for public offices that oversee elections. And according to an investigation by The Times, at least 357 Republican legislators in nine states have used the power of their offices to attack the results of the 2020 election.This isn’t a hypothetical threat. On Tuesday, New Mexico’s secretary of state was forced to ask the State Supreme Court to compel a Republican-led county election commission to certify primary election results. The commission had refused to do so, citing its distrust of its own voting machines.There is also an active effort underway to frustrate the Jan. 6 committee’s work, including refusing to comply with subpoenas. Mr. Biggs, for instance, has refused to comply with a congressional subpoena to testify, as have other Republican members of Congress, including Jim Jordan, Kevin McCarthy, Mo Brooks and Scott Perry. (Mr. Perry, among other congressmen, asked for a presidential pardon for efforts to challenge and overturn the 2020 election, according to Representative Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the committee. He has denied that charge.) Representatives Barry Loudermilk and Ronny Jackson have yet to agree to interview requests from the committee. Six of these congressmen alone have brought in more than $826,000 from corporate donors since Jan. 6, according to Accountable.US. (Mr. Brooks didn’t receive any money from the Fortune 500 companies and trade groups tracked in the report.)We tend to think of the past and future threat to elections as coming from voters for Donald Trump and those whom they’d elect to office. But the success of these politicians also depends on money. And a lot of money from corporations like Boeing, Koch Industries, Home Depot, FedEx, UPS and General Dynamics has gone to politicians who reject the 2020 election results based on lies told by the former president, according to a tally kept by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, known as CREW.All told, as of this week, corporations and industry groups gave almost $32 million to the House and Senate members who voted to overturn the election and to the G.O.P. committees focused on the party’s congressional campaigns. The top 10 companies that gave money to those members, according to CREW’s analysis of campaign finance disclosures, are Koch Industries, Boeing, Home Depot, Valero Energy, Lockheed Martin, UPS, Raytheon, Marathon Petroleum, General Motors and FedEx. All of those companies, with the exception of Koch Industries and FedEx, once said they’d refrain from donating to politicians who voted to reject the election results.Of the 249 companies that promised not to fund the 147 senators and representatives who voted against any of the results, fewer than half have stuck to their promise, according to CREW.Kudos aplenty to the 85 corporations that stuck to their guns and still refuse to fund the seditious, including Nike, PepsiCo, Lyft, Cisco, Prudential, Marriott, Target and Zillow. That’s what responsible corporate citizenship looks like. It’s also patriotic.We’re going to need more patriotic companies for what’s coming. Not only are Republican lawmakers who refused to certify the election results still in office; their party is poised to make gains during the midterm elections. Their electoral fortunes represent not only an endorsement from voters who support their efforts to undermine our democracy; they also represent the explicit financial support of hundreds of corporations that pour money into their campaign coffers.Money in politics is the way of the world, especially in this country. But as the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation has made clear, Mr. Trump’s attempted coup was orders of magnitude different from the normal rough-and-tumble of politics. Returning to the status quo where corporate money flowed to nearly every politician elected to office isn’t just unseemly; it is helping to fund a continuing attack on our democracy.Many Americans say they’ve moved on from the attack on Jan. 6. For those who haven’t, a good place to focus their attention is on the continuing threat to the Republic posed by politicians who are actively undermining it, and the money that helps them do so.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Just 5 Months Into His Term, Adams Is Busy Raising Money to Win Another

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      The mayor has kicked off a cross-country fund-raising blitz for re-election, taking his tour to Chicago and Beverly Hills, even as he confronts major challenges in New York City.Not long after celebrating his first 100 days as mayor this spring, Eric Adams was poolside in Beverly Hills, Calif., already thinking about the future.Wearing a crisp blue suit and fuchsia tie, Mr. Adams spoke to a crowd of vegan enthusiasts about his allegiance to a plant-based diet in an event at the midcentury home of Naren Shankar, a Hollywood showrunner and producer of “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.”The underlying motivation, however, was about another passion: raising money for his re-election campaign in 2025.The fund-raising event was hastily organized while Mr. Adams was in town to speak on a technology panel at the Milken Institute Global Conference — part of a three-day trip in May where he also socialized with the comedian Dave Chappelle and the heiress Paris Hilton.Even as Mr. Adams has struggled to address a series of pressing challenges in New York, he has launched an unusually early fund-raising blitz to secure a second term, a feat that no Black mayor of New York City has achieved.The fund-raisers coincide with Mr. Adams’s efforts to establish a national profile. In March, the mayor held an event in Chicago at the home of Desirée Rogers, the former White House social secretary for President Barack Obama, which was attended by Robert Blackwell Jr., an entrepreneur and Obama ally.Robert Blackwell Jr., a Chicago-based entrepreneur and long-supporter of former President Barack Obama, recently attended a fund-raiser for Mr. Adams in Chicago.Pigi Cipelli/Mondadori, via Getty ImagesSometime this summer, Charles Phillips, the managing partner of Recognize, a technology investment firm, is planning to hold a fund-raiser for Mr. Adams — probably “out east,” in the Hamptons, he said in an interview.The mayor’s team is hoping he will max out his fund-raising by the end of the summer, according to a Democratic consultant who was briefed on the campaign’s plans. A $2 million haul, coupled with the city’s generous matching funds program, could enable him to hit the $7.9 million spending cap for the 2025 mayoral primary. Collecting a huge war chest now could fend off potential competitors and capitalize on what remains of the mayor’s honeymoon period, when he is still relatively popular and donors are eager to get his attention.“You want to raise money as a show of strength,” said Chris Coffey, the chief executive of Tusk Strategies and a manager of Andrew Yang’s campaign for mayor. “You don’t want to spend your last year running around doing fund-raisers.”There is little precedent for such an early push. Bill de Blasio, in his first year as mayor, focused on raising money for candidates for the State Senate and for the Campaign for One New York, a nonprofit group that supported his agenda — both of which became part of federal and state investigations into his fund-raising. Michael R. Bloomberg did not have to bother with fund-raising; he used his own fortune to run for a second term, then wielded his personal philanthropy to gain support to overturn term limits in 2008, spending a record $102 million on a third term.There are also political risks to Mr. Adams’s fund-raising strategy, which could potentially cast him as an absentee leader unduly focused on politics.When the mayor was in Beverly Hills, the risk level for coronavirus cases had just increased in New York City, raising fresh concerns about the city’s economic recovery. Federal officials were weighing a takeover of the troubled Rikers Island jail in response to rising violence and inmate deaths there. A police officer was slashed in Brooklyn by a man carrying a 16-inch knife.And when his return flight from California was abruptly canceled, Mr. Adams had to scrap most of his events for the day, including a rally at City Hall to put pressure on the State Legislature to extend mayoral control of city schools.Mr. Adams has already seen his approval rating drop as he faces growing pressure to address rising crime and an affordable housing crisis. Only 29 percent of New Yorkers said his performance was good or excellent, and 56 percent said the city was headed in the wrong direction, according to a recent poll by NY1 and Siena College.Mr. Adams defended his polling numbers, arguing that New Yorkers were tough graders and that many had given him a “fair” rating, which he considered a C grade.“Listen, a C is not an A, but a C is not an F,” Mr. Adams told reporters.Charles Phillips, the managing partner of Recognize, a technology investment firm, said he planned to hold a summer fund-raiser for Mr. Adams.Cindy Ord/Getty ImagesThe mayor has proved to be a prolific fund-raiser. He raised more than $9 million for the Democratic primary and the general election last year and another $10 million in matching funds. Mr. Adams spent much of last summer traveling to the Hamptons and Martha’s Vineyard to court wealthy donors who favored his brand of centrism, attending as many as five fund-raisers a day.Mr. Adams, a former state senator and Brooklyn borough president, has at times tested the boundaries of campaign-finance and ethics laws. He was investigated for his role in backing a video lottery terminal bidder for the Aqueduct Racetrack and has been criticized for taking money from developers who were lobbying him to support crucial zoning changes.As a mayoral candidate, Mr. Adams raised money from a wide array of donors, including real estate developers, billionaires, cannabis investors, hedge fund executives, Republicans and working-class New Yorkers. He raised more than $2.8 million from donors outside New York City, and a super PAC supporting his campaign raised about $7 million.Now as mayor, Mr. Adams has again embraced fund-raising with vigor. On June 3, after delivering a commencement speech in Queens, Mr. Adams attended a fund-raiser at a construction company’s offices in Midtown Manhattan, hosted by the Bravo Group chief executive, Ehab Shehata. At the middle-of-the-workday event, Mr. Adams told the crowd that the city could only rebound if crime levels dropped and that he was the man for the job, according to a person who attended the event.Mr. Shehata did not respond to requests for comment. But he is hardly the only local executive eager to curry favor with the mayor.Marc Holliday, chief executive of SL Green Realty Corp., which co-owns the new One Vanderbilt skyscraper near Grand Central Terminal, reached out to fellow real estate executives in April on behalf of Mr. Adams’s 2025 campaign. The tower has been home to at least two mayoral appearances, including the Wells Fargo product launch in April where the mayor partied with the model and actress Cara Delevingne, earning himself a spread in the gossip pages.Mr. Adams has made at least two appearances at the new One Vanderbilt skyscraper, including in October when he posed with Marc Holliday, the chief executive of SL Green, the company that co-owns the building.Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu Agency, via Getty Images“At a time when NYC needed it the most, Eric has stepped into the mayoralty and has quickly become the face and driving force behind New York’s recovery,” Mr. Holliday wrote in an email. “Anything you can do would be very much appreciated.”The first public disclosures for the 2025 mayor’s race are due next month and will provide a clearer picture of the donors Mr. Adams is relying on.Barry Gosin, the chief executive officer of Newmark Group, a commercial real estate firm, is hosting a fund-raiser for Mr. Adams on Wednesday on the fifth floor of a skyscraper near Grand Central Terminal. Attendees are requested to donate between $400 and $2,000 apiece.“This is an opportunity to support a great, authentic mayor,” Mr. Gosin said. “He’s working his butt off, and I think the things he’s doing are the things that should be done. But that’s my opinion.”Barry Gosin, center, a commercial real estate executive, is hosting a fund-raiser for Mr. Adams on Wednesday.Kelly Sullivan/Getty Images for BenchMarksIn his trip to Chicago in March, Mr. Adams also held a news conference with Mayor Lori Lightfoot to discuss gang violence. Mr. Adams invited himself to Ms. Lightfoot’s office in City Hall and announced the appearance before she could alert the local press, The Chicago Sun-Times reported.The Chicago fund-raiser was attended by Mr. Blackwell, the leader of a table tennis company who donated $400 to Mr. Adams’s mayoral campaign last year. It was co-hosted by Ms. Rogers and Carol Adams, the former president of the DuSable Museum of African American History.“To run for office, it takes money — expensive city, expensive ad market,” Mr. Phillips said. “And you have to tell your story before someone else does.”Another fund-raiser in May at the Kimberly Hotel in Midtown Manhattan was attended by Taj Gibson, the New York Knicks forward, and Jean Shafiroff, a fixture on the charity circuit who attended a soiree for Mr. Adams in the Hamptons last summer.“We have to give him a chance,” she said. “I like what he stands for. It’s really not fair to judge anyone after three months.” More

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      Gov. Hochul Stockpiles Donations, as Rivals Struggle to Keep Pace

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      Real estate, unions and crypto interests were among the donors to Ms. Hochul. Here are five takeaways from the money battle in New York’s race for governor.ALBANY, N.Y. — In the final stretch of the primary race for New York governor, the incumbent, Kathy Hochul, has widened her already formidable fund-raising lead over both Democratic and Republican rivals, scooping up millions from lobbyists, wealthy New Yorkers and special interest groups with a stake in policy outcomes in Albany.Ms. Hochul pulled in more than $10 million from mid-January to late May, outpacing her nearest Democratic competitor, Representative Thomas R. Suozzi, by about a 3-to-1 margin, according to new filings released on Friday. A third Democratic candidate, the New York City public advocate, Jumaane Williams, raised just $250,000 during the period and was left with only $130,000 in the bank at the end of the month.On the Republican side, Representative Lee Zeldin, a Long Island conservative, led his rivals with $3.2 million raised. Harry Wilson, a businessman who said he intended to mostly self-fund his campaign, reported just under $2 million in contributions; he also dipped into his personal fortune to blanket the airwaves with TV ads. Thanks to his considerable wealth, Mr. Wilson had more money to spend — $4.2 million — than any challenger to Ms. Hochul. But the governor’s $18.6 million war chest, eye-poppingly fat even after she spent $13 million (mostly on TV and online ads) in the last four months, puts her in the driver’s seat in a state that hasn’t elected a Republican governor since 2002.Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate, badly trails his Democratic rivals in fund-raising efforts.Libby March for The New York TimesThe power of incumbencyAs Ms. Hochul was helping decide how to spend $220 billion of the state’s money, she raked in cash from every corner of the economy just as — or shortly after — the state budget negotiations were taking place.Eleven donors gave the maximum $69,700 in the latest report — from organized labor groups such as the American Dream Fund service workers union and the Transport Workers Union, to major corporate givers like John Hess, chief executive of the Hess Corporation, and Manhattan real estate developers like Jack and Michael Cayre.All told, 84 percent of the haul came in chunks of $5,000 or more, records show. The campaign noted that 70 percent of the donations came from contributors giving $250 or less, signaling Ms. Hochul’s “broad coalition of supporters.”Few were more generous than lobbyists registered with the state to influence lawmakers at the Capitol — on everything from cannabis regulation to education policy and funding.Many of the lobbyists who donated to Ms. Hochul soon after she was sworn in last summer re-upped with contributions once her first legislative session began. The firm Featherstonhaugh, Wiley & Clyne, whose clients include Saratoga Casino Holdings and the Thoroughbred Horsemen’s Association, gave Ms. Hochul $25,000 about a month after she took office and then another $25,000 a few weeks into her first session.The Albany lobbying firm Ostroff Associates and its partners have showered $78,000 on Ms. Hochul since she became governor, and Shenker, Russo & Clark, which represents banking and auto dealer interests, among others, just chipped in another $5,000 after giving Ms. Hochul $20,000 in October.“Follow the money, and none of it leads to addressing the crime and affordability crisis in our state,” said Kim Devlin, a senior adviser to Mr. Suozzi.Representative Thomas R. Suozzi raised far more than one of his Democratic rivals, Jumaane Williams, but far less than Ms. Hochul.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesMining for Hochul’s approvalWith controversy swirling over the expansion of cryptocurrency mining in New York, where aging industrial facilities and cheap electricity have lured major players in the sector, a single five-figure donation to Ms. Hochul stands out: $40,000 from Ashton Soniat, the chief executive of Coinmint, according to the company’s website.The company has a crypto-mining operation on the grounds of a former aluminum plant in Massena, N.Y., a small town northeast of Niagara Falls. Environmentalists have raised alarms about the high electricity consumption of crypto mining and its potential contribution to climate change. Crypto speculators have been drawn to northern and western New York because of its abundant hydroelectric power.Coinmint did not respond to requests for comment sent through its website and to email addresses and phone numbers listed in business directories and state records.Ms. Hochul’s campaign reported that she received the donation from Mr. Soniat, via credit card, on May 23. A day later, Ms. Hochul, during a breakfast with legislators at the governor’s mansion in Albany, spoke optimistically about the potential job creation bonanza in the economically distressed area.“We have to balance the protection of the environment, but also protect the opportunity for jobs that go to areas that don’t see a lot of activity and make sure that the energy that’s consumed by these entities is managed properly,” Ms. Hochul told reporters after the breakfast meeting.Assemblywoman Anna R. Kelles, a Democrat who represents the Ithaca area, said Ms. Hochul told her the state can’t ignore the jobs crypto mining in Massena could bring. Ms. Kelles said Ms. Hochul told her, “I spoke to them and they said they employ about 140 people and they are looking to go up to 400 employees in an area where there are very few industries. So this is really important.”Ms. Kelles is the sponsor of a bill that would put a two-year moratorium on certain crypto-mining operations that rely on fossil fuels, legislation that Ms. Hochul said she would consider once a final version reaches her desk.“Political donations have no influence on government decisions,” said Hazel Crampton-Hays, a Hochul spokeswoman. “Governor Hochul approaches every decision through one lens: What is best for New Yorkers.”Gov. Hochul, right, with Vice President Kamala Harris, before a memorial service for a victim of the racist massacre in Buffalo.Patrick Semansky/Associated PressReal estate stands firm with HochulOn April 18, Governor Hochul joined the real estate developer Scott Rechler and Mayor Eric Adams to hail the opening of a publicly accessible rooftop in an office development on a pier in the city- and state-controlled Hudson River Park. In the ensuing month, Mr. Rechler, the chief executive of RXR, and his wife, Deborah Rechler, gave a combined $85,600 to the campaign this filing period. Both are Nassau County constituents of Mr. Suozzi, a Long Island congressman who is running to the right of Ms. Hochul.Big real estate donors have a habit of sticking with politically moderate incumbents they perceive to be doing a decent job. This year appears no different. Ms. Hochul, the incumbent in question, has continued to haul in donations from landlords and developers.Jerry Speyer, the chairman of Tishman Speyer, which owns Rockefeller Center, donated $50,000 to Ms. Hochul’s campaign in April. Donald Capoccia, the managing principal of Brooklyn-based developer BFC Partners, donated $25,000. James L. Dolan, who controls Madison Square Garden — which sits atop the Penn Station Ms. Hochul is renovating — donated $69,700.“In the real estate business, you’re only as strong as the communities where you’re doing business,” Mr. Rechler, who used to be one of former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s biggest donors, said in a statement. “Governor Hochul recognizes that to build stronger communities you need to invest in infrastructure, focus on quality of life and prioritize public safety.”Suozzi releases his tax returnOn the day that candidates for governor faced a deadline to release fund-raising information, Mr. Suozzi chose to also make his tax return available to reporters. On both counts, Mr. Suozzi trails the governor.Ms. Hochul and her husband, William J. Hochul Jr., reported a joint taxable income of $825,000 this year, more than twice the combined income of Mr. Suozzi and his wife.Mr. Hochul, a high-ranking executive at Delaware North, a hospitality company and state concessionaire, earned the bulk of the couple’s income: $547,434 from his job at Delaware North. The $363,494 in joint taxable income from Mr. Suozzi and his wife, Helene Suozzi, includes $152,645 in wages — a vast majority of it from Mr. Suozzi’s congressional salary — and $136,339 in capital gains.The Suozzis have a smattering of investments, including a rental office property in Glen Cove, N.Y., that garnered $18,360 in rental income in 2021, and an investment in a Southampton day camp, which earned them $12,677 in passive income.The Suozzis donated $38,097 to charity. The Hochuls donated $72,153, and paid $237,916 in federal taxes, or 29 percent of their income. The Suozzis paid $70,018, a federal tax rate of 19 percent.In the latest fund-raising disclosures, Mr. Suozzi reported raising $3.5 million and transferred a little less than $400,000 from his congressional account, leaving him with $2.7 million in the bank.Andrew Giuliani has raised the least money among the Republican candidates for governor.Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesGiuliani has name recognition, but few donorsAndrew Giuliani may have his father’s name recognition going for him, but in the race for money, he is badly lagging the New York Republican Party’s anointed candidate for governor.Mr. Giuliani raised just a little over $220,000 from donors this filing period, with no individual donations greater than $25,000, according to state campaign finance records. He has a bit more than $300,000 on hand. Mr. Giuliani performed worse, financially, than all three of his Republican rivals, even if some polling suggests he may be leading among voters.Rob Astorino, the former Westchester County executive, raised about $600,000 this period, leaving him with more than $1.1 million on hand. Mr. Zeldin, the party-backed candidate, raised a little over $3 million, leaving him with roughly that same amount to spend in the final weeks of the primary race. Mr. Wilson, a wealthy Wall Street trader who nearly won the race for state comptroller in 2010, raised more than $10 million this period, most of it from himself.“The unparalleled outpouring of grass-roots support from every corner of our state has only grown stronger,” Mr. Zeldin said in a statement. “In November, New Yorkers are going to restore a balance of power to Albany.”Dana Rubinstein reported from New York, and Luis Ferré-Sadurní contributed reporting from New York. More

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      Jumaane Williams Owns the Left Lane. Why Hasn’t His Campaign Taken Off?

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      Mr. Williams, whose candidacy for New York governor was celebrated by progressives, has not gained much momentum and is far behind in fund-raising.At an outdoor event space in Buffalo, a diverse crowd gathered for a benefit to help the families affected by the horrific mass shooting at a supermarket in the city’s East Side.Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate who is running for governor, had planned to attend, his campaign said. But as the crowd hushed and the names and ages of the victims were read aloud, Mr. Williams was absent.Running late, the candidate had decided instead to head directly to the Tops Friendly Market where the racist massacre occurred, milling around a group of volunteers handing out groceries and food to residents.Mr. Williams seemed cautious at first, but eventually he struck up a conversation with Brenda Williams McDuffie, a former president of the Buffalo Urban League and a Brooklyn native.“They want people they trust to be able to communicate sometimes on their behalf,” Ms. McDuffie said. “I know his voice and how he uses his voice and his values and love for the community, so it’s exceptional for him to come.”Still, she conceded that many in Buffalo were less familiar with him. “I knew he was running for governor, but I haven’t really followed it, because I think I haven’t really seen him in upstate New York,” she said.Mr. Williams, at an event to help the families of the shooting victims in Buffalo, said that his wife’s cancer and the premature birth of his daughter had curtailed his campaigning.Libby March for The New York TimesAfter a competitive run for lieutenant governor four years ago, Mr. Williams generated excitement in progressive circles when he announced that he would challenge Gov. Kathy Hochul in her bid for her first full term.He had name recognition, charisma and a clear political lane: Ms. Hochul and another primary rival, Representative Thomas R. Suozzi, are considered centrist Democrats; Mr. Williams is backed by numerous progressive-oriented groups, including the Working Families Party.But Mr. Williams has failed to gain much momentum ahead of the June 28 primary. He is far behind in fund-raising, has not run any television ads, and has done far fewer campaign events than might be expected of a major candidate for governor.Beneath it all is an underlying issue, though Mr. Williams is careful not to blame his campaign woes on it: His wife was diagnosed with cervical cancer last year, and their daughter was born prematurely in February.Mr. Williams’s wife, India Sneed-Williams, a lawyer, said her husband had twice privately offered to drop out of the governor’s race. She refused, she said. She wouldn’t let him because “I know who I had married.”Mr. Williams acknowledged in an interview that he came “closer than I had ever been” to dropping out of the race.“There were a few times that I think it did impact the campaign,” Mr. Williams said.“Could I give everything I would normally give to a campaign while I’m going through this?” he added. “The answer is no.”But he decided to push on, even as his campaign worried that it would not have enough money to compete. “It was always about the ability to show a path, even if it was uphill,” he said.With a month remaining before the primary, Mr. Williams’s supporters recognize that describing his path as uphill undersells just how steep it is.Sochie Nnaemeka, the head of the New York State Working Families Party, described Mr. Williams as a “moral figure” who can “contrast a Hochul administration that believes that the ultra-wealthy also deserve government to do their bidding for them.”Mr. Williams, comforting the family of an 11-year-old girl killed by a stray bullet in the Bronx, has called on state leaders to better address the root causes of violent crime.Gregg Vigliotti for The New York TimesMr. Williams and his aides concur. They hope that he can use two upcoming debates to portray Ms. Hochul as a nicer version of her predecessor, Andrew M. Cuomo, who supports many of the same policies as he did, such as changes to the bail reform law, and raises millions from the same special interests, labor unions and business groups that supported him.Ms. Hochul has shown other recent signs of potential vulnerability: Her chosen lieutenant governor resigned in April after being indicted on fraud and bribery charges. She has also been criticized for pushing $600 million in state subsidies to build a football stadium for the Buffalo Bills.“It’s unfortunate because those things aligned with Jumaane having a baby that was very premature and also his wife going through cancer treatments,” said Jonathan Westin, director of New York Communities for Change, a grass-roots organizing group that has endorsed Mr. Williams. “It was hard for him to be out there as much as he wanted to be.”Ms. Sneed-Williams finished chemotherapy three weeks ago, and their “miracle baby” is now healthy.Ms. Hochul, whose campaign spokesman declined to comment, has largely ignored Mr. Williams. She has amassed an overwhelming advantage in fund-raising and has a solid lead in the polls.The governor has $18.5 million on hand and has raised $31.7 million, her campaign said this week. Mr. Williams had raised just $221,000 as of January, according to the most recent round of financial disclosure reports, and is set to report updated numbers later on Friday.Mr. Williams ran a spirited campaign for lieutenant governor in 2018 against the incumbent, Kathy Hochul, who is now governor.Hilary Swift for The New York Times“We always had a conversation about is this sustainable? Are you OK? Do you want to keep going?” Ana María Archila, a candidate for lieutenant governor and his running mate, said. His decision to stay in the race, she added, solidified Mr. Williams as a candidate “who brings his life into he public arena in a way that humanizes everybody else.”Mr. Williams’s campaign expects to be able to air ads on cable closer to the primary, and noted that he did not widely advertise during the primary for lieutenant governor in 2018, when he beat Ms. Hochul by 60,000 votes in New York City.Bruce Gyory, a Democratic strategist, said that although Ms. Hochul was not exciting the Democratic base, she had not antagonized it either. He still expected Mr. Williams to have a better showing than the 12 percent he received in a recent poll.“He’s working the progressives hard and he has a Hispanic lieutenant governor working hard out there, too,” Mr. Gyory said. “I think there’s more energy on the ground for Jumaane than there is for Suozzi.”Mr. Williams, a self-described “activist elected official,” is known for speaking out against discriminatory policing practices and getting arrested to protest them.When he won a special election for public advocate in 2019, Mr. Williams spoke candidly during his acceptance speech about seeking therapy for mental health challenges. And in the video announcing his bid for governor, he talked about living with Tourette’s Syndrome and the involuntary body movements that come with it.During a walk-through at Kingsborough Houses in Brooklyn with Ms. Archila, Mr. Williams easily connected with tenants as they explained how they had to deal with everything from rundown apartments to the lack of a safe park space.He ran into some he knew from his early days as an activist, and connected others with the public advocate’s office to deal with issues such as a backed-up sewer at the day care center.“Could you see Gov. Hochul really walking around here authentically talking with people?” said Jamell Henderson, a Kingsborough resident who led the visit.Mr. Williams and his running mate, Ana María Archila, at a recent visit to the Kingsborough Houses in Brooklyn.Gregg Vigliotti for The New York TimesAt another recent event in the Bronx, where various public officials addressed the death of an 11-year-old girl who was struck by a stray bullet, Mr. Williams was the last elected official to speak.He offered a fiery denunciation of Ms. Hochul, accusing her of failing to designate enough funding in the state’s $220 billion budget to address the root causes of violence.At his appearance in Buffalo, Mr. Williams again attacked the governor, this time for funding the Bills stadium while the Black neighborhood where the shooting occurred suffered from decades of systemic racism.He said he was angry that Ms. Hochul had said she lived 10 minutes from the scene of the massacre, but did nothing to help the neighborhood add other grocery options beyond Tops, the only supermarket in the area. “I’m like, ‘You just found that out?’” Mr. Williams said.By the time he made it to the next event, its organizers were packing up. Mr. Williams apologized and chatted for a few minutes. What did he make of his chances, one of the organizers, Willie Aytch, asked?“It’s always uphill for me,” Mr. Williams said. “But I fight uphill.”Jesse McKinley reported from Buffalo, N.Y. More

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      N.Y. Governor Candidates Flood the Airwaves With $20 Million in Ads

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      With the June 28 primary fast approaching, candidates for governor are spending big to get their message out to voters.An Army veteran. A bartender’s son. A hard-working executive, burning the midnight oil.These are just a few of the ways in which candidates vying to be New York’s next governor have introduced themselves to voters in a barrage of campaign advertisements before the June 28 primaries.In the Covid era where in-person campaigning still remains fraught, political ads offer candidates an opportunity to speak directly to voters, showcasing their qualifications and vision for the future.Four of the candidates for governor have spent a combined $19.8 million on television ads: Gov. Kathy Hochul and Representative Thomas Suozzi, both Democrats, and Representative Lee Zeldin and Harry Wilson on the Republican side. Other candidates, including the New York City public advocate, Jumaane Williams, a left-leaning Democrat, and Andrew Giuliani, a pro-Trump conservative, have not yet purchased ads on television, according to AdImpact, a firm that tracks television ad spending.There has, however, been some major ad spending on behalf of a familiar noncandidate, who is at least as of now not running for governor — former governor Andrew M. Cuomo.Hochul leads the spending warMs. Hochul’s first television ad shows the governor late at night at her desk in her Albany office, portraying her as an executive who has worked tirelessly since ascending to the governorship following the unexpected resignation of Mr. Cuomo in August.What the 30-second spot does not show is how Ms. Hochul has also worked tirelessly to raise campaign funds.The governor, who as of January had amassed a record-smashing $21.6 million campaign war chest, has so far spent more than $6.8 million in ad buys, according to AdImpact. Most of the spending, not surprisingly, has been focused on New York City and its suburbs, where most Democratic primary voters live.Wielding the power of incumbency, Ms. Hochul utilized her first ad to highlight some of the voter-friendly policy priorities she negotiated with lawmakers as part of the state budget in April. The ad underscores her efforts to confront some of the biggest election-year issues — crime and skyrocketing prices — by touting measures to crack down on illegal guns and cut taxes for the middle class.Ms. Hochul released a second television ad last week focused on her commitment to protect abortion rights in New York, shortly after news broke that the Supreme Court was likely to overturn Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that legalized abortion across the country in 1973.Similar to other Democratic campaigns nationwide, Ms. Hochul’s operatives are hoping to wield the issue against Republicans — the ad accuses two of her Republican rivals of wanting to ban abortion — and to galvanize Democratic voters in November, when control of Congress will also be in play.Representative Tom Suozzi has used his ads to focus on his vows to combat crime and lower taxes.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesSuozzi focuses on crime and taxesMr. Suozzi, a centrist Democrat from Long Island, has used his campaign ads to cast himself as the “common-sense” candidate and to attack Ms. Hochul. Some of the ads blame her for failing to address rising gun violence, chiding her for an endorsement she received from the National Rifle Association during her time in Congress.Mr. Suozzi has focused most of his ads on his promise to lower income and property taxes and to further roll back the changes to the state’s bail laws that the Democrat-led Legislature passed in 2019.Mr. Suozzi has repeatedly blamed bail reform for leading to the release of more criminals. He has accused the governor of not doing enough to fix what he sees as deficiencies in the bail laws, even though Ms. Hochul recently persuaded lawmakers to approve some changes.Mr. Suozzi, who trails Ms. Hochul in public polls, faces an uphill battle: The Democratic primary tends to attract the party’s most liberal voters, but he is running as an unabashed moderate unafraid of taking on the party’s vocal left wing.“It’s not about being politically correct, it’s about doing the correct thing for the people of New York,” he says in one ad, which the campaign named, “No B.S.”Mr. Suozzi, who had about $5.4 million in the bank as of earlier this year, has poured just over $3.9 million into television ad buys.He began spending on television ads as early as January, far before Ms. Hochul, but his campaign has not made ad buys in the most recent weeks of May, according to AdImpact.A representative from Mr. Suozzi’s campaign said that it had halted buying because of some uncertainty around the date of the primary, but planned to soon resume.Representative Lee Zeldin is running negative ads attacking the governor.Johnny Milano for The New York TimesZeldin goes negative on Hochul and state of New YorkMr. Zeldin’s television ads have consistently sought to link Ms. Hochul to the ills that his campaign argues have befallen New York because of Democratic rule, a recurring theme as he seeks to become the state’s first Republican governor in 16 years.Anchored on a pledge to “Save Our State,” Mr. Zeldin’s ads home in heavily on crime — they rail against bail reform and the defund the police movement — as well as the state’s high taxes and population loss.They also seek to tie Ms. Hochul, who served as Mr. Cuomo’s lieutenant governor for six years, to the scandals that led to his resignation (one calls her a “silent accomplice”). His campaign’s most recent television ad is focused exclusively on the arrest in May of Ms. Hochul’s former lieutenant governor, Brian Benjamin, on federal bribery charges.Mr. Zeldin, who is the Republican Party’s designee in the race, has used the ads to tout his own credentials as a military veteran and as a “tax-fighting, trusted conservative.”They make no mention of his staunch support for former President Donald J. Trump, who remains largely unpopular in his home state, where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one. Mr. Zeldin voted against certifying last year’s presidential election in January 2021, a move Democrats have used as a cudgel against him.Of the more than $5 million in campaign money Mr. Zeldin had as of January, about $3.9 million has been steered into television ads.While Mr. Zeldin has spent almost $1.5 million in the New York City area, the majority of his television ad spending has gone outside the downstate region, targeting the state’s conservative voters.Harry Wilson, a businessman who contemplated running for governor in 2018, is hoping to upset the Republican nominee, Representative Lee Zeldin.John Minchillo/Associated PressHarry Wilson spends big on airtimeMr. Wilson, a businessman who has run for state office before, nonetheless entered the race largely unknown to voters. But he’s hoping that a slate of ad buys stretching from February to June will change that.Mr. Wilson, who is reported to be largely self-funding his campaign, has spent more than $5.2 million, according to AdImpact, outspending Mr. Zeldin, who is widely seen as the front-runner on the Republican side.Mr. Wilson ran a well-regarded campaign for comptroller in 2010 that captured the support of three major editorial boards, but he lost narrowly to the Democratic nominee, Thomas P. DiNapoli. He also contemplated running for governor four years ago, but decided against it.Mr. Wilson hopes that his record coaching troubled companies and center-right social views will appeal to moderate voters looking for a change.His ads focus on bureaucratic inefficiency, rising costs and population losses that Mr. Wilson blames on “corrupt go-along to get-along politicians.” Like some of his competitors, he promises to lower taxes and add police officers. But he also pitches himself as a fiscally conscious political outsider, with the perspective and experience to turn around a failing state.“I’m running for governor because I cannot sit by and watch as New York is devastated by career politicians,” he says in one ad.Ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo has released two political ads and has spoken at churches as part of his campaign to rehabilitate his image.Victor J. Blue for The New York TimesCuomo to New York: Don’t you forget about meThough he is not an official candidate for any office, the former governor has also run two ads — spending $2.8 million out of the campaign fund he left office with, according to AdImpact.The ads seek to restore Mr. Cuomo’s image after his resignation last year amid allegations of sexual harassment and to reframe him as the victim of political attacks.Mr. Cuomo ran the ads from late February until late March, heightening speculation that he might jump into the race, but hasn’t made any ad buys since then.Mr. Cuomo has denied any inappropriate behavior, and five district attorneys declined to prosecute claims against him after opening inquiries. However, the New York State attorney general, Letitia James, State Assembly investigators and many of those same district attorneys found Mr. Cuomo’s accusers to be credible.One 30-second advertisement begins with a smattering of newspaper headlines memorializing the closure of several investigations into sexual harassment and assault allegations, concluding that “political attacks won, and New Yorkers lost a proven leader.”The other seeks to remind New Yorkers of Mr. Cuomo’s achievements in office, citing the state’s gun laws, the $15 minimum wage and major airport and bridge projects.“I never stopped fighting for New Yorkers, and I never will,” he says. More