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      Money Floods the Race for Control of Congress, More Than a Year Early

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      The main House war chests for both Democrats and Republicans have a combined $128 million in the bank — more than double the sum at this point in 2020.A dizzying amount of money is already pouring into the battles for the House and the Senate more than a year before the 2022 elections, as Republicans are bullish on their chances to take over both chambers in the first midterm election under President Biden, given the narrow margins keeping Democrats in power.The two parties’ main war chests for the House total a combined $128 million — more than double the sum at this point in the 2020 cycle and far surpassing every other previous one. Top House members are now raising $1 million or more per quarter. And more than two dozen senators and Senate candidates topped that threshold.Candidate after candidate, and the parties themselves, are posting record-breaking sums, even as the shapes of most House districts nationwide remain in flux because of delays in the once-a-decade redrawing of boundaries.In Georgia, Senator Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, raised more than $100,000 per day in the last three months for a $9.5 million haul. But his leading Republican rival, Herschel Walker, the former football player who was urged to run by former President Donald J. Trump, raised $3.7 million in a little more than a month, setting up a potentially bruising and expensive contest in that key state.Politicians in both parties are furiously racing to expand their online donor bases while simultaneously courting big checks from wealthy benefactors. At a Senate Republican retreat for big donors in Palm Beach, Fla., this week, Mr. Trump’s presence was a reminder of his continued perch at the center of the Republican Party — both in helping lure donations and in derailing whatever messaging party operatives have designed.“The donor community is waking up to the fact that the Republican Party has a historic opportunity in 2022, in spite of Trump continuing to talk about 2020,” said Scott Reed, a longtime Republican strategist.Money alone is rarely decisive in political races, especially when both parties are flush with cash. But the glut of political funding, detailed in Federal Election Commission reports filed on Friday by House and Senate candidates and announced by the parties, shows the growing stakes of American elections, where a single flipped Senate seat can shift trillions of dollars in federal spending.The country’s increasingly polarized electorate has been hyper-engaged in politics since the Trump era began, and the ease of channeling that energy into donations online is remaking how campaigns are funded. The online donation clearinghouses for the two parties, ActBlue and WinRed, processed a combined total of more than $450 million in the third quarter.The avalanche of cash could expand the 2022 political battlefield and result in an unrelenting wave of advertising aimed at Americans who live in swing districts and states.The ad wars have, in fact, already begun. Democratic- and Republican-linked groups are spending millions of dollars to shape public opinion on the spending package currently being debated in Congress.Among them is one Biden-aligned nonprofit group, Building Back Together, which said it had spent nearly $15 million on television ads in more than two dozen House districts and key states since July. This week, a Republican-aligned nonprofit group, One Nation, announced that it was beginning a $10 million ad campaign, urging three Democratic senators up for re-election in 2022 — in Nevada, Arizona and New Hampshire — to oppose the spending package.Senator Raphael Warnock raised more than $100,000 per day in the last three months, making him the top Democratic fund-raiser outside of congressional leaders.Damon Winter/The New York TimesAll told, more than $70 million has been spent since Sept. 1 on television ads related to the Biden legislative agenda, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm.Historically, the party out of power has done well in a new president’s first midterm election, and Republicans see rising inflation, missteps in Afghanistan and a softening in Mr. Biden’s approval rating as reasons for a sunny 2022 outlook.“We’ll have to really screw up to lose the House,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, referring to the Democrats’ narrow majority in that chamber. He said that recapturing the Senate, which is split evenly between 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, would depend on recruiting more top-tier Republicans, such as Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire.At the donor retreat in Florida, Mr. Graham said, “there was a sense of optimism that was as high as I’ve seen it.”In the House, the path to the majority is widely expected to be determined by suburban voters, who swung sharply toward the Democratic Party during the Trump administration.Jesse Ferguson, a Democratic strategist who has worked on House campaigns, noted that the central role of suburban terrain — the battlegrounds were more rural 15 years ago — had driven up the cost of campaigning. Buying ads to reach suburban voters requires advertising in pricier urban television markets.“The upside is the Democratic coalition is built around suburbs,” Mr. Ferguson said. “The downside is the resources to run in Philadelphia and Chicago and L.A. and Miami.”The National Republican Congressional Committee began this year with roughly $8 million less on hand than its Democratic counterpart but entered October with roughly $2 million more, as small digital contributions have accelerated for Republicans. Each group has raised well over $100 million this year.Representative Tom Emmer, the chairman of the Republican congressional committee, noted in a call with reporters that in the 2020 cycle, his party committee had not reached the $100 million threshold until February — five months later.Both the Senate and the House Republican campaign committees have leaned on hardball and sometimes deceptive tactics to boost their bottom lines, such as pre-checking boxes that automatically enroll donors in recurring monthly contributions and aggressively fostering guilt trips in supporters and questioning their allegiances.“You’re a traitor …” began one such House G.O.P. text earlier this week. “You abandoned Trump.”The text gave a false deadline of 17 minutes to donate. “This is your final chance to prove your loyalty or be branded a deserter,” it read.A fund-raising text message this week from the National Republican Congressional Committee.The House G.O.P. committee, which declined to comment on its tactics, said it had raised nearly 44 percent of its funds last quarter online.“Democrats have owned online fund-raising, and that is no longer true,” said former Representative Tom Davis, who previously led the House Republican campaign arm. “Republicans now are the ones who are obsessed and aroused. People voted for Biden to get Trump out of their living rooms. But they didn’t vote for all his policies.”Most Republican strategists hope to keep the focus on Democrats, knowing voters typically want to put a check on those in power. But Mr. Trump’s continued insistence on making his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen a central rallying cry for the G.O.P. — “If we don’t solve the Presidential Election Fraud of 2020,” Mr. Trump warned in a statement this week, “Republicans will not be voting in ’22 or ’24” — is a complicating factor.“If it’s a referendum on Biden’s policies, we will do very well,” Mr. Graham said of the 2022 midterms. “If it’s looking back, if it’s a grievance campaign, then we could be in trouble.”Mr. Emmer tried to distance himself from Mr. Trump’s remarks, saying, “He’s a private citizen, and he, of course, is entitled to his own opinion.” Still, Mr. Emmer added that he was “honored” that the former president would headline the committee’s fall fund-raising dinner. “He remains the biggest draw in our party,” he said.Congressional leaders are the other leading party fund-raisers. Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican minority leader, and his top deputy, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, have transferred a combined total of nearly $30 million to their party committees this year, party officials said.Mr. Scalise’s top donations since July included $105,000 from the PAC of Koch Industries; $125,000 from H. Fisk Johnson, the chief executive of S.C. Johnson & Son; and $66,300 from John W. Childs, the private equity magnate.Whether this is the final term of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is 81, is widely discussed in Washington. But the San Francisco Democrat remains a prolific fund-raiser.Donors to her political accounts in recent months include Haim Saban, the media investor ($263,400); Hamilton James, a top Blackstone executive ($263,000); Gwendolyn Sontheim Meyer, the Cargill heiress ($263,400); and Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood producer ($163,400).Senator Chuck Schumer has aggressively pressed top party fund-raisers in recent months.Sarahbeth Maney/The New York TimesSenator Chuck Schumer, the majority leader, raised heavily both for his own 2022 re-election bid in New York and to maintain the Democratic majority. Mr. Schumer has aggressively pressed top party fund-raisers in recent months, telling one that he wanted to fill his war chest (now at $31.9 million) as a deterrent to any primary challenge from the left. He specifically named Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York as the kind of candidate he would like to keep from running, mostly to avoid weakening his hand while navigating the evenly divided Senate. Mr. Schumer’s office declined to comment.Notably, some of the top fund-raisers in both parties are Black.They include Mr. Warnock, the top Democratic fund-raiser, and Mr. Walker, a leading Republican in the Georgia Senate race. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the lone Black Republican in the Senate, was the top fund-raiser in his party. Mr. Scott raised $8.3 million in the third quarter. He now has $18.8 million in the bank, funds that can be used for his 2022 re-election or to seed a potential 2024 presidential run.Representative Val Demings, a Black Democrat in Florida and a former Orlando police chief, is challenging Senator Marco Rubio, the Republican incumbent, and was another top fund-raiser, pulling in $8.4 million. But she spent heavily to do so: $5.6 million.Florida has proved elusive for Democratic candidates, especially in recent years, and some party strategists are already quietly grumbling about the tens of millions — if not more — that is likely to be poured in to a tough race, especially after hundreds of millions of dollars was spent on losing 2020 efforts to topple Republican incumbents in Maine, Iowa, North Carolina and South Carolina.Rachel Shorey contributed reporting. More

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      Para los demócratas, estos son los votantes clave en Texas

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      Una nueva y ambiciosa campaña pretende atraer a los jóvenes texanos que no están registrados para votar o no acuden a las urnas sistemáticamente.HOUSTON — Cristina Tzintzún-Ramirez está convencida de saber cuál es el secreto para que Texas se convierta en un estado demócrata.La juventud.Cuando se postuló para dirigir NextGen America, un grupo liberal respaldado por el multimillonario y excandidato a la presidencia Tom Steyer, ella dejó en claro dos cosas: que no iba a salir de Austin y que la organización tendría que invertir tiempo y dinero en Texas.Además, se enfocó en un número mágico: 631.000 votos, que fue el margen de triunfo con el que los republicanos ganaron el estado en 2020.Ahora, NextGen tiene como meta dos millones de votantes en Texas: 1,1 millón de electores de entre 18 y 30 años de edad que están registrados para votar pero que no acudido a las urnas de manera sistemática en las últimas elecciones; otros 277.000 electores jóvenes que no votaron en 2020; y 565.000 personas que han identificado como “progresistas jóvenes” que no están registrados. Si solo una tercera parte del total saliera a votar —aproximadamente 633.000 personas—, sería suficiente para que los demócratas superaran el margen de los republicanos.“Hay una enorme cantidad de jóvenes que aún no se registran para votar, así que tenemos que lograr que crean en su propio poder”, señaló Tzintzún-Ramirez, quien es la presidenta actual de NextGen y ha trabajado en la política de Texas durante más de 15 años. “La gente pensaba que la demografía bastaba, pero en realidad tenemos que salir y convencer a esa población de que vote”.Esta organización está pensando gastar casi 16 millones de dólares en Texas durante los próximos dos años para registrar a nuevos electores y llevarlos a las casillas en las elecciones intermedias de 2022. El proyecto representa una parte del gasto más importante de los demócratas en Texas y tiene como objetivo captar a los jóvenes, un grupo que el partido espera que sirva para poner fin al control republicano en ese estado.No obstante, los demócratas tienen que subir una cuesta muy escarpada. La meta de ganar Texas, el estado del país más grande controlado por los republicanos, se les ha escapado desde hace mucho tiempo: su partido ha gastado muy poco o nada, la manipulación partidista les dificulta ganar las elecciones y la cámara estatal lidera con eficacia el flanco derecho de los republicanos.Además, con singular entusiasmo, los republicanos siguen haciendo circular el dinero en ese estado: el gobernador Greg Abbott recaudó casi 19 millones de dólares solo en los últimos diez días de junio, mucho más dinero del que NextGen piensa gastar en el estado durante los próximos dos años. Varios de los cheques para el gobernador fueron por un millón de dólares, algo que ocurre de manera habitual en el caso de los republicanos de Texas, donde no existen límites de donación en las contiendas estatales.“El dinero no lo es todo, pero es mucho mejor que nada”, comentó Julián Castro, exalcalde de San Antonio y excandidato a la presidencia. “Es primordial aumentar las cifras, cuando hay tantos votantes poco asiduos; registrar votantes cuesta dinero”.Cristina Tzintzún-Ramirez cree que a los jóvenes los motivan más los temas que los candidatos en sí.Annie Mulligan para The New York TimesTzintzún-Ramirez piensa que a los jóvenes los motivan más los temas que los candidatos en sí y que el trabajo del grupo complementará cualquier gasto en las campañas. La mayor parte de estas, señaló, se enfocan en los electores con los que ya cuentan o en los indecisos, y “movilizar a los jóvenes no es parte de la ecuación y no es rentable para la mayoría de las campañas”.Según el Centro para la Información y la Investigación sobre Educación Cívica de la Universidad Tufts, el año pasado, aproximadamente el 50 por ciento de las personas menores de 30 años votaron en las elecciones presidenciales, un aumento del 11 por ciento en comparación con 2016. La información del censo muestra que Texas es el segundo estado más grande del país y que su población también es una de las más jóvenes y diversas. En la última década, la gente de color representó el 95 por ciento del crecimiento estatal y, ahora, los texanos blancos conforman menos del 40 por ciento de la población del estado.Tal vez no sea suficiente inundar de dinero el estado en un momento en que el Partido Demócrata de Texas enfrenta obstáculos importantes: una disminución del entusiasmo entre los electores, actitudes políticas cambiantes, restricciones de votación más estrictas y una reestructuración de los distritos que favorece a los republicanos. Además, aunque desde hace mucho tiempo la demografía se ha considerado una ventaja para los demócratas conforme el estado se vuelve más diverso, en las últimas elecciones, una cantidad considerable de electores latinos de la zona fronteriza decidieron votar por el Partido Republicano.Para los republicanos, quienes creen que el discurso de darle la vuelta a las votaciones en el estado no es más que propaganda demócrata, esas donaciones de siete cifras para su propio partido reflejan un entusiasmo hacia el Partido Republicano.“Desde luego que el dinero influye, pero los demócratas han afirmado una y otra vez que Texas estaba a punto de volverse demócrata y vieron truncadas sus esperanzas”, comentó el senador Ted Cruz, quien criticó a Beto O’Rourke en su contienda por el Senado en 2018 por atraer tantas donaciones de los liberales de otras partes del país.La dificultad para los demócratas se puso de manifiesto durante un mitin que dio inicio a los esfuerzos de registro de votantes de NextGen en la Universidad de Houston. En el evento subieron al escenario varios líderes demócratas, uno tras otro, en un intento de convencer a la pequeña multitud del poder que tienen los jóvenes votantes.Pero al final, cuando Sheila Jackson Lee y Al Green, dos congresistas negros, subieron al escenario, quedaron claros los límites de ese poder.Los republicanos que elaboraron el borrador de un nuevo mapa del Congreso fusionaron sus dos distritos en uno solo, lo que plantea la posibilidad de que dos de los integrantes más veteranos de la delegación demócrata del Congreso del estado se vean obligados a competir entre sí. Jackson Lee y Green se han opuesto al nuevo mapa, al decir que parece ser discriminatorio.“Vamos a tener que pelear”, dijo Green en una entrevista. “Habrá que protestar. Eso requerirá energía. Se necesitarán recursos. Y los conseguiremos”.El multimillonario y excandidato presidencial Tom Steyer fundó NextGen en 2013.Annie Mulligan para The New York TimesDesde hace mucho tiempo, Texas —donde hay más de 650.000 millonarios, más que en cualquier otro estado, a excepción de California— ha sido una especie de cajero automático para los candidatos de ambos partidos en otras partes del país, casi siempre en detrimento de los candidatos locales.Apenas hace ocho años, cuando Paul Sadler contendió por un escaño en el Senado contra Cruz, que en ese entonces apenas empezaba, los demócratas del país casi no hicieron nada para apoyar su campaña, afirmó. Cruz recaudó más de 14 millones de dólares. Sadler no llegó ni siquiera a un millón de dólares.“No tuvieron ninguna participación”, comentó el exlegislador estatal Sadler acerca de los grupos demócratas a nivel nacional. “Tomaron el mapa y eliminaron a Texas por completo. Me decepcioné muchísimo. Ni siquiera lo intentaban”.Más bien, los dirigentes demócratas de todo el país trataron a Texas como si fuera una alcancía y recaudaron dinero de donantes que vivían ahí para las campañas de otros estados. “Nadie creía que Texas podría ganarse, pero ahora es un lugar diferente”, señaló.De hecho, en las elecciones presidenciales de la última década, se han reducido o se han mantenido igual los márgenes del Partido Republicanos en Texas. En 2012, Mitt Romney ganó Texas con 57 por ciento de los votos. Donald Trump recibió 52 por ciento de los votos en 2016 y una vez más en 2020.El gasto demócrata ha crecido al mismo tiempo en los últimos ciclos: mientras que unos 75 millones de dólares se destinaron a los candidatos demócratas en el estado en 2016, aproximadamente 213 millones de dólares se destinaron a los candidatos demócratas en 2020. Esa cifra de 2020 seguía siendo empequeñecida por los 388 millones de dólares gastados en candidatos republicanos, según Open Secrets, que rastrea el gasto político en todo el país.Debido al tamaño de Texas, tanto demócratas como republicanos gastan más dinero allí que en casi cualquier otro estado del país. Pero el porcentaje gastado en candidatos demócratas es uno de los más bajos del país. Aproximadamente el 35 por ciento de todo el gasto político en Texas se destina a los demócratas, según Open Secrets. En Wisconsin, un estado clave en las elecciones, el 49 por ciento se destina a los demócratas.Ya ha habido algunos intentos de inversión de alto nivel en el estado: la campaña de Michael Bloomberg gastó varios millones de dólares a favor de Joe Biden durante las primarias presidenciales de 2020. En 2014, Battleground Texas, un esfuerzo liderado por exasesores de Barack Obama, gastó millones solo para que todos los demócratas perdieran en las elecciones estatales.Rafael Anchia, un legislador demócrata estatal de Dallas, quien preside el Comité Legislativo Mexicoestadounidense, señaló que la campaña de O’Rourke fue el único esfuerzo reciente de los demócratas a nivel estatal con un presupuesto lo suficientemente alto como para cubrir todo el estado. Anchia afirmó que, al igual que otros demócratas de Texas, ha defendido ante los donantes del país que ese estado podría ser competitivo.“Texas ya no se considera una quimera”, comentó. “Tiene una población parecida a la de California, pero ha sido un estado de baja participación y de bajas votaciones”.Claudia Yoli Ferla, directora ejecutiva de MOVE Texas, anima a los asistentes en un evento de NextGen en Houston.Annie Mulligan para The New York TimesQuizás uno de los obstáculos más difíciles que hay que superar sea la apatía. En una reunión de planificación de NextGen en McAllen, en la frontera con México, varios estudiantes dijeron que su mayor reto sería convencer a sus compañeros para que votaran.“Para la gente, la política es un tema incómodo o algo que en realidad no le afecta en absoluto”, comentó Rebecca Rivera, una estudiante de 21 años de la Universidad de Texas en el Valle del Río Grande. “Han perdido la confianza en el gobierno o, para empezar, nunca la tuvieron en realidad”.Jennifer Medina es reportera de política estadounidense que cubrió la campaña presidencial de Estados Unidos de 2020. Originaria del sur de California, anteriormente pasó varios años reportando sobre la región para la sección National. @jennymedina More

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      Testimony at Lev Parnas Trial Offers Peek at His Place in Trump’s Orbit

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      Among other things, Adam Laxalt, a U.S. Senate candidate in Nevada, described his suspicions about a donation to his run for governor in 2018.Adam Laxalt was a Republican candidate for governor of Nevada in 2018 when he bumped into Rudolph W. Giuliani in a ballroom at the Trump International Hotel in Washington.Mr. Laxalt, who, like Mr. Giuliani, was a staunch supporter of President Donald J. Trump, accompanied Mr. Giuliani to a balcony, and told him that the governor’s race was “very close.”Among a group smoking cigars and having drinks, someone Mr. Laxalt did not know spoke up: It was Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian American businessman.“He immediately offered to help my campaign,” Mr. Laxalt said on Friday while testifying as a prosecution witness at Mr. Parnas’s corruption trial in federal court in Manhattan. “He offered to throw a fund-raiser.”Mr. Parnas is charged with conspiring to make campaign contributions by a foreign national and in the name of a person other than himself. Among the contributions at issue is one made in the maximum amount, $2,700, to Mr. Laxalt in 2018. An indictment says Mr. Parnas made the contribution using a credit card belonging to a business partner, Igor Fruman, and another person.Later, Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman became known for helping Mr. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, as he oversaw an effort in Ukraine to uncover damaging information about Joe Biden, at the time a leading Democratic presidential candidate who went on to beat Mr. Trump in the 2020 election.Mr. Laxalt’s testimony illustrated how thoroughly Mr. Parnas appeared to have installed himself in Mr. Trump’s orbit. Mr. Laxalt was a co-chair of Mr. Trump’s 2020 campaign in Nevada and he supported an effort to overturn Mr. Trump’s loss there.The interactions between Mr. Laxalt, who is currently running for a U.S. Senate seat in Nevada, and Mr. Parnas also provided a glimpse into the life of a political candidate eager to keep money flowing to his campaign.Although Mr. Laxalt is well known in Nevada — his grandfather was Paul Laxalt, a U.S. senator from the state — he testified that his race against Steve Sisolak, the Democrat who ultimately prevailed, was a “long, grueling, very tense” experience.The day after the meeting at the Trump hotel, Mr. Laxalt testified that he and Mr. Parnas exchanged text messages and that he believed some of them were related to plans to attend a rally that was to include Mike Pence, the vice president at the time.The text exchanges continued for weeks. A pattern emerged, in which Mr. Laxalt asked Mr. Parnas about donations, and Mr. Parnas provided responses that were short on commitment.Mr. Laxalt’s apparent friendliness in his messages to Mr. Parnas may have been partly professional. On cross-examination, he acknowledged that he had referred to Mr. Parnas as “a clownish guy with a gold chain,” and wondered whether he was an oddball from Brooklyn with a home in Florida who was more interested in taking photos with candidates than in writing checks to them.“Are you going to deliver on this fund-raiser,” Mr. Laxalt texted Mr. Parnas at one point. Mr. Parnas suggested some possible dates. But they passed without the event taking place.Mr. Laxalt testified that he encountered Mr. Parnas at a rally for Mr. Trump in Elko, Nev. They also arranged to have dinner, along with a few others, at a restaurant in Las Vegas that Mr. Laxalt described in a text message to Mr. Parnas as “an old mob joint.” (Mr. Parnas responded “love it” and included a thumb’s up emoji.)At times, the two exchanged comments about the campaign of Ron DeSantis, a good friend of Mr. Laxalt’s whom Mr. Parnas was also supporting as he ran for governor of Florida.As the election neared, Mr. Laxalt kept inquiring about money. Mr. Parnas said he would bring Mr. Giuliani to Nevada to barnstorm on Mr. Laxalt’s behalf. Mr. Parnas also asked Mr. Laxalt whether he would like help in arranging a robocall.Eventually, Mr. Parnas told Mr. Laxalt by text that he could arrange for donations totaling $20,000 from three people. Mr. Laxalt was appreciative but he asked whether Mr. Parnas himself was going to donate.“I can’t,” Mr. Parnas replied, citing a Federal Election Commission matter, an apparent reference to a complaint that a $325,000 donation to a super PAC supporting Mr. Trump, America First Action, by an energy company started by Mr. Fruman and Mr. Parnas had broken the law.“My attorney won’t allow it,” Mr. Parnas wrote to Mr. Laxalt, adding that he had tried to get his wife to donate but that his lawyer had also vetoed that idea.A short time later, on Nov. 1, 2018, less than a week before Election Day, Mr. Laxalt’s campaign received a $10,000 donation from Mr. Fruman.Mr. Laxalt said during his testimony on Friday that he was suspicious of the donation and, on the “advice of counsel,” had decided to send a check in that amount to the U.S. Treasury. More

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      Why Democrats Say Young Voters Are Crucial to Flipping Texas

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      Young people who are unregistered or do not vote consistently are the focus of an ambitious new push to turn Texas blue, a long-elusive goal for Democrats.HOUSTON — Cristina Tzintzún-Ramirez is convinced she knows the secret to turning Texas blue.Young people.When she applied to lead NextGen America, a liberal group backed by the billionaire and former presidential candidate Tom Steyer, she made two things clear. She was not leaving Austin, and the organization would have to spend time and money in Texas.And she was focused on a magic number: 631,000 votes. That was the margin of victory for Republicans in the state in 2020.Now, NextGen is targeting nearly 2 million voters in Texas: 1.1 million voters between the ages of 18 and 30 who are registered to vote but have not cast ballots consistently in recent elections; another 277,000 young voters who did not vote in 2020; and 565,000 people they have identified as “young progressives” who are unregistered. If just a third of the total turns out to vote — roughly 633,000 people — it would be enough for Democrats to overcome the Republican margin.“We have a huge number of young people who are not yet registered to vote, so we need to make them believe in their own power,” said Ms. Tzintzún-Ramirez, who is now the president of NextGen and who has worked in Texas politics for more than 15 years. “People believed demography is destiny, but we actually have to go out and convince those people to vote.”The organization is planning to spend nearly $16 million in Texas over the next two years to register new voters and get them to the polls in the 2022 midterm elections. The project marks some of the most significant Democratic spending in Texas that targets the young people the party hopes will help it break the Republican grip on the state.But Democrats have a steep hill to climb. The goal of flipping Texas, the country’s largest Republican-controlled state, has long eluded Democrats, after years of their party spending little to nothing, partisan gerrymandering making it more difficult for them to win elections and a statehouse that is effectively leading the Republican right flank.And Republicans enthusiastically keep the money flowing freely in the state: Gov. Greg Abbott raised nearly $19 million during the last 10 days of June alone, more money than NextGen plans to spend in the state in the next two years. Several of those checks to the governor were for $1 million, a regular occurrence for Republicans in Texas, where there are no donation limits in statewide races.“Money is not everything, but it’s a lot better than nothing,” said Julián Castro, the former mayor of San Antonio and a former presidential candidate. “It’s crucial to getting the numbers up, when you have so many people who are infrequent voters — voter registration drives cost money.”Cristina Tzintzún-Ramirez believes that young people are more motivated by issues than by individual candidates.Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesMs. Tzintzún-Ramirez believes that young people are more motivated by issues than by individual candidates, and that the work of the group will supplement any campaign spending. Most campaigns, Ms. Tzintzún-Ramirez said, focus on reliable voters or swing voters, and “mobilizing young people doesn’t fit into that equation and simply isn’t cost effective for most campaigns.”Last year, roughly 50 percent of people under the age of 30 voted in the presidential election, an 11-point increase from 2016, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University. Texas is the second-largest state in the country, and its population is also one of the youngest and most diverse, census data shows. People of color accounted for 95 percent of the state’s growth in the last decade, and white Texans now make up less than 40 percent of the state’s population.Flooding the state with money may not be enough at a time when the Democratic Party in Texas faces significant hurdles — flagging voter enthusiasm, shifting political attitudes, tighter voting restrictions and redistricting that favors Republicans. And while demographics have long been seen as a boon to Democrats as the state grows more diverse, a significant number of Hispanic voters near the border swung toward Republicans in the last election.For Republicans who believe the talk of flipping the state is nothing but Democratic hype, those seven-figure donations to their own party reflect the enthusiasm for the G.O.P.“Money certainly makes a difference, but Democrats have over and over again claimed that Texas was on the verge of turning blue only to have their hopes dashed,” said Senator Ted Cruz, who criticized Beto O’Rourke in their 2018 Senate race for attracting so many donations from liberals in other parts of the country.The difficulty for Democrats was on full display during a rally kicking off NextGen’s voter registration efforts at the University of Houston, where one Democratic leader after another took the stage to convince the small crowd of young voters’ power.But by the end, when Sheila Jackson Lee and Al Green, two Black members of Congress, took the stage, the limits of that power became clear.The Republicans who drew the draft of a new congressional map merged their two districts into one — raising the possibility that two of the longest-serving members of the state’s Democratic congressional delegation may be forced to run against each other. Ms. Jackson Lee and Mr. Green have objected to the redrawn map, saying it appears to be discriminatory.“We are going to have to fight,” Mr. Green said in an interview. “That will take protest. That will take energy. That will take resources. And we will get them.” Tom Steyer, the billionaire and former presidential candidate, founded NextGen in 2013. Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesTexas — with more than 650,000 millionaires, more than any other state except California — has long been a kind of A.T.M. for candidates from both parties in other parts of the country, often to the detriment of local candidates.Just eight years ago, when Paul Sadler ran for the Senate seat against Mr. Cruz, then a newcomer, national Democrats did next to nothing to support his campaign, he said. Mr. Cruz raised more than $14 million. Mr. Sadler never even reached $1 million.“They played absolutely no role,” Mr. Sadler, a former state legislator, said of national Democratic groups. “They took the map and wrote off Texas completely. I was extraordinarily disappointed. They wouldn’t even try.”Instead, he said, national Democratic leaders treated Texas like a piggy bank, raising money from donors who lived there for campaigns in other states. “Nobody believed Texas could be won, but it is a different place today,” he said.Indeed, the margins for Republicans have shrunk or stayed the same in presidential elections in Texas over the last decade. In 2012, Republican Senator Mitt Romney won Texas with 57 percent of the vote. In 2016, Donald J. Trump earned 52 percent. Last year, Mr. Trump again won 52 percent.Democratic spending has at the same time grown over the last several cycles: While about $75 million went to Democratic candidates in the state in 2016, roughly $213 million went to Democratic candidates in 2020. That 2020 number was still dwarfed by the $388 million spent on Republican candidates, according to Open Secrets, which tracks political spending across the country.Because of Texas’ size, both Democrats and Republicans spend more money there than in nearly any other state in the country. But the percentage spent on Democratic candidates is one of the lowest in the country. Roughly 35 percent of all political spending in Texas goes toward Democrats, according to Open Secrets. In Wisconsin, a key swing state in every election, 49 percent goes toward Democrats.There have been some high-profile attempts at investing in the state before: Michael R. Bloomberg’s campaign spent several million dollars for Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential primary. In 2014, Battleground Texas, an effort led by former Obama aides, spent millions — only to have every Democrat lose in statewide elections.Rafael Anchia, a Democratic state lawmaker from Dallas who is the chairman of the Mexican American Legislative Caucus, said Mr. O’Rourke’s campaign was the only statewide Democratic effort in recent memory with a large enough budget to reach across the state. Mr. Anchia said that like other Texas Democrats, he has made the case to national funders that the state could be competitive.“No longer is Texas considered this fool’s gold,” he said. “It has demographics similar to California’s but has been a low-turnout, low-voting state.”Claudia Yoli Ferla, executive director of MOVE Texas, rallies the crowd at a NextGen event in Houston.  Annie Mulligan for The New York TimesOne of the most difficult hurdles to overcome may be apathy. At a NextGen organizing meeting in McAllen, along the Mexican border, several students said their biggest challenge would be convincing their peers to vote at all.“People see politics as this uncomfortable conversation, or something that really doesn’t impact them at all,” said Rebecca Rivera, 21, a student at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. “They have lost their faith in government, or didn’t ever really have it to begin with.” More

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      As Lev Parnas' Trial Begins, Trump’s Shadow Looms

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      Though Mr. Parnas played a key role in the events that led to the former president’s impeachment, the charges he faces involve accusations of campaign finance violations.For Lev Parnas, a Ukrainian American businessman living in Florida, 2018 was a busy year.Sometime around March, he began showing up at Republican fund-raisers. Then, in late April, he dined on cheeseburgers and wedge salads with President Donald J. Trump.By May, a fledgling energy company that Mr. Parnas started with a partner, Igor Fruman, was listed as giving $325,000 to a pro-Trump super PAC. Soon, Mr. Parnas was assisting President Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, as he oversaw a shadow diplomacy campaign to investigate Joseph R. Biden Jr., then a leading Democratic presidential candidate.Within a year, Mr. Parnas was under investigation, and in late 2019 he was arrested with Mr. Fruman at Dulles International Airport, where both held one-way tickets on a Lufthansa Airlines flight to Frankfurt.Now, Mr. Parnas is facing a trial on campaign finance charges that include contributions to the super PAC and a state candidate in Nevada, where he wanted to operate a cannabis business. And though the case has little to do with his dealings with the former president — who was not accused of wrongdoing in the matter — Mr. Trump’s shadow hangs over Mr. Parnas’s trial, which begins Tuesday in federal court in Manhattan.The trial is expected to fill in gaps in the story of Mr. Parnas’s improbable ascent and downfall, from humble beginnings in Brooklyn to playing a key role in a sequence of events connected to the impeachment of Mr. Trump over accusations that he had asked Ukraine to investigate unfounded allegations about Mr. Biden and a conspiracy theory that Ukraine, rather than Russia, had meddled in the 2016 election.“Parnas is an interesting figure because in many respects he was in the underbelly of the Ukraine story,” said Daniel S. Goldman, the House Intelligence Committee lawyer who led the Ukraine inquiry. “We understood that Parnas in particular was Giuliani’s liaison to a lot of the significant officials in Ukraine.”According to an indictment unsealed after the airport arrests, Mr. Parnas, along with Mr. Fruman and two other co-defendants, conspired to circumvent the federal laws against foreign influence “by engaging in a scheme to funnel foreign money to candidates for federal and state office.”Mr. Fruman pleaded guilty last month to soliciting a campaign contribution from a foreign national. Another co-defendant, David Correia, pleaded guilty last year to conspiracy to commit wire fraud and to making false statements to the Federal Election Commission.Igor Fruman, center, pleaded guilty in September to soliciting a campaign contribution from a foreign national.Go Nakamura/ReutersWhen jury selection begins on Tuesday, Mr. Parnas’s only remaining co-defendant will be a man named Andrey Kukushkin. He is described in court papers as a partner in the planned cannabis business and a participant in a conspiracy to make political donations using money from a rich Russian businessman, Andrey Muraviev.A prosecutor, Hagan Cordell Scotten, suggested during a recent court hearing that Mr. Parnas could be viewed as “something of a genius serial fraudster.”One man who lost money by investing in a company led by Mr. Parnas remembered him wearing diamonds and driving a Rolls-Royce. But behind the trappings of affluence was a history of debts and aborted businesses.As he entered the world of political donors, Mr. Parnas seemed to see it in purely transactional terms, using money to gain access to Republican influencers, then apparently hoping to use those connections to further various moneymaking efforts.While working with Mr. Giuliani in late 2018 and 2019, Mr. Parnas traveled to Kyiv to press officials there to investigate Mr. Biden’s son Hunter, who had served as a board member of a Ukrainian energy company.Records released by Mr. Parnas show that he maintained regular communication with Yuriy Lutsenko, then Ukraine’s chief prosecutor, who was urging the removal of the United States ambassador in Kyiv and promising to help obtain information about both Bidens.Mr. Parnas also exchanged text messages with a Trump ally, Robert F. Hyde, that appeared to include references to people conducting surveillance on the ambassador, who Mr. Trump eventually recalled from her post. Mr. Giuliani later said in an interview with The New Yorker that he wanted that ambassador, Marie Yovanovitch, “out of the way” because he feared she would complicate his attempts to dig up dirt on Joe Biden.After Mr. Parnas’s arrest, Mr. Trump denied knowing him. Before long, Mr. Parnas reversed his loyalties, saying he regretted trusting Mr. Giuliani and Mr. Trump and providing documents, including some related to Ms. Yovanovitch, to the House Intelligence Committee as part of its impeachment inquiry.Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are investigating Mr. Giuliani’s pre-election activities in Ukraine. He has denied wrongdoing.The schemes that prosecutors are planning to outline during the upcoming trial seem more brash than sophisticated.The $325,000 donation to the super PAC, America First Action, was made using money that an indictment said Mr. Fruman and others obtained through a private loan, prosecutors have said. Court papers said that the donation was falsely listed in the name of Global Energy Producers, the company Mr. Parnas and Mr. Fruman were starting, because they were eager to “make it appear that GEP was a successful business.”Mr. Parnas is also accused of making a maximum contribution of $2,700 to the re-election campaign of Pete Sessions, a Republican congressman from Texas and a critic of Ms. Yovanovitch, using a credit card registered to an account belonging to Mr. Fruman and another person.And, according to an indictment, Mr. Parnas was part of a conspiracy to make political contributions by a foreign national. As part of that, the indictment said, a businessman — identified by prosecutors in a separate document as Mr. Muraviev — sent $1 million to a bank account controlled by Mr. Fruman “for purposes of making political donations and contributions.”Among candidates who prosecutors said Mr. Parnas promised to support was Adam Laxalt, who in 2018 was running for governor of Nevada and after the presidential election spoke at a news conference announcing a lawsuit by the Trump campaign seeking to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory in the state. (That suit was dismissed by a state court judge for lack of evidence.)Prosecutors said in a recent court filing that Mr. Laxalt became suspicious about the origins of a $10,000 donation to his campaign identified as being from Mr. Fruman, and sent a check for that amount to the U.S. Treasury “in order to avoid continued possession of the illegal donation without returning it to a potential wrongdoer.”In court filings and during a recent hearing, prosecutors and defense lawyers offered some indications of what arguments they might advance and what evidence they could introduce during the trial.Prosecutors wrote that they intended to offer out-of-court statements made by both defendants, as well as Mr. Correia, Mr. Fruman and Mr. Muraviev. Most of those, they added, “were made in electronic communications, such as emails, text messages, and chats using WhatsApp.”Likely witnesses, they wrote, included Deanna Van Rensburg, who served as Mr. Parnas’s personal assistant from about April 2018 until his arrest, and Mr. Laxalt, now vying for the Republican nomination for a U.S. Senate seat.Mr. Parnas’s lawyer, Joseph A. Bondy, suggested during the hearing, on Oct. 5, that he might portray his client as someone with a “relative lack of education” in the area of election law.And a lawyer for Mr. Kukushkin signaled that he planned to portray his client as a victim of Mr. Parnas rather than as his co-conspirator.The lawyer, Gerald B. Lefcourt, described Mr. Parnas in a recent court filing as the perpetrator of a “con” who, along with Mr. Fruman and Mr. Correia, used a “dog and pony show” to dupe Mr. Kukushkin and many others.“They portrayed themselves as well-connected, powerful political power brokers, who could speak directly to the president of the United States, his children, his inner circle,” Mr. Lefcourt wrote. “Of course, it was all a ruse, one big fraud or Ponzi scheme.” More

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      Eric Adams Runs His First General Election TV Ad

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      The Democratic nominee for New York City mayor used the 30-second ad to tell his personal story, stressing his commitment to affordable housing.With a month left until Election Day, Eric Adams is finally starting to use some of his sizable campaign war chest, releasing his first post-primary television ad on Tuesday in the general election for mayor of New York City.The ad focuses on his working-class roots and his mother, Dorothy Adams, who died in March — a departure from his ads during the Democratic primary, which focused on policing.“My mom cleaned houses and worked three jobs to give us a better life in a city that too often fails families like ours,” Mr. Adams says in the ad, as a Black woman is shown cleaning a home and embracing her children at the end of the day.Mr. Adams then appears onscreen with a smile and says that the city must invest in early childhood education and affordable housing: “That’s how we really make a difference.”The ad marks the beginning of the final stretch of the mayor’s race, which pits Mr. Adams against Curtis Sliwa, the Republican candidate, on Nov. 2. Mr. Adams, 61, the Brooklyn borough president, is widely expected to win and has been promoting himself and his centrist platform as the future of the Democratic Party.He won a contentious Democratic primary by focusing on public safety and his background as a police officer. Now he is trying to highlight other priorities like reducing the cost of child care for children under 3.Mr. Adams wants to offer “universal child care” for families that cannot afford it by reducing the costs that centers pay for space with tax breaks and other incentives. He also wants to rezone wealthy neighborhoods to build more affordable housing and to convert empty hotels outside Manhattan to supportive housing.Mr. Sliwa, 67, has focused his ads on the message that he is compassionate toward homeless people — as well as his small army of rescue cats — and that he would offer a departure from Mayor Bill de Blasio. He has also criticized Mr. Adams for spending his summer meeting with the city’s elite and traveling outside the city to court donors.“The choice is somebody up in the suites like an Eric Adams — a professional politician — or somebody down in the streets and subways — that’s Curtis Sliwa,” he says in one ad. “I’ve got the touch with the common man and common woman.”Mr. Sliwa’s ad shows Mr. Adams standing next to Mr. de Blasio, who has supported Mr. Adams during the race.But Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly seven to one in New York City, and Mr. Sliwa has struggled to gain attention, let alone momentum. Mr. Adams also has a major fund-raising advantage: He has more than $7.5 million on hand; Mr. Sliwa has about $1.2 million.Mr. Adams’s new ad was produced by Ralston Lapp Guinn, a media firm that worked with him during the primary. The team has made ads for other Democrats like President Barack Obama and Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota.The ad mentions Mr. Adams’s signature issue — public safety — noting that “we all have a right to a safe and secure future”Mr. Adams, who would be New York City’s second Black mayor, has often spoken about his mother on the campaign trail and of growing up poor with five siblings. Ms. Adams died earlier this year — something Mr. Adams revealed in an emotional moment during the primary.In recent interviews, Mr. Adams has said that it was two months into the Democratic primary when he decided to focus on his personal narrative.He said in a recent podcast with Ezra Klein of The New York Times that he decided to share a “series of vignettes” about his life, including being beaten by the police, having a learning disability and working as a dishwasher, and he believed that his authenticity won over voters.“Each time I stood in front of a group of people and gave them another peek into who I am, they said to themselves, ‘He’s one of us,’” he said. More

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      Lovely Warren, Troubled Rochester Mayor, to Resign in Plea Deal

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      Ms. Warren will leave office early as part of a plea deal on campaign finance violations. The deal also resolves gun charges against her.Lovely Warren, the embattled Democratic mayor of Rochester, N.Y., agreed to resign on Monday as part of a plea deal on several state criminal charges, capping a swift and staggering fall for a politician once considered a rising star in the state Democratic Party.The plea deal, in Monroe County court, resolves two separate state cases against Ms. Warren: one arising from campaign finance violations and another that included gun and child-endangerment charges that Ms. Warren and her estranged husband faced.Ms. Warren’s resignation is effective Dec. 1, just a month before she would have left office, having lost a June primary for a third term to Malik Evans, a city councilman.Last October, Ms. Warren was indicted by a grand jury in Monroe County on two campaign finance charges related to her 2017 re-election campaign, involving her official campaign fund and a political action committee.Those charges came just a month after Ms. Warren’s administration had been engulfed in a scandal involving accusations of a cover-up in the death in March 2020 of Daniel Prude, a Black man, after the Rochester police pinned him to the ground and put a hood over his head while taking him into custody.In July, Ms. Warren and her husband, Timothy Granison, were indicted on gun and child-endangerment charges, after police found weapons in a May raid of the home they shared, despite being estranged. Both pleaded not guilty.Mr. Granison had previously been charged in state and federal court as part of what prosecutors called a drug-trafficking ring. His charges weren’t resolved by Ms. Warren’s plea, his lawyer said Monday.In a news conference after her husband’s May arrest, Ms. Warren said she was the victim of a conspiracy, engineered in part by the county prosecutor, to discredit her on the eve of the Democratic primary. “People will try anything to break me,” she said.Ms. Warren’s resignation adds to a period of turmoil in Rochester, a city of some 200,000 people on the shores of Lake Ontario that suffered a steep toll from the coronavirus and was shaken by the fallout from the death of Mr. Prude, including heated demonstrations and the firing of the city’s police chief.A lawyer and onetime president of the City Council, Ms. Warren was the city’s first female mayor and the youngest in the modern era. She was first elected in 2013 after scoring a stunning upset against a Democratic incumbent, Thomas S. Richards, in both a September primary and a general election two months later. (Mr. Richards ran on two third-party lines.)She was also the city’s second Black mayor and spoke passionately in her 2014 inaugural address about the city’s future, devoting her speech to promises to her young daughter.“I know this isn’t going to be easy,” she said. “But I’m going to fight for changes and outcomes with the fierceness of a parent defending their child. Because I am defending you, and all of Rochester’s children.”She was handily re-elected in 2017, but the criminal charges against her arose from allegations raised at the time by her challengers about evasion of donor limits. Those complaints led to an investigation by the state Board of Elections.Ms. Warren’s trial on the campaign finance charges was set to begin on Monday. Carrie Cohen, her lawyer, said that the mayor’s plea — to a misdemeanor, rather than the initial felony charges she had faced — was in line with her previous admission that payments to her political action committee “were not categorized correctly.”“There never was any allegation of theft of any campaign or other funds by the mayor, or anybody else involved in the campaign,” said Ms. Cohen, adding that the plea resolved all the pending state criminal charges without admission of any fraud or dishonesty.Calli Marianetti, a spokeswoman for Sandra Doorley, the Monroe County district attorney, said that as part of a plea deal with Ms. Warren, the gun and child endangerment charges would no longer be pursued.In a statement, Ms. Doorley said that the resolution of the charges facing Ms. Warren — and those facing two fellow defendants, her campaign treasurer and Rochester’s finance director — was “fair and just based on the nature of their crimes.”“This is an important step in our larger efforts in promoting ethical elections in our state,” said Ms. Doorley, a Republican.It was the Daniel Prude case that came to define much of Ms. Warren’s second term. In March 2020, Mr. Prude, visiting Rochester from Chicago, ran out of his brother’s home in an agitated state. After his brother called 911, police responded and handcuffed Mr. Prude. When he began spitting, they covered his head with a hood and later pinned him on the ground, face down.Mr. Prude stopped breathing and was resuscitated, but died a week later at a hospital. An internal investigation by police quickly cleared the officers involved, despite a medical examiner’s finding that Mr. Prude’s death was a homicide caused by “complications of asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint.”Months later, the public release of a video of the encounter sparked outrage in the wake of a national reckoning over police brutality. Ms. Warren soon announced the firing of the police chief and suspension of other city officials, but questions about her response — and allegations of a cover-up — continued to dog her.Mr. Evans, the Democratic nominee and Ms. Warren’s presumptive successor, said Monday that he expected to continue to work with the administration until Ms. Warren stepped down.“We have to stay focused on making sure the city of Rochester continues to move forward,” Mr. Evans said. More

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      Eric Adams Has $7.7 Million to Spend, As Donations From Wealthy Pour In

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      With victory nearly assured, Mr. Adams has amassed a substantial war chest ahead of the general election for New York City mayor. His opponent lags far behind.Eric Adams is heavily favored to become the next mayor of New York City, but that hasn’t stopped him from amassing an intimidatingly large war chest ahead of November’s general election.Mr. Adams, the Democratic nominee, has raised another $2.4 million since late August, leaving his campaign with roughly $7.7 million to promote his message and to signal strength. Over the course of five weeks, some 700 donors gave him the legal maximum donation of $2,000, according to the latest campaign finance reports released on Friday.His Republican opponent, Curtis Sliwa, raised roughly $200,000 during the latest filing period and has $1.2 million on hand. Only two people gave him the maximum donation of $2,000.There has been no public polling, but Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly seven to one in New York City, and many are predicting a landslide for Mr. Adams. Mr. Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, has been struggling to gain momentum and recently released his first campaign ads, which showed him scratching the chin of a rescue cat and riding the subway.Curtis Sliwa, the Republican mayoral candidate, has $1.2 million on hand.Stephanie Keith for The New York TimesMr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, has spent much of his summer focused on fund-raising, traveling to the Hamptons and Martha’s Vineyard and courting wealthy donors who favor his brand of centrism. His travels appeared to have paid off: He raised more than $950,000 from donors outside New York City during the latest filing period — about 40 percent of his haul.His donors ran the gamut, from billionaires to a plumber from the Bronx.The billionaires included the Mediacom Communications chief executive, Rocco Commisso; the Estée Lauder heir William Lauder; Laurie Tisch, the Loews Corporation heiress, and her brother, Steve Tisch, the chairman of the New York Giants.Mr. Adams raked in handsome donations from the hedge fund industry, too, including from John Griffin, the founder of Blue Ridge Capital; Lee Ainslie, the founder of Maverick Ventures; and the New York Mets owner, Steven A. Cohen, the chief executive of Point72, who donated $1,800 to Mr. Adams, and whose employees donated an additional $26,500.Mr. Adams has said in recent weeks that he would swing open New York’s doors to businesses big and small and use incentives when necessary to lure them here. In his rhetoric, he is drawing a sharp contrast with the outgoing mayor, Bill de Blasio, who has openly quarreled with the city’s business elite.“The support for our campaign from every corner of the city continues to be overwhelming and humbling,” Mr. Adams said in a statement on Friday.Early voting in the general election begins on Oct. 23. Mr. Adams and Mr. Sliwa are expected to participate in two debates this month on WNBC and WABC. Mr. Sliwa, who is fighting for exposure, is pushing for more debates.Mr. Sliwa recently qualified for public matching funds and has sought to capture attention with dog-and-pony media events, like crossing the George Washington Bridge to New Jersey in a showy effort to find out where Mr. Adams lives. But Mr. Sliwa’s proclivity for drama backfired last week when his campaign claimed on Twitter that he had found a gun at a crime scene on the Upper West Side when, in fact, he had not.Mr. Sliwa’s campaign released a statement on Friday trumpeting his recent fund-raising and said it believes “this will be a very competitive and close race.”But even Mr. Sliwa has acknowledged that he is facing an uphill battle. As a sign of Mr. Adams’s broad appeal, both Mr. de Blasio, a self-described progressive, and Michael R. Bloomberg, a pro-business centrist, have embraced him.Mr. Adams’s most recent campaign finance filings indicate that special interests from a cross-section of New York labor and industry are eager to make his acquaintance. Many of his donations came from landlords and developers, including William Blodgett, the co-founder of Fairstead; the Durst Organization executive Alexander Durst; Anthony Malkin, chairman of the company that owns the Empire State Building; and Joseph Sitt, chairman of Thor Equities Group.Eric Adams’s campaign has raised more than $7.7 million heading into the general election.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesThere were also donations from the philanthropists David Rockefeller Jr. and Susan Rockefeller; Jeffrey Gural, a major landlord and the owner of the Tioga Downs casino in the Southern Tier; and members of the Rudin family, who are prominent in commercial real estate.With New York gearing up to sell recreational marijuana, cannabis investors sought Mr. Adams’s good graces, too, including the LeafLink CEO, Ryan Smith, and Gregory Heyman, the managing partner of Beehouse.The Adams campaign has spent about $630,000 since late August — on consultants, polling and other expenses — and appears to saving the bulk of its money for advertising in the final weeks before Election Day. Mr. Sliwa spent $1.5 million during the latest filing period, including about $1 million on television and radio ads.Bruce Gyory, a veteran Democratic strategist, said Mr. Adams most likely plans to spend his campaign war chest “not just to promote interest in his candidacy, but to build a mandate for his approach to governing New York.”“At every turn in this mayoral race, Adams and his campaign have been strategic,” he said. “So my hunch is that Eric Adams will use this spending advantage purposefully.”Mr. Adams has already started to plan his transition ahead of Inauguration Day in January. In recent weeks, he has released a series of broad-based proposals about how he would address climate change and the affordable housing crisis.Now that Mr. Adams can devote less time to fund-raising, he is planning a trip that he hopes will benefit him as mayor: visiting the Netherlands to examine its solutions to flooding.A firm date for the trip has yet to be determined. More