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      Lee Zeldin, Republican Candidate for N.Y. Governor, Is Attacked at Event

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      Representative Lee Zeldin was addressing supporters in western New York when he was confronted by a man with a pointed weapon in his hand. Mr. Zeldin was not injured.Representative Lee Zeldin, the Republican candidate for governor of New York, was attacked on Thursday at a campaign event outside Rochester by a man with a pointed weapon who dragged him to the ground before being subdued by several other men, according to officials and a video of the attack. Mr. Zeldin was not injured, a campaign representative said.The video shows Mr. Zeldin, standing on the bed of a truck, addressing supporters gathered in a parking lot in Perinton, N.Y., when a man approaches him slowly from the right before trying to pull Mr. Zeldin down by the arm. Mr. Zeldin responds by grabbing the man’s wrist and is then joined by several men in containing the attacker.A spokeswoman for Mr. Zeldin’s campaign said in a statement issued after the attack that he and members of his campaign staff were safe.“Far more must be done to make New York safe again,” the spokeswoman, Katie Vincentz, said, putting the attack in the context of Mr. Zeldin’s tough-on-crime campaign message. “This is very much getting out of hand in this state. Unfortunately, Congressman Zeldin is just the latest New Yorker whose life has been affected by the out-of-control crime.”Ms. Vincentz said the man had been taken into custody, but local law enforcement agencies did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Information about the man’s identify, weapon and potential motivation were not immediately forthcoming Thursday night.An onlooker in the video can be heard saying “he’s got a knife,” but exactly what type of weapon the man was wielding was not yet clear.The incident comes at a time when actual and threatened political violence — including threats directed at members of Congress — are on the rise across the United States.Gov. Kathy Hochul, Mr. Zeldin’s Democratic opponent, quickly condemned “this violent behavior in the strongest terms possible — it has no place in New York.”“Relieved to hear that Congressman Zeldin was not injured and that the suspect is in custody,” Ms. Hochul wrote on Twitter.The event in Monroe County was the first stop on a planned weekend “Unite to Fire Hochul” bus tour across upstate New York to informally kick off Mr. Zeldin’s general election campaign. Alison Esposito, Mr. Zeldin’s running mate and a former New York City police officer, was with him at the event.Mr. Zeldin, a 42-year-old fourth-term congressman from Long Island and an Army veteran, won the Republican nomination for governor handily last month.He has made crime a centerpiece of his campaign for governor, using apocalyptic terms to paint a dark picture of the state of public safety and to appeal to New Yorkers’ sense of unease. He has specifically pinned blame on rising crime on Democrats and Ms. Hochul, calling on them to reinstate most cash bail and ratchet up policing.Just hours before the attempted attack, Mr. Zeldin’s campaign had released its first digital advertisement of the general election, a lengthy spot attacking Ms. Hochul for refusing to fire Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, after he initially charged a bodega clerk who fatally stabbed an attacker with second-degree murder. Mr. Bragg dropped the charge on Tuesday, but he and his policies have been a frequent punching bag for the political right.Mr. Zeldin faces an uphill battle as he tries to become the first Republican to win statewide in New York in two decades. Registered Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly two to one in New York, and Ms. Hochul enters the race with a huge financial advantage. She hopes both factors will be a bulwark against favorable political conditions for Republicans nationwide.Jesse McKinley More

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      Stacey Abrams Aims to Put Abortion at Center of Georgia Governor Race

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      ATLANTA — Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia, is racing to turn abortion rights supporters’ frustrations and fears into electoral gains for her party after a court ruling reinstated the state’s six-week ban on the procedure.Immediately after the ruling from a federal appeals court, which put into effect a 2019 law prohibiting most abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, Ms. Abrams’s campaign released an advertisement on Thursday morning calling the law — and Gov. Brian Kemp’s support for it — “extreme” and hinting that the governor could move to ban exceptions for rape or incest.And in an impassioned news conference late Wednesday afternoon, Ms. Abrams, flanked by more than two dozen state Democratic leaders, underlined the stakes for women in Georgia, with a specific message for those still unsure whether they would cast their vote for her in November.“Georgia is part of a nation that faces economic vicissitudes — things go up, things go down,” she said. “But this law is permanent.”She added that she would ask the state’s scores of moderate Republican and independent voters, who may be disillusioned with Democratic leadership in Washington, to “balance whether your immediate concerns about money outweigh your concerns about your constitutional protected rights.”Read More on Abortion Issues in AmericaMedication Abortion on Campus: Some students want colleges to provide the abortion pill. But even in states that protect abortion rights, schools are proceeding with caution.In Ohio: The case of a 10-year-old rape victim who was forced to travel out of state to terminate her pregnancy has become the focus of a heated debate over what new abortion bans mean for the lives of the youngest patients and their bodies.Medical Exceptions: Of the 13 states with trigger abortion bans, all make exceptions for abortions to save the life of the mother. But what defines a medical emergency?Hurdles to Miscarriage Care: Since the reversal of Roe, some patients have had trouble obtaining miscarriage treatments, which are identical to those for abortions.Ms. Abrams’s comments represented something of a bet: that for Democrats, it is better to focus on subjects on which the party’s positions poll better, like abortion, than on economic issues, on which voters tend to favor Republicans. Polls have consistently shown that inflation and other economic issues are voters’ top concerns ahead of the November midterm elections.Ms. Abrams’s remarks also signaled a shift in her campaign message. While she has previously called for expanded abortion access in Georgia and criticized state Republicans, she is now making direct appeals to on-the-fence voters on the issue and portraying her opponent, Mr. Kemp, as the architect of one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion laws.Ms. Abrams has sought to make abortion access one of the clearest dividing issues between her and Mr. Kemp. Days after a draft ruling revealing the Supreme Court’s intention to overturn Roe v. Wade leaked, her campaign redirected its fund-raising efforts to organizations that provide abortion care.Several candidates on the state Democratic ticket have also pledged to use all levers of their power to oppose the law if elected, including the Democratic nominee for attorney general, Jen Jordan, who vowed not to prosecute abortion-related cases while in office.Mr. Kemp, who has generally led Ms. Abrams in limited polling of the race, has not widely discussed abortion. In the weeks after the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down Roe v. Wade, his campaign focused instead on Ms. Abrams’s support for efforts to overhaul policing, aiming to tie her to the movement to defund the police, which she does not support.When asked for comment on Ms. Abrams’s remarks on Wednesday, Mr. Kemp’s campaign pointed to an official statement from his office, in which he said the federal court ruling “affirms our promise to protect life at all stages.”Ms. Abrams’s campaign views the next few weeks as pivotal in its effort to tell more voters about Georgia’s newly reinstated abortion law and its implications.In a memo released Thursday, Lauren Groh-Wargo, Ms. Abrams’s campaign manager, shared internal polling showing that over half of voters in Georgia opposed additional abortion restrictions, along with more than 60 percent of independent voters.“While Abrams will protect women and abortion rights as the next governor, Kemp will continue his crusade against women — including victims of rape and incest and those whose health is at risk,” Ms. Groh-Wargo wrote. More

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      How Dan Cox Won the Republican Race for Maryland Governor

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      Maryland’s Republican contest for governor was the third election this year in which Democrats have effectively teamed up with Republicans loyal to former President Donald J. Trump to help a far-right candidate win a blue-state primary.Weeks ahead of Maryland’s Republican primary for governor, private Democratic polling showed the Trump-endorsed candidate, Dan Cox, with a slight lead over his establishment-backed rival, Kelly Schulz, a former cabinet secretary to Gov. Larry Hogan.But polls showed that once Republican voters were told Mr. Cox, who spent just $21,000 on TV and radio advertising, had been endorsed by Mr. Trump and held staunchly conservative views on abortion, his advantage ballooned.The Democratic Governors Association proceeded to spend more than $1.16 million on TV ads reminding Republican voters of Mr. Cox’s loyalty to Mr. Trump and endorsement from him.Mr. Cox won his race on Tuesday by double digits. He became the latest Republican primary winner to demonstrate both the power of the party’s far-right base in selecting G.O.P. nominees and the establishment wing’s inability to halt Democratic meddling in primaries.On Wednesday, Mr. Cox — who wrote on Twitter during the Capitol riot that Vice President Mike Pence was a “traitor” — dismissed the idea that he had been propped up by Democrats. They supported his primary bid in the belief that he cannot win the general election in Maryland, which Mr. Trump lost by 33 points in 2020.“The Democrats didn’t win this race,” Mr. Cox said in an interview on “Fox & Friends,” the morning program watched regularly by Mr. Trump. “The arguments of my opponent were replayed over and over again, smearing me.”The chief antagonist of Mr. Cox’s campaign was less any future Democratic opponent or even Ms. Schulz than it was Mr. Hogan, who won two terms as governor of an overwhelmingly Democratic state by focusing on Maryland’s economy while avoiding thorny social issues.Mr. Cox’s strategy of playing to the Trumpist base of the party won him a commanding primary victory, though tens of thousands of uncounted absentee ballots are likely to narrow his 16-point margin.Still, sowing division among Republicans and alienating moderate Democrats is the opposite of how Mr. Hogan won the last two elections. Mr. Cox is likely to face challenges broadening his support.Mr. Cox’s Democratic opponent is likely to be Wes Moore, a best-selling author and former nonprofit executive.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesIn the past, Mr. Cox has associated himself with followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory. He has tweeted the group’s hashtag, and in April he appeared at an event called Patriots Arise at a hotel in Gettysburg, Pa., that was organized by a right-wing social media influencer whose website has promoted a QAnon slogan.There, Mr. Cox promoted a similar brand of Christian nationalism that has animated the campaign of Doug Mastriano, the Republican nominee for governor of Pennsylvania, who has endorsed Mr. Cox.“The Constitution does not give us our liberties. It merely protects those that were given by God,” Mr. Cox said at the event. “We have natural rights that supersede any governor, any government, any official, all of which is based upon the fact that we are created in his image.”Mr. Cox, in his Fox interview on Wednesday, played down the suggestion that he would not be able to build a winning coalition.But Mr. Hogan didn’t wait 24 hours before signaling that he would not vote for Mr. Cox. “The governor will not support the QAnon candidate,” said Mr. Hogan’s spokesman, Mike Ricci.Mr. Cox’s campaign manager, his daughter Patience Faith Cox, declined an interview request.The state’s business community, after eight years of being aggressively courted by Mr. Hogan, might soon turn to the Democrats.Rick Weldon, the president of the local chamber of commerce in Frederick, Md., said on Wednesday that he had better conversations about the needs of small businesses in the state with Wes Moore, who leads the still-uncalled Democratic primary, than with Mr. Cox, a state legislator from Frederick.“Mr. Cox is a crusader,” Mr. Weldon said. “Crusaders, once they get elected, make relatively ineffective elected officials.”Democrats’ backing of Mr. Cox was helped by Ms. Schulz’s minimal attempts to define him as unelectable. She never attacked him in television ads, hoping to employ the Hogan strategy of appealing to all manner of Republicans while also winning a substantial amount of Democratic votes in November.Kelly Schulz, Mr. Cox’s top rival, raised about $2.5 million through early July — about five times as much as he took in.Matt Roth for The New York TimesOfficials at the Democratic Governors Association bore no guilt about elevating a series of election-denying, Trump-loyal candidates who would seek to ban abortion, among a range of other measures, if they prevail in November.David Turner, a spokesman for the D.G.A., said his organization was focused on “winning these elections in November.” If giving a boost to far-right candidates increases the chances that Democrats will prevail, he said, it is worth the risk of placing in a governor’s mansion someone like Mr. Cox, Mr. Mastriano or Darren Bailey, an Illinois state senator who was the beneficiary of $35 million of Democratic advertising before winning his primary last month.“If the Republican Party had more leaders and less cowards at the top willing to speak truth to their voters, this lane wouldn’t even exist,” Mr. Turner said.Ms. Schulz had raised about $2.5 million through early July — about five times as much as Mr. Cox took in.But unlike Gov. Brian Kemp in Georgia, who imported a host of ambitious Republicans looking to create some daylight between themselves and Mr. Trump with voters, Ms. Schulz never sought to make her contest a referendum on Trumpism.Campaigning with national Republican figures would have made an already difficult general election much harder, said Doug Mayer, Ms. Schulz’s senior adviser.“You don’t play to win the primary, you play to win the general,” Mr. Mayer said. “In Maryland, that is a very, very, very difficult line to walk.”Mr. Cox’s Democratic opponent is likely to be Mr. Moore, a best-selling author and former nonprofit executive. Mr. Moore holds a 35,000-vote lead over Tom Perez, a former Democratic National Committee chairman. At least 169,000 Democratic absentee votes remain to be counted, but the number could be more than 300,000: Ballots postmarked by Tuesday will count as long as they are received by July 29.On Thursday morning, election officials across Maryland will begin processing the absentee ballots received in the mail and in drop boxes. The counting is expected to take several days.Elizabeth Dias More

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      Dan Cox, a Trump Loyalist, Wins Maryland G.O.P. Primary for Governor

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      Republican voters in Maryland on Tuesday nominated for governor Dan Cox, a state legislator who was endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump and who wrote on Twitter during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol that Vice President Mike Pence was a “traitor.” The Associated Press called the race late Tuesday. Mr. Cox defeated Kelly Schulz, a former cabinet secretary under Gov. Larry Hogan, an ambitious term-limited governor who has sought to present himself as a potential alternative to Mr. Trump in 2024. But Mr. Hogan’s inability to push through his political protégé in his home state will put a significant damper on his chance of galvanizing a national movement in the party against Mr. Trump. Mr. Cox faces a steep general-election challenge in a state Joseph R. Biden Jr. won by more than 30 percentage points. Republicans like Mr. Hogan have done well in Maryland by appealing to independents and moderate Democratic voters worried about Democratic dominance of the General Assembly; Mr. Cox has predicated his campaign on a fealty to Mr. Trump and his far-right base. In remarks to supporters in Annapolis before the race was called on Tuesday night, Ms. Schulz expressed regret about Republican voters’ loyalty to Mr. Trump and lamented that the G.O.P. has strayed from its historical roots. “My Republican Party is the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and John McCain,” she said. “And that is exactly the party that I will continue to fight for.”Ms. Schulz had predicted Mr. Cox would lose the general election by 30 percentage points to any of the Democrats running. “The Maryland Republican Party got together and committed ritualized mass suicide,” said Doug Mayer, an senior aide to Ms. Schulz. “The only thing that was missing was Jim Jones and cup of Kool-Aid.”Democrats were choosing among a field of nine candidates, the top tier of which included Tom Perez, a former Democratic National Committee chairman and labor secretary; Peter Franchot, the state comptroller, who has been in Maryland politics since 1987; and Wes Moore, a best-selling author and former nonprofit executive who campaigned as a political newcomer. Late Tuesday, Mr. Moore held a healthy lead over Mr. Perez, with Mr. Franchot well behind both, though nearly two-thirds of the Democratic vote still remained to be counted — and very little had been reported in Montgomery County, Mr. Perez’s home base. Mr. Moore built his advantage through his strength in Baltimore City and Prince George’s County, which are home to the state’s largest concentrations of Black voters. He was winning nearly half of the vote in Prince George’s County, a populous Washington suburb, a margin that might be difficult for Mr. Perez to make up. Because Maryland law prohibits the processing and counting of ballots returned by mail and in drop boxes until Thursday, the outcome of the Democratic primary for governor and other close races might not be known for days.As Democrats try to retake a governor’s office that has been held since 2015 by a Republican, Mr. Hogan, their primary contest was defined by stylistic differences rather than ideological ones. Mr. Perez and Mr. Franchot emphasized their long experience in government, while Mr. Moore argued that the party needed new blood. From left, Peter Franchot, Wes Moore and Tom Perez faced off in Maryland’s Democratic primary for governor.The New York Times“You know what you’re going to get with Tom Perez,” Mr. Perez said last week in an interview outside an early-voting site in Silver Spring. “It’s a workhorse, not a show horse. It’s someone with a proven track record of getting stuff done.” In an interview on Tuesday on MSNBC, Mr. Moore dismissed criticism that he had given misleading impressions about his personal history and accomplishments, and said the real risk would be elevating an establishment candidate.“People are not looking for the same ideas from the same people,” he said.Mr. Cox, whose campaign raised little money, was the beneficiary of more than $1.16 million in television advertising from the Democratic Governors Association, which tried to help his primary campaign in hopes that he would be easier to defeat in the general election. Democrats across the country have employed similar strategies to aid far-right Republicans in G.O.P. primaries this year, despite the risk that it could backfire.Dan Cox, a Republican state legislator, was endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump.Brian Witte/Associated PressKelly Schulz, a former cabinet secretary for Gov. Larry Hogan, had his backing.Matt Roth for The New York TimesAt least 169,000 Democratic absentee ballots and more than 38,000 Republican ballots had been returned as of Monday, according to the State Board of Elections. Another 204,000 Democratic and 58,000 Republican absentee ballots were mailed to voters and remain outstanding. Ballots postmarked on Tuesday will count if they are received by July 29.Another 116,000 Democrats and 51,000 Republicans voted during the state’s eight days of early in-person balloting, which ended last week.A ballot drop box in Baltimore on Tuesday.Julio Cortez/Associated PressThe turnout was expected to outpace past competitive primaries in Maryland. Four years ago, in another closely contested Democratic primary for governor, 552,000 people voted. Officials involved in the Democratic campaigns expected between 600,000 and 700,000 votes this year in the primary for governor. The Republican turnout picture was murkier. There has not been a meaningful statewide G.O.P. primary in a midterm year since 2014, when Mr. Hogan first ran. That year, 215,000 Republicans voted. In the state’s open contest for attorney general, Republicans were choosing between Michael Anthony Peroutka, who has on several occasions spoken to the League of the South, a group that calls for the states of the former Confederacy to secede again from the United States, and Jim Shalleck, a prosecutor who has served as president of the Montgomery County Board of Elections.In the Democratic primary, Representative Anthony Brown, who served as lieutenant governor under Gov. Martin O’Malley, was facing off against Mr. O’Malley’s wife, Katie Curran O’Malley, who was a judge in Baltimore for two decades.Republicans have not won an election for Maryland attorney general since 1918.In other Maryland races, former Representative Donna Edwards was trying to win back the Prince George’s County-based House seat she gave up to run for the Senate in 2016. Her candidacy is embroiled in a proxy war over Israel policy.Donna Edwards, a former congresswoman, is trying to win back her old seat.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesMs. Edwards is facing Glenn Ivey, a former prosecutor who is backed by a group affiliated with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesThe United Democracy Project, a political action committee affiliated with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee, has spent $5.9 million to help Ms. Edwards’s Democratic opponent, Glenn Ivey, a prosecutor. Ms. Edwards, for her part, is backed by J Street, a liberal Jewish organization. And in a House district that stretches from the Washington suburbs across Western Maryland to the West Virginia line, Mr. Trump and Mr. Hogan — frequent critics of each other — endorsed the same candidate, only to see him go down in defeat.That candidate, a 25-year-old conservative journalist, Matthew Foldi, lost to Neil Parrott, a Republican state legislator. Mr. Parrott will face Representative David Trone, a wealthy Democrat, in a rematch of their 2020 contest. More

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      Videos Vanish From Doug Mastriano’s Social Media, on Climate, Abortion and More

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      The videos were a sort-of virtual ride-along with Doug Mastriano as he crisscrossed Pennsylvania in the governor’s race, regaling viewers with his far-right musings about climate change, abortion and critics within his own party.In one live broadcast on Facebook in April, Mr. Mastriano, a Republican state senator, referred to climate change as “pop science.”In a separate video on his social media from a radio interview, three days after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, he dismissed the issue of abortion rights as a distraction. And when trying to explain in April why some Republicans would not support him, Mr. Mastriano, a retired Army colonel, attributed it to their “disdain for veterans.”But now that Mr. Mastriano is the G.O.P. nominee for governor, having been helped by the endorsement of former President Donald J. Trump in the primary, he is shifting to the general election — and those videos have vanished.The removal of the videos from his campaign’s Facebook page was reported earlier on Monday by The Philadelphia Inquirer, which listed 14 videos featuring Mr. Mastriano, one of Pennsylvania’s pre-eminent election deniers, that had disappeared since April.It was not the first time that Mr. Mastriano had drawn scrutiny for what critics say is an effort to tone down his profile on social media. Last year, the group Media Matters for America reported that Mr. Mastriano had deleted more than 50 tweets promoting the conspiracy theory QAnon after Media Matters, a journalism watchdog, highlighted his role in an illegitimate election audit in Pennsylvania.But the video footage that once resided on Mr. Mastriano’s campaign Facebook page has not vanished entirely. The New York Times obtained the clips on Monday from American Bridge, a liberal group specializing in opposition research that archived them.A campaign spokesman for Mr. Mastriano denied in a statement on Monday that he had scrubbed his social media accounts of the videos.“The biased mainstream media is trying to manufacture a scandal, but they haven’t done their homework,” said the spokesman, who declined to provide his name but was responding from a campaign email address. “The videos in question were automatically deleted by Facebook after 30 days because of a default Facebook setting.”One of the videos that disappeared was less than 30 days old and was recorded on June 27. And a review of Mr. Mastriano’s Facebook page on Monday showed dozens of Facebook Live videos older than 30 days. The campaign did not respond to a follow-up question about why those videos still appeared.At the end of every Facebook Live broadcast, an automatic prompt asks account holders whether they want their video to be deleted after 30 days or remain on their page, according to the social media company.Critics accused Mr. Mastriano on Monday of trying to distance himself from his extreme views, which they said could alienate voters beyond his far-right political base in the general election against Josh Shapiro, the Democratic nominee for governor and Pennsylvania’s attorney general.“Doug Mastriano spends every day trafficking conspiracy theories and reminding voters his top priority is banning abortion with no exceptions,” said Manuel Bonder, a campaign spokesman for Mr. Shapiro. “No amount of clicking the delete button can change the fact that Mastriano is the most extreme, dangerous candidate in Pennsylvania history.”David Turner, a spokesman for the Democratic Governors Association, said on Monday that Mr. Mastriano “can’t delete his extreme positions.”“He’s completely out of touch with most Pennsylvanians, calling to ban abortions, trafficking insane election conspiracy theories, and denying climate change,” Mr. Turner said.The Republican Governors Association did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.In the Facebook Live broadcast on April 6, Mr. Mastriano criticized Gov. Tom Wolf, a term-limited Democrat, for entering Pennsylvania into a regional, multistate compact to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the power sector that Mr. Mastriano said could cost the state billions.“For what?” Mr. Mastriano asked rhetorically in the video, assailing Democrats. “For pop science. Let’s talk about climate change. So they’re hellbent on this theory. It’s a theory. It’s not a fact. Heck, the weatherman can’t get the weather right, you know, 24 hours out.”A link to a video on Mr. Mastriano’s campaign Facebook page said on Monday that the content was no longer available “because the owner only shared it with a small group of people, changed who can see it or it’s been deleted.”In a Facebook Live video from June 27, Mr. Mastriano recorded himself giving a radio interview in which he accused Democrats of trying to turn attention away from the troubled economy to issues like abortion rights and the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. (He funded buses to shuttle supporters to the rally before the riot.)“They want us to focus on this and now on the Roe v. Wade decision instead of dealing with life,” he said in the video, which was also no longer visible on his Facebook page.Mr. Mastriano’s claim that the issue of reproductive rights was a distraction echoed remarks he made three days earlier in Binghamton, N.Y., where he appeared with Rudolph W. Giuliani and his son, Andrew Giuliani, an unsuccessful Republican candidate for New York governor. More

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      Gov. Hochul Holds Steep Fund-Raising Edge Over G.O.P. Rival Lee Zeldin

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