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      Siena Poll Shows Zeldin Gaining on Hochul in NY Governor’s Race

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      Representative Lee Zeldin has cut into Gov. Kathy Hochul’s lead in the race for governor of New York, narrowing the margin to 11 percentage points, down from 17 points last month, according to a Siena College poll released on Tuesday.The survey suggested that Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, still possesses a healthy lead over Mr. Zeldin, a Republican, in a liberal-leaning state where no Republican has won a statewide race since 2002.But with Election Day just three weeks away, the diminished gap between the two suggested that New York voters were growing more concerned about the state’s direction — much as recent polling nationwide has indicated that the flailing economy and stubborn inflation remain top-of-mind concerns, as Republicans have expanded their edge over Democrats ahead of November’s midterm elections.While 61 percent of Democrats said that New York was on the right track, 87 percent of Republicans and a majority of independent voters said the state was headed in the wrong direction, according to the poll.In particular, Ms. Hochul lost support among white voters, who appear to be evenly divided between the candidates after favoring Ms. Hochul by 10 percentage points in September, the poll found.The results from the Siena poll tracked closely with a separate survey from Marist College last week that showed Ms. Hochul leading Mr. Zeldin by 10 percentage points among registered voters and eight percentage points among likely voters. Ms. Hochul appears to have a roughly 12-point lead, according to an average of nearly a dozen polls compiled by FiveThirtyEight, an opinion poll analysis website that takes into account a poll’s quality and partisan lean.Ms. Hochul and Mr. Zeldin have both sharpened their attacks in the final stretch, casting each other as members of their party’s most extreme wings and doubling down on the overarching themes that have defined the race. Ms. Hochul has continued to portray Mr. Zeldin as a threat to the state’s strict abortion protections, while Mr. Zeldin has blamed the governor’s policies for contributing to crime and rising costs in New York.The contest received a jolt over the weekend when former President Donald J. Trump formally endorsed Mr. Zeldin, who was one of Mr. Trump’s earliest supporters in Congress. Mr. Trump, who previously raised money for Mr. Zeldin, praised the candidate as “great and brilliant” in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social.Democrats in New York, where Mr. Trump remains deeply unpopular, quickly moved to capitalize on the endorsement, releasing an ad trumpeting Mr. Zeldin’s close ties to the former president, including his vote against certifying the 2020 election.But the congressman, who is vying to make inroads among moderate voters and disaffected Democrats, played down Mr. Trump’s formal backing, saying on Monday that it “shouldn’t have been news.”The Siena poll, which surveyed over 700 likely voters last week and has a margin of error of 4.9 percentage points, showed Ms. Hochul and Mr. Zeldin with a tight hold over voters from their respective parties. Mr. Zeldin, however, increased his lead among independent voters by six percentage points (49 percent to 40 percent over Ms. Hochul).The governor continues to have a commanding lead in New York City, where she is beating Mr. Zeldin 70 percent to 23 percent, and among women as well as Black and Latino voters, according to the poll.Mr. Zeldin, for his part, gained the lead in the city’s suburbs, where he is now beating Ms. Hochul 49 percent to 45 percent, after trailing her by one percentage point last month. He also increased his margin in upstate New York to four percentage points, up from one percentage point in the last poll. He has improved his name recognition, even if most voters continue to have an unfavorable view of him.Despite the modest gains, Mr. Zeldin would have to make much larger inroads across the map to cobble together a winning coalition. The state’s electoral landscape is stacked against him: Democratic voters outnumber Republicans two to one in New York.And though Mr. Zeldin is receiving significant support from Republican-backed super PACs pumping money into the race, he appears unlikely to surpass Ms. Hochul’s sizable fund-raising advantage.The governor has maintained an aggressive fund-raising schedule to help bankroll the multimillion-dollar barrage of television ads she has deployed to attack Mr. Zeldin.But Ms. Hochul, until very recently, has mostly avoided overtly political events such as rallies and other retail politics in which she personally engages with voters. Mr. Zeldin, in contrast, has deployed an ambitious ground game, touring the state in a truck festooned with his name and a “Save our State” slogan. More

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      Hochul Hits the Road, Even if It Veers From the Campaign Trail

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York is forgoing retail politics and instead relying on an aggressive ad strategy and staged events that highlight state investments.Earlier this year, Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York convened over a dozen state lawmakers from Long Island at the governor’s mansion in Albany. Over breakfast, she sought to reassure them that she would prioritize their needs in the forthcoming state budget.Two weeks later, she fulfilled her promise. Just before the budget vote, her office slipped in a $350 million fund that could be spent with few restrictions on projects in Nassau and Suffolk Counties, a late-minute addition to the budget that caught most by surprise.Now, with about a month until Election Day, Ms. Hochul is reaping the political benefits from her shrewd maneuvering of state resources: Two weeks ago, she visited Long Island to announce the fund’s first grant — $10 million for a medical research center — drawing local fanfare and favorable news coverage in a key battleground region and the home turf of her Republican opponent, Representative Lee Zeldin.As she seeks her first full term as governor, Ms. Hochul, a Democrat from Buffalo, has diligently wielded the governor’s office to her political advantage, pulling the levers of government to woo voters and casting herself as the steady, experienced hand.The governor has, until very recently, mostly avoided overtly political events such as rallies and other retail politics in which she personally engages with voters. But behind the scenes, she has kept busy fund-raising large sums of money to bankroll the multimillion-dollar barrage of television ads she has deployed to attack Mr. Zeldin, and cushion her lead in most public polls.She held a 10 percentage point lead over Mr. Zeldin in a Marist College poll released on Thursday, and an even larger lead in other recent major polls.While Mr. Zeldin has been actively campaigning and battling for media attention on a near-daily basis, Ms. Hochul has rarely issued official campaign schedules, and has agreed to debate Mr. Zeldin only once, much to his chagrin. Instead, over the past few weeks, she has mostly crisscrossed the state in her capacity as governor, using taxpayer-funded transport to make over 50 appearances in just as many days, the majority of them in voter-rich New York City.Representative Lee Zeldin, on a recent visit to a Hasidic neighborhood in Brooklyn, is pushing Ms. Hochul to agree to multiple debates.Andrew Seng for The New York TimesShe has kept a busy itinerary, shuffling from ceremonies and receptions — a monument unveiling in Buffalo, a fashion week event on Park Avenue, a Labor Day breakfast with union leaders — to carefully staged events to sign legislation and make government pronouncements related to public safety, climate change and economic development.On a Tuesday morning last month, Ms. Hochul spoke at back-to-back conferences in Manhattan before visiting a subway maintenance facility in Queens to announce putting security cameras inside subway cars. The following week, she drove an electric car to publicize an announcement in White Plains about state efforts to make vehicles in New York emission-free; later that evening, she delivered remarks at Carnegie Hall’s opening night gala.She has greeted President Biden in New York twice in two weeks.“What people want to see is a governor governing and she’s providing that,” Doug Forand, the founder of Red Horse Strategies, a consulting firm, who is working for a political action committee that is supporting Ms. Hochul. “The reality is that, as an incumbent, you’re going to be judged much more based on how you perform in your office than you are on how many debates you do or how many parades you walk in.”The immense advantages of the governor’s office as a campaign asset came into sharp focus last week. Joined by Senator Chuck Schumer in Syracuse, Ms. Hochul announced that a computer chip company, Micron, had decided to open a massive plant in the area, and had pledged to invest more than $100 billion over two decades. Ms. Hochul helped facilitate the deal by giving the company a $6 billion state subsidy — one of the largest incentives in state history.Shortly after, the Hochul campaign began to capitalize on the deal, promoting the investment as a consequential job-generator and “one of the largest economic development projects in U.S. history,” casting it as an example of Ms. Hochul’s business-friendly ethos.The governor strongly rejected the notion that voter-friendly economic projects, like the $10 million grant for the Long Island medical research center, was the result of political calculations in an election year.“You’ve seen events with me on Long Island since my first couple of weeks on the job,” said Ms. Hochul. “This is a continuation of our investment all throughout New York State.”Indeed, Ms. Hochul is largely running on her record during her 13 months in office, following her unexpected replacement of former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. Rather than proposing a grand policy vision for the next four years, she touts what she has accomplished. If anything, she has cast herself as a fierce defender of the status quo: She has hinged much of her campaign on protecting New York’s already-strict abortion rights and gun laws, while portraying Mr. Zeldin as a threat to both.A fashion week event in Manhattan was among the 50 or so events that Ms. Hochul attended in the last 50 days.Dolly Faibyshev for The New York TimesBy relying on the governor’s office and the airwaves — she has spent $8.7 million on ad buys so far versus Mr. Zeldin’s $2 million, according to AdImpact — her campaign has, for the most part, adopted a so-called Rose Garden strategy, using the power of incumbency and the prestige of the governor’s office to attract free publicity and stay in the public eye.But her spotty presence on the campaign trail has rekindled concerns among some that her campaign may not be running an aggressive enough ground game to draw in voters in overlooked communities and deepen a broad coalition that could help her govern a full term.Camille Rivera, a political consultant at New Deal Strategies, said that while she expected Ms. Hochul to cruise to victory after uniting Democrats around animating issues, including reproductive rights, she said there had been “a lackluster engagement of Latino voters, in particular.”“The governor is missing an opportunity to take this and really campaign, campaign to solidify her base,” she said. “I’ve seen her in Queens and in the Bronx with elected officials, but I don’t think I’ve seen her doing that kind of people-to-people style engagement that can excite voters for the future if she wants to run again.”In response to questions from The Times, the Hochul campaign sent a list of over a dozen appearances the governor had made in recent weeks that it said were examples of campaigning, even though the events were not listed on her campaign schedule, including visits to small businesses in Ithaca and Bayside, Queens.Indeed, Ms. Hochul has been spotted nurturing relationships with elected officials in casual gatherings that her campaign does not necessarily announce to the media. In mid-August, for example, she visited a Latin American restaurant in Williamsburg to try a drink named in her honor alongside Antonio Reynoso, the Brooklyn borough president, and State Senator Julia Salazar.Over the past two weekends, Ms. Hochul’s campaign issued an unusually active schedule, a sign that she may begin to ramp up campaign-related events as Election Day nears and voters pay closer attention to the race.In a flurry of photo opportunities that spanned roughly four hours, she joined the Rev. Al Sharpton for his birthday celebration in Harlem on Oct. 1 before sitting with Dan Goldman, a Democrat running for Congress, at a Puerto Rican restaurant in the Lower East Side. By noon, she had traveled to Long Island to speak briefly to the campaign volunteers for two Democrats engaged in competitive House races there.Last Saturday, she joined Letitia James, the state attorney general, in Brooklyn to give remarks at two festivals, in Bedford-Stuyvesant and Fort Greene, while the party’s field offices launched canvassing operations in 39 locations across the state, sending volunteers to knock on doors and register voters, according to the Hochul campaign.Even as Ms. Hochul’s campaign stirs to life, the governor’s Rose Garden strategy has a track record of success. Mr. Cuomo, a three-term Democrat, employed a similar approach in his re-election campaigns, drawing ire from his political critics and rivals even though he went on to win by large margins. “My campaign is basically my performance in office,” he said in 2014.Even though Ms. Hochul vowed to usher in a new era of open government in Albany, where bills are typically hashed out behind closed doors, some of the achievements she has pitched to voters in recent weeks were a result of the opaque, far-from-public-view policymaking she had vowed to eradicate.The $6 billion state subsidy the governor awarded to Micron was made possible by a bill she muscled through the State Legislature in the last days of this year’s legislative session. With little chance for lawmakers to review it, the bill, which designated $10 billion in tax breaks for microchip makers, received virtually zero public discussion.The $350 million fund that Ms. Hochul carved out for Long Island in the state budget followed a similar pattern.At the time, Ms. Hochul had just unveiled a secret deal she had negotiated with the Buffalo Bills to spend $850 million in taxpayer money to build a new stadium for the football team. Politicians from both parties denounced the agreement as a boondoggle, creating a political headache for Ms. Hochul, who was left to find ways to placate lawmakers in other parts of the state.Indeed, a few days before the $350 million fund for Long Island-based projects became public knowledge, Newsday published a scathing editorial that excoriated Ms. Hochul and the region’s lawmakers for not having scored a “big budgetary win” for Long Island in the looming budget deal.Ms. Hochul’s critics have denounced the $350 million pot of money, which can be spent with great flexibility at the discretion of the executive branch, as a “slush fund.” But it was also part of nearly $1.6 billion in similar funding for capital projects added late into the budget negotiations, which Patrick Orecki, the director of state studies at the Citizens Budget Commission, described as a classic example of pork spending.“This funding really came at the 11th hour,” he said. “So it seems like they’re probably the result of political negotiations, rather than rigorous capital planning and identifying what the most urgent priorities of the state’s infrastructure are.” More

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      Hochul Leads Zeldin by 10 Points in Marist Poll, as G.O.P. Sees Hope

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, enjoys a healthy lead in New York, but Republican leaders are showing signs of cautious optimism that the race might be competitive.Gov. Kathy Hochul leads Representative Lee Zeldin by 10 percentage points in a Marist College poll of registered voters released on Thursday, a potential margin of victory that would be the narrowest in a New York governor’s race in nearly three decades.The poll suggested that Ms. Hochul, a Democrat from Buffalo, would defeat Mr. Zeldin, a Republican from Long Island, by 51 percent to 41 percent, a poll result that included those who were undecided but were pressed to pick the candidate they were leaning toward.The governor’s lead over Mr. Zeldin narrowed to eight percentage points among voters who said that they would “definitely vote” in the Nov. 8 election, one of the marquee races for governor in the country.The survey marked the first time that Marist has polled the governor’s race in New York this year, and it suggested that Ms. Hochul’s lead may be narrower than some other major public polls have indicated in recent months.A poll released by Siena College in late September, for instance, found that the governor was ahead by a commanding 17 percentage points, up from 14 percentage points in a Siena survey from August. An Emerson College poll suggested that Ms. Hochul was up by 15 points in early September.The last time a candidate in a contest for governor of New York won by fewer than 10 percentage points was in 1994, when George Pataki, a Republican, upset the three-term Democratic incumbent, Mario M. Cuomo, by roughly three percentage points. (In 2002, Mr. Pataki won re-election with 49.4 percent of the vote, while two candidates, Carl McCall and Tom Golisano, split the rest of the vote.)There are other signals that national Republicans have grown more cautiously optimistic about the trajectory of the race. After initially taking a pass on spending for Mr. Zeldin, the Republican Governors Association transferred $450,000 last week to a pro-Zeldin super PAC running ads attacking Ms. Hochul. Still, the investment is a fraction of what the group is spending in swing states like Arizona and Michigan.Even so, with less than a month until Election Day, the Marist poll was the latest indication that, despite the favorable political climate for Republicans this cycle, Ms. Hochul remains strongly positioned to emerge victorious as she seeks her first full term.She has built a campaign juggernaut that has continued to significantly outpace Mr. Zeldin in spending and fund-raising, while publicizing her accomplishments during her one year in office since unexpectedly succeeding former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo after his resignation.While Mr. Zeldin has sought to appeal to New Yorkers’ concerns over inflation and public safety, Ms. Hochul has generated a storm of television and digital ads attacking Mr. Zeldin’s opposition to abortion rights, as well as his support of former President Donald J. Trump.For Mr. Zeldin to pull off a win in a state that is overwhelmingly Democratic, he would have to make significant inroads in voter-rich New York City, the state’s liberal stronghold, while winning by considerable margins in the suburbs and in upstate.But recent polls have suggested that those prospects may be far from reach.The Zeldin campaign has said he would need to secure at least 30 percent of the vote in New York City to remain competitive, but the Marist poll found him trailing Ms. Hochul 23 percent to 65 percent in the city. His small lead in the suburbs (three percentage points) and upstate (six percentage points) would not be enough to defeat Ms. Hochul statewide if the election were held today, the poll suggested.The Marist poll, however, indicated there might be more enthusiasm among Republicans, suggesting that Republicans were more likely to head to the polls. It suggested that a higher percentage of voters who said they supported Mr. Zeldin, 74 percent, said they “strongly supported” their candidate of choice, compared with 62 percent of those who said they would vote for Ms. Hochul.“Although Democratic candidates for governor and U.S. Senate lead in very blue New York, the race for governor still bears watching,” Lee M. Miringoff, the director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion, said in a statement. “Republicans say they are more likely to vote, enthusiasm for Zeldin among his supporters exceeds Hochul’s and any shift to crime in the closing weeks is likely to benefit Zeldin.”The poll was conducted a few days before two teenagers were shot in a drive-by shooting outside Mr. Zeldin’s home on Long Island last weekend, an incident that the congressman has used to play up his campaign message around public safety.Out of the 1,117 registered voters that the Marist poll surveyed over a four-day span last week via phone, text and online, 900, or about 70 percent, said that they definitely planned to vote in November. The poll had a margin of error of four percentage points.Nicholas Fandos More

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      For Zeldin, a Shooting Hits Close to Home and to His Campaign Theme

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      The shooting of two teenagers directly outside his Long Island home has given Mr. Zeldin an opportunity to push his tough-on-crime message within a personal frame.After two teenage boys were shot outside his home on Long Island last weekend, Representative Lee Zeldin wasted little time to amplify the tough-on-crime message he has relentlessly pressed in his bid for governor of New York.He quickly assembled a news conference in front of his moonlit house on Sunday night, followed up the next day with a Fox News interview, and used an appearance at the Columbus Day Parade to imbue his political messaging with a new personal, if frightening, outlook.“It doesn’t hit any closer to home than this,” Mr. Zeldin, a Republican, said while marching at the parade in Manhattan on Monday, describing the incident as “traumatic” for his twin 16-year-old daughters, who were doing their homework in the kitchen when the shooting happened. “This could be anyone across this entire state.”“Last night the girls wanted to sleep with us,” Mr. Zeldin also said during the parade. “I didn’t think that the next time I’d be standing in front of a crime scene, it would be crime scene tape in front of my own house.”The shooting unfolded on Sunday afternoon when the police said multiple gunshots were fired from a dark-colored vehicle at three teenage boys walking near Mr. Zeldin’s home in Suffolk County on Long Island. Two 17-year-old boys were forced to take cover by Mr. Zeldin’s porch, suffering injuries that were not life threatening, while a 15-year-old boy fled the shots unharmed.That the shooting unfolded near the home of a conservative congressman who has anchored his campaign for governor on the state of crime in New York, attracting outsize media attention, appears to have been pure happenstance.The police had not made any arrests as of Tuesday, but they were investigating whether the incident was connected to gang violence, according to a law enforcement official who asked to remain anonymous to discuss an ongoing investigation.But with less than four weeks until Election Day, the shooting offered Mr. Zeldin an opportunity to elevate the issue of public safety in the governor’s race, as the congressman seeks a breakout in his efforts to unseat Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat who has so far enjoyed a comfortable lead in most public polls.Mr. Zeldin faces a steep climb to overcome Ms. Hochul’s significant fund-raising edge in a state where Democrats overwhelmingly outnumber Republicans. He has been quick to talk about the impact of the shooting in starkly personal terms, appealing to New Yorkers who have also been affected by gun violence. Mr. Zeldin was at a campaign event in the Bronx with his wife during the shooting.Mr. Zeldin, a staunch Trump supporter who has represented Suffolk County in Congress since 2015, has said he would make law and order his top priority if elected. He has consistently sought to blame the rise in violence on criminal justice policies enacted by progressive lawmakers as well as on left-leaning prosecutors, such as Alvin Bragg, the district attorney in Manhattan. He has promised to fire Mr. Bragg “on Day 1.”At the same time, he has opposed Democratic-led efforts to tighten gun control measures, cheering the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down New York’s concealed carry law as “a historic, proper, and necessary victory.”Ms. Hochul, who is seeking her first full term, has trumpeted her efforts to tighten the state’s bail laws and has emphasized initiatives to crack down on illegal gun trafficking, as well as a law she signed raising the age for the purchase of semiautomatic rifles, after a massacre at a Buffalo supermarket earlier this year.“We’re not running away from those issues,” Ms. Hochul said on Monday. “We’re leaning hard into them because we have a real record of accomplishment.”The shooting outside Mr. Zeldin’s home is the second time his safety has been threatened this election cycle.Three months ago, a man tried to physically attack Mr. Zeldin with a sharp key chain during a campaign event near Rochester. The attacker, a veteran of the Iraq War who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and alcoholism, was quickly subdued and initially released without bail before being arrested on federal assault charges.Mr. Zeldin, who was not injured, used the confrontation to attack Democrats for the reforms they enacted to the state’s bail laws two years ago, even if the episode did little to shake up the state of the race.“It’s an extraordinary coincidence of events that gives Zeldin’s crime message added credibility, urgency, and national attention,” said William F. B. O’Reilly, a Republican political consultant who is not working on the Zeldin campaign. “This will almost certainly help him in the final weeks of the campaign.”Mr. Zeldin could certainly use a boost, having lagged behind Ms. Hochul in nearly every public poll commissioned this cycle. He has also found himself chasing her haul of campaign contributions — a tribute to a voracious fund-raising apparatus that raised $11.1 million from July to October of this year. The cash has allowed her to blanket airwaves and smartphones with campaign ads attacking Mr. Zeldin’s support of Mr. Trump and his opposition to abortion rights.Mr. Zeldins financial outlook is not exactly bleak, however. He brought in $6.4 million during the same period, thanks in part to fund-raisers with former president Donald J. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. He has also seen support from conservative super PACs which have spent nearly $4 million in the past weeks on ads calling Ms. Hochul soft on crime and criticizing her handling of the economy.On Tuesday, a police car was still stationed outside Mr. Zeldin’s home in Shirley, a working-class hamlet on the South Shore of Long Island, where residents on the typically sleepy street were still rattled by the burst of violence.Dan Haug was in his home when he heard the shots and ran to the window, spotting one of the boys lying in Mr. Zeldin’s bushes, screaming and bleeding from the gunshot wounds.“You know, there’s little isolated incidents in this neighborhood with like, fireworks and like dogs getting loose,” said Mr. Haug, who has lived in the neighborhood for seven years. “But nothing like that.”Mary Smith, the mother of the teenager who escaped unharmed, blamed the shooting on the proliferation of guns among young people, while stressing that she did not believe her son was in a gang, saying: “He’s just a normal kid.”While expressing sympathy for the Zeldin family ordeal, Ms. Smith lamented that she had heard nothing from the congressman himself, despite his many public comments.“I’m around the corner from you,” Ms. Smith said in an interview. “They took the story away from the victims and made it about running for government.”Chelsia Rose Marcius More

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      Hochul Outpaces Zeldin in Cash Race, but Super PACs Help His Cause

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

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      Gov. Hochul Solidifies Lead Over Lee Zeldin in Latest Poll

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul has expanded her commanding lead over Representative Lee Zeldin, her Republican challenger in the New York race for governor, according to a Siena College poll released on Wednesday that showed her leading by 17 percentage points.The poll suggested that Ms. Hochul, a Democrat from Buffalo vying for her first full term, has improved her standing among voters since a Siena College survey in August that had her up by 14 points.With six weeks until Election Day, Ms. Hochul has held a comfortable lead in most public polls, buoyed by a seemingly insurmountable fund-raising edge that has allowed her to spend freely on television ads attacking Mr. Zeldin over the past few weeks.The poll was but the latest indication of the uphill battle that Mr. Zeldin faces to capture the governor’s office in New York, where Democratic voters outnumber Republicans two to one. The state hasn’t elected a Republican governor since George E. Pataki, who left office in 2006.Notably, Ms. Hochul made significant gains in the New York City suburbs: She was beating Mr. Zeldin by five percentage points in the poll, which was conducted last week, compared with the August poll, which had her trailing Mr. Zeldin by three points in the suburbs.Ms. Hochul also modestly improved her favorability rating among Republicans, while Mr. Zeldin lost some support among his party’s voters, with 77 percent of Republicans saying they would vote for him, down from 84 percent in August. Even so, Mr. Zeldin continued to hold a slim lead among independent voters and is virtually tied with Ms. Hochul in upstate New York, according to the poll, which surveyed 655 likely voters.The poll found Ms. Hochul holds a commanding lead in vote-rich New York City, with Mr. Zeldin well short of the 30 percent of votes he has said he will need to win.Mr. Zeldin, an ally of former President Donald J. Trump who has represented Suffolk County in Congress since 2015, would have to make significant inroads among independent and suburban voters in the final weeks of the campaign to overcome Ms. Hochul’s strong support in New York City and among women, Latino and Black voters.Ms. Hochul began spending heavily on television and digital advertisements in early September, many of them trying to define Mr. Zeldin as “extreme and dangerous” based on his view on abortion and his votes on Jan. 6 to overturn election results in key states. By the end of the week, her campaign will have spent roughly $7 million on the ads, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm.Mr. Zeldin, who has struggled to replenish his campaign reserves after a costly primary, had spent just under $1 million during the same period, the firm has found. Ronald S. Lauder, the conservative cosmetics heir, has funneled more than $3 million into a pair of pro-Zeldin super PACs to try to narrow the gap, but the bulk of the groups’ ad buys attacking the governor as being soft on crime only began airing in recent days.While Mr. Zeldin has sought to amplify a handful of Republican-friendly polls showing the race as far tighter, the high-dollar donors who could reverse his financial fortunes could conclude that victory is simply slipping out of reach and put away their checkbooks, leaving him unable to defend himself from Ms. Hochul’s onslaught.The poll, which had a margin of error of 3.9 percentage points, found that other top Democrats running statewide — Senator Chuck Schumer; Thomas DiNapoli, the state comptroller; and Letitia James, the state attorney general — were also dominating their Republican opponents in their races. More

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      Hochul and Zeldin Turn Potential Debates Into a Game of Chicken

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      There have been accusations of cowardice, name-calling and, of course, liberal use of a chicken suit motif.With six weeks until Election Day, the candidates in the New York race for governor have fully embraced a now-familiar rite of passage to the governor’s mansion in Albany: the debate over the debate.Republican Lee Zeldin, a Republican from Long Island, had for weeks challenged Gov. Kathy Hochul, the Democratic incumbent vying for her first full term, to as many as five debates ahead of the general election on Nov. 8.The taunting played out in typical New York fashion: Mr. Zeldin incessantly accused Ms. Hochul of “chickening out” on Twitter and in emails to supporters, while The New York Post ran a front page of Ms. Hochul — whom they called “scaredy Kat” — in a bright yellow chicken suit.Despite the goading, Ms. Hochul remained noncommittal until last week, when she said she would apparently participate in only one debate: an event hosted by Spectrum News NY1 on Oct. 25.Mr. Zeldin decried her decision as “cowardly” and insisted that the candidates should have several debates. Mr. Zeldin has accepted invitations to two other debates that Ms. Hochul has not agreed to. But he has not, as of now, accepted the invitation to the Oct. 25 debate, in an apparent sign of protest, posturing or bargaining — or all three.The impasse, however long it lasts, has only escalated the one-upmanship between the campaigns. On Thursday, Ms. Hochul’s press secretary posted an image on Twitter of Mr. Zeldin in a chicken suit; Mr. Zeldin shot back with a statement challenging Ms. Hochul to “come out, come out wherever you are!”So, as matters stand, it remains unclear when, or even if, New Yorkers will get an opportunity to watch Ms. Hochul and Mr. Zeldin face off as they contend for the state’s highest office, in a race largely defined by competing visions around issues of public safety, affordability and reproductive rights.As is typical for challengers seeking to unseat incumbents, Mr. Zeldin would stand to benefit the most from the free airtime associated with debates. It is plausible that he will eventually capitulate to Ms. Hochul’s offer of a lone debate.Some recent public polls show Mr. Zeldin trailing Ms. Hochul, who enjoys wider name recognition, by roughly 15 percentage points, though other surveys suggest that the race may be tighter. Ms. Hochul, who took office last year after former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo abruptly resigned over sexual harassment allegations, has also amassed a considerably larger campaign war chest that she has deployed to flood the airwaves with a barrage of TV ads attacking Mr. Zeldin.Ms. Hochul’s stance is not unusual for incumbent governors in New York.Mr. Cuomo, who was often reluctant to debate his rivals, held out until about two weeks before Election Day in 2018 before committing to a single debate with his Republican opponent, Marcus J. Molinaro, who had repeatedly accused him of making “a mockery of democracy” and “hiding from public scrutiny.” (Tabloids and chicken suits were also involved in that process).Mr. Cuomo came under similar monthslong pressure from the actress Cynthia Nixon, who unsuccessfully challenged him during the Democratic primary earlier that year, until he finally agreed to one debate.Years before, in 1994, George E. Pataki was not given the chance to debate former Gov. Mario M. Cuomo, a three-term Democrat. Mr. Pataki, a Republican, prevailed nonetheless in an upset victory, but he did not debate his opponents in the following election in 1998.In announcing Ms. Hochul’s participation in the Oct. 25 debate, which will take place at 7 p.m. at Pace University, her campaign said that she had participated in two debates during the Democratic primary earlier this year. It added that she would announce “additional public forums and speaking engagements” ahead of November.“Governor Hochul looks forward to highlighting the clear contrast between her strong record of delivering results and Lee Zeldin’s extreme agenda,” Jerrel Harvey, a spokesman for the Hochul campaign, said in a statement.Mr. Zeldin’s campaign said that Mr. Zeldin had already accepted two debate requests — from WCBS-TV and WPIX-TV — and urged the local networks to proceed with the debates “without her and with an empty podium.” The debate on Spectrum News NY1, the campaign said, could also be limited to cable viewers, potentially leaving out television viewers who mostly rely on broadcast channels or are subscribed to another cable provider.The Zeldin campaign also noted that the Oct. 25 debate would take place over a month after election officials began mailing absentee ballots to voters.“Voters should have the opportunity to hear where the candidates stand before they vote, not after,” Mr. Zeldin said in a statement. “Scaredy cat Hochul can run but she can’t hide from her absolutely abysmal record on the issues most important to New Yorkers, including rising crime, skyrocketing cost of living and an eroding quality of education.” More

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul Seeks Donations From Cuomo Appointees

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul’s campaign says contributions from board and commission members and their families are fair game because she did not appoint them.ALBANY, N.Y. — On the road to building one of the largest campaign war chests the state of New York has ever seen, Gov. Kathy Hochul has been taking money from appointees of the governor — despite an executive order designed to prevent it.In her first year in office, Ms. Hochul has accepted more than $400,000 from appointees on boards from Buffalo to Battery Park City as well as the appointees’ spouses, a New York Times analysis of campaign finance data has found.The fund-raising has occurred despite the longstanding executive order — reissued by Ms. Hochul on her first day in office — that prohibits such transactions in order to avoid even the appearance of rewarding donors with jobs in exchange for contributions.Ms. Hochul’s campaign said it was appropriate to accept the contributions because they came from people appointed by her predecessor, Andrew M. Cuomo. The argument underscored a loophole in the ethics order that would seem to allow one governor to accept money from another governor’s board and commission appointees. In some cases, Ms. Hochul received donations from people Mr. Cuomo had appointed and then gave them new appointments.A spokesman for Ms. Hochul’s campaign, Jerrel Harvey, said that Ms. Hochul had not accepted money from people she appointed and emphasized that all of her fund-raising had been aboveboard.“We’ve been clear from the beginning of Governor Hochul’s term that people who are appointed by her are prevented from donating once they are appointed,” Mr. Harvey said. “We have followed that straightforward standard consistently and strictly.”But legal experts and good government advocates have called Ms. Hochul’s reasoning into question.“It’s a silly argument to say if I appointed you then you can’t contribute to me, but if my predecessor appointed you, then I can hit you up for donations,” said Bruce Green, a professor at Fordham University Law School and a former member of the New York City Conflicts of Interest Board. “Going forward, presumably, they’re both going to want to be reappointed.”Ms. Hochul has already raised some $35 million and set a goal of raising as much as twice that amount ahead of the general election in November. Cindy Schultz for The New York TimesThe donations that Ms. Hochul accepted from appointees represent just a small portion of her campaign’s huge haul ahead of the election in November. She has already raised some $35 million and set a goal of raising as much as twice that amount, people familiar with her plans said. Doing so would put the 2022 governor’s race at or near the most expensive in state history.Ms. Hochul, a Democrat who was sworn in as governor after Mr. Cuomo resigned amid a scandal last year, easily defeated two primary rivals this summer and is heavily favored to win against Representative Lee Zeldin, a Republican, in the fall.Although she has promised a clean break from the ways of her predecessor, Ms. Hochul’s willingness to raise money from appointees runs counter to that pledge. Mr. Cuomo was known for taking a hawkish approach to soliciting donations from the people he appointed, raising ethics concerns.Ms. Hochul’s campaign has not shrunk from accepting donations from Mr. Cuomo’s appointees, receiving more than $250,000 from them, records show.She got more than $56,000 from the real estate developer Don Capoccia, whom Mr. Cuomo appointed to the Battery Park City Authority in 2011 and who did not respond to requests for comment.She accepted more than $90,000 between October and May from a trial lawyer, Joe Belluck, who was chosen by Mr. Cuomo for two statewide panels, and his wife. Ms. Hochul appointed Mr. Belluck to the state’s new Cannabis Advisory Board in June.Mr. Belluck scoffed at the notion of any impropriety in his donation.“I receive no remuneration and do no business with the state, period,” he said. “I have no private interests related to these positions. I donate to Governor Hochul because I support her policies and admire her leadership, and I am honored to serve.”Ms. Hochul also received $45,200 from John Ernst, an heir to the Bloomingdale’s fortune, whom Mr. Cuomo appointed to the Adirondack Park Agency board in 2016, and Mr. Ernst’s wife. Less than three weeks after receiving those donations, she reappointed Mr. Ernst to the park agency’s board and made him chairman.Mr. Ernst said he initially turned down Ms. Hochul’s offer of the chairmanship, which comes with a $30,000 annual salary, and emphatically denied any connection between his donating and being appointed to the position.“If I had thought it was a conflict, I wouldn’t have done it — wouldn’t have made a contribution,” he said. “I did it independently as a citizen because I believed in Kathy Hochul.”A spokeswoman for the governor’s office, Julie Wood, said Ms. Hochul has applied the ethics order far more “broadly and strictly” than Mr. Cuomo did, saying his administration “violated their own rules.”“Governor Hochul holds herself to a higher ethical standard,” Ms. Wood said.Ms. Hochul has also accepted contributions and then appointed the donors to state boards and commissions. She received $3,000 from Robert Simpson, the chief executive of a Syracuse nonprofit that promotes economic development, in two donations and named him to the board of Empire State Development, New York’s economic development agency, less than a month after the second one.A spokeswoman for Mr. Simpson said that after he assumed the post he adopted policies to limit conflicts of interest and pledged to no longer contribute to or raise money for Ms. Hochul.Ms. Hochul accepted more than $7,800 from Janice Shorenstein, the mother of Ms. Hochul’s former transition director, Marissa Shorenstein, and Janice Shorenstein threw a fund-raiser for the governor in May. Marissa Shorenstein, who attended the event, was confirmed to the New York State Gaming Commission about two weeks later. Ms. Shorenstein and her mother did not respond to requests for comment left at their offices.And Ms. Hochul accepted another $5,000 in April from Sammy Chu, a Long Island businessman whose company also paid more than $2,100 for a Hochul fund-raiser in Plainview two days later. In late May, she tapped him for a spot on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.Mr. Chu said he learned of the rules against governors’ accepting money from appointees only when The Times informed him of them in August.“There was certainly no quid pro quo,” Mr. Chu said. “Now that I’m appointed to the board, you know, I’ll be hypervigilant about it. But at that time, I was not a nominee or a board member.”Taken together, records show, Ms. Hochul accepted at least 40 donations totaling more than $475,000 from her nominees or Mr. Cuomo’s appointees and their family members. Those appointees are sitting on more than 20 boards, commissions and public authorities across New York, including the State University of New York board, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the New York Power Authority and the United Nations Development Corporation.Ms. Hochul’s campaign stressed that she had been careful not to take contributions from any person she appointed to a state position. In at least one case, The Times found, Ms. Hochul accepted contributions from a person appointed by Mr. Cuomo, appointed that person to a different commission and then declined to accept further contributions from him.While none of the donations accepted by Ms. Hochul’s campaign from her own appointees appeared to violate any rules, they nevertheless might create the appearance of impropriety, legal experts said.Some might feel pressure to give to an elected official with power over their appointed positions. Others who wish to be appointed might donate in hopes of getting the job, said Kathleen Clark, a Washington University law professor.“It may appear that the way to get appointed is to give money or to hold fund-raisers,” Professor Clark said, adding: “The scandal is what we allow rather than what we prohibit.”For her part, Ms. Hochul has dismissed any suggestion that her fund-raising practices might raise ethical concerns. When a reporter asked at a recent news conference if she worried about the optics of taking campaign money from people who are doing business with the state, she bristled.“I will say one sentence on this,” she said. “I follow all the rules, always have, always will.”Nicholas Fandos More