Gov. Hochul’s campaign reports raising $6.4 million in latest bonanza, fueled by wealthy donors

Gov. Hochul reported raising an eye-popping $6.4 million in campaign funds in the second half of 2023, scoring large sums from wealthy pro-business donors and reinforcing her reputation as a formidable fundraiser.

Among the donors filling the governor’s coffers were billionaires including Larry Silverstein, a New York developer seeking to put a casino in Midtown Manhattan; and Leonard Blavatnik, a Ukrainian-American who has frozen his donations to Harvard over antisemitism concerns.

A spokeswoman for Blavatnik, Lisa Shields, said he appreciates the governor’s support for Israel and the Jewish community in New York. Blavatnik and three members of his family collectively donated $72,000 to Hochul, campaign filings show.

All told, the governor received a total of $6,373,503 in the six-month cycle, and finished the year with a war chest worth more than $9 million, according to filings reported to the state Board of Elections on Tuesday, the same day Hochul introduced her state budget proposal.

Hochul’s fundraising performance surpassed her haul from the first half of 2023 and exceeded the efforts of her predecessor, Andrew Cuomo, in comparable periods during his governorship.

In the second half of 2019, Cuomo reported raising about $4.5 million, according to state Elections Board records.

To the surprise of some observers and allies, Hochul has proven to be a fearsome collector of campaign cash since she replaced Cuomo in 2021, intimidating would-be challengers and helping to bolster the state Democratic Party’s reserves.

In a statement Tuesday, the governor said she was “honored that so many are supporting our campaign and that vision for our state.”

“We are working every single day to make life in New York safer and more affordable, with a common-sense agenda,” Hochul added. “Democrats will be successful in 2024 if we have a message that speaks to hardworking New Yorkers’ greatest aspirations and anxieties, and if we have the infrastructure to communicate and turn out voters across this entire state.”

The scale and sources of some of Hochul’s funds have driven concerns that she could land in the pocket of moneyed interests.

Sid Davidoff, a longtime lobbyist and fixture in New York politics, said that he did not believe Hochul would let her policy choices be determined by her contributors. The governor’s intense focus on fundraising likely stems from her narrow, 6-point victory in the 2022 election, Davidoff said.

“Why is she so active?” he said. “She had a close race — a race that shouldn’t have been close.”

“She’s securing her governorship,” Davidoff added.

But the fundraising disclosures came at a moment when progressives are pushing the governor to lift taxes on high earners, pointing to polling that shows public support for such a move.

Hochul has sharply rejected the prospect of raising taxes. For some, her financial support from wealthy donors raised eyebrows.

“You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” Camille Rivera, a progressive Democratic political consultant, said of campaign fundraising.

But she added that there is a difference between raising from billionaires and from everyday New Yorkers.

“There’s got to be a reason why she doesn’t want to raise taxes,” Rivera said of Hochul. “You’ve got to wonder why.”