Gov. Kathy Hochul recently reported that she raised a considerable $4.6 million in campaign funds within the second half of 2023, obtaining significant sums from wealthy business donors.
Among these benefactors is Larry Silverstein, a New York developer who is seeking to put a casino in Midtown Manhattan; along with Leonard Blavatnik, a Ukrainian-American mogul who has recently frozen his donations to Harvard after concerns about anti-semitism. Lisa Shields, Blavatnik’s spokeswoman, said he appreciates governor Hochul’s support for Israel and the Jewish community in New York- he and three members of his family jointly donated $72,000 to Hochul, according to campaign filings.
This past Tuesday, as Hochul announced her state budget proposal, filings reported to the state Board of Elections read that the governor received a total of $6,373,503 in the six-month campaign cycle, and finished the year with a war chest worth more than $9 million.
Hochul has proven to be a formidable collector of campaign donations since replacing former governor Andrew Cuomo in 2021, consistently expanding the state Democratic Party’s reserves.
Her fundraising performance during the latter half of 2023 has surpassed Cuomo’s previous efforts while he was in office during comparable periods, as in 2019 he raised about $4.5 million, according to the state Elections Board records.
The scale of Hochul’s funds has raised concerns for some that she will be driven by moneyed interests, and will use the donations in a problematic way. However, Sid Davidoff, a lobbyist and fixture in New York politics, stated that he doesn’t think Hochul will let her policy choices be affected or determined by her contributors. Davidoff also claimed that her tunnel vision on fundraising likely derives from her narrow, 6-point victory in the 2022 governor election. “She’s securing her governorship,” he added.
Yet these records of fundraising have come out while progressives are still pushing for the governor to lift taxes on high earners, which she has refused to do in the past, generating suspicion around the nature of her relationship to her wealthy benefactors.
“You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” Camille Rivera, a progressive Democratic political consultant, commented on campaign fundraising. However, she went on to add that there are differences in raising from billionaires rather than everyday New Yorkers.
“There’s got to be a reason why she doesn’t want to raise taxes… You’ve got to wonder why,” Rivera said of Hochul.
On Tuesday, Hochul said in a statement that 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,” she 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.”
