Hochul's campaign has 10 times more cash than Blakeman's in final stretch of governor's race

ALBANY — Gov. Kathy Hochul has nearly 10 times more cash on hand than GOP rival Bruce Blakeman going into the final week of the campaign, according to the candidates’ latest campaign finance reports.

Both candidates got millions of dollars from party committees, as they spent millions on television ads over the past several weeks, hammering home their messages to voters.

Hochul, the incumbent and a Democrat, had $12.3 million on hand as of Friday after spending $14.2 million since late September. She raised just over $1 million in contributions and received a transfer of $6.5 million from the state Democratic Party, which had $9.5 million on hand.

Blakeman, the Nassau County executive and a Republican, had $1.2 million on hand after spending $4.3 million over the last several weeks. He raised more than $5.4 million including $2.4 million from the Nassau County Republican Party. The county party committee is one of Blakeman’s biggest donors, giving him $8.3 million since he launched his campaign. It had $2.4 million on hand.

Party committees are proving a valuable fundraising tool for candidates because they can accept contributions of up to $138,000, versus the $9,000 general election limit for contributions to a candidate’s committee.

Hochul spent nearly $12.5 million on ads, including $10.8 million on television ads and $1.6 million on online ads. Blakeman spent over $3 million on television, radio and online advertisements.

Now their attention will turn to the final push, using their remaining money and the field operations to turn out as many voters as they can, said veteran political consultant Hank Sheinkopf.

"The last week, it's all about voter turnout, social media and television ads," he said. "There is nothing else."

Sheinkopf said a statewide campaign could expect to spend up to $400,000 a day in the last week.

Much of their attention will be on New York City. Hochul needs to generate votes in areas friendly to her while Blakeman needs to gather as many New York City votes as possible to offset turnout in the suburbs, Sheinkopf said.

Blakeman’s most recent filing does not appear to have the same amount of duplication flagged in his last campaign filing.

A Newsday analysis of Blakeman’s filing at the beginning of the month found thousands of transactions that were double- or triple-reported, where the same person is listed as giving the same contribution multiple times on the same day.

His campaign blamed the state Board of Elections software and said it would file an updated report, which it had not done on Monday at 5 p.m.

In response, Brian Keegan, the Democratic co-director for the state’s Public Campaign Finance Board, told Newsday that Blakeman’s campaign was the only filer who had that issue and said it was due to user error, rather than a system error.

A Blakeman spokeswoman did not return a request for comment.