Democrats circle wagons to boost Hochul in final week of campaign

New York Democrats are doing some last-minute scrambling to head off a potential upset against incumbent Gov. Kathy Hochul.

Threatened by narrowing poll numbers and the surging crime that GOP challenger Rep. Lee Zeldin has made the center of his campaign, Mrs. Hochul received support from a new super PAC created last week by the Democratic Governors Association.

The last-minute political boost comes as early voters in the state began casting their ballots at the start of the weekend in a remarkably tight election battle.

Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran New York Democratic campaign consultant, said his party had ignored the crime issue in New York City at its own peril early on and now is paying the price.

“I’ve been saying for at least a year, that the real issues confronting everyone in 2022 would be crime,” he said.

While Democrats and the Biden administration are being blamed for the economy, he said, “crime is the overriding argument, which is part of disorder.

“When disorder happens, the party in power tends to pay a terrible price,” he said.

Although Mrs. Hochul outraised Mr. Zeldin for most of the race, he has the support of Republican organizations and two super PACs, Safe Together NY and Save our State NY.

Those PACs are being funded by conservative billionaire Ronald S. Lauder, who has already contributed $9 million to them.

These groups can accept unlimited donations from Mr. Lauder, or from anyone else, as long as there is no formal coordination with Mr. Zeldin’s official campaign.

Additionally, according to recent campaign filings covering three weeks in October, Mr. Zeldin outraised Mrs. Hochul by $3.6 million to $3.4 million, the The New York Times reported.

Both campaigns are also bringing in their political stars to get out the vote in the final week.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis talked up Mr. Zeldin at a campaign rally Saturday in Long Island attended by thousands of people.

On Monday, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, who flipped his own state from blue to red last year, joined Mr. Zeldin in Westchester County, where they talked to the crowd about education.

The Hochul campaign brought in its own party’s top guns, with former President Barack Obama cutting a new radio ad for her and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton set to appear with her Thursday in New York City. Mrs. Hochul also has held a rally in Queens with New York City Mayor Eric Adams.

Having to bring in Democratic heavyweights in a deep blue state like New York to help Mrs. Hochul over the finish line in the week around Halloween was far from Democrats’ minds several months ago.

Mrs. Hochul had been expected to coast to victory after being sworn into the governor’s post last year when scandal-plagued Gov. Andrew Cuomo, whose lieutenant governor she had been, resigned.

Most believed New York’s Democratic machine, with its supermajorities in the Albany state houses and on New York’s City Council, would allow for an easy campaign cycle for Mrs. Hochul.

However, amid a crime wave in the state, Mrs. Hochul supported her party leadership’s passing cashless bail and law enforcement restrictions in 2019.

As governor, she tried to roll back some of the cashless bail law but was rebuffed by her own party and only made minor changes.

Mrs. Hochul touted this change she made at the only debate she and Mr. Zeldin had but got pummeled by him for not firing Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg over his failure to prosecute violent criminals and repeat offenders.

A new poll released late Monday shows Mr. Zeldin has also pushed Mrs. Hochul out of the lead for the first time. Mr. Zeldin now leads the Democratic governor 48.4% to 47.6%, according to a Trafalgar Group poll.

Mr. Sheinkopf attributes the poll numbers to a gap in enthusiasm among Democratic voters.

“Thus far, there’s nothing to indicate that there’s a tremendous amount of enthusiasm and the polls keep talking about that for Hochul. The enthusiasm level is down, according to the polls, which means her pollsters committed an atrocious error in their strategic thinking,” he said.

Mr. Sheinkopf noted that Mrs. Hochul’s pollsters are the same ones who polled for former Rep. Joseph Crowley of New York in his upset Democratic primary loss in 2018 to an unknown outsider — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.