Both of our intrepid mayoral candidates had fund-raising events on Monday, and those events captured how each candidate is faring here in the final few weeks of their campaigns. Democrat Bill de Blasio, leading by 44 points, raised a cool million dollars over a two-hour dinner, with a little help from Hillary Clinton, whose 2000 Senate campaign De Blasio managed. Joe Lhota, meanwhile, sprang for a Buffalo chicken pizza (to the disgust of Sal Albanese) at a fund-raiser for Republican City Councilman Eric Ulrich in Ozone Park, Queens. It was one of three events he was hitting up that day, though he did not know how much money they would net him. “I never ask that question. I really don’t,” he said, according to the New York Daily News. At the end of the day, however, De Blasio was the one with his hand still out.
In the hours before the midnight deadline for candidates to receive city matching funds, De Blasio sent out a flurry of tweets imploring followers to donate. Lhota did not mention it on his campaign’s Twitter stream. At the end of September, the last time candidates released fund-raising numbers, de Blasio had $1.15 million cash on hand, while Lhota had $787,714, according to The Wall Street Journal. After the Clinton event, which The Journal reported was the single-largest cash infusion to the De Blasio campaign to date, expect that gap to widen for October.
