Cuomo campaign now a perpetual cash machine

To the expected victor go the checks.

State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo's gubernatorial campaign released an eye-popping cash-on-hand figure of $23.6 million, with $9 million of it raised in the six-month period that ended earlier this week.

Four years ago this week, Cuomo's predecessor as attorney general, fellow Democrat Eliot Spitzer, reported $16.3 million on hand. John Faso, the last GOP candidate for governor, had raised $1.4 million as of mid-July 2006.

For those unafraid to remember, Spitzer won the governorship with nearly 70 percent of the vote.

Even if Cuomo's foe Rick Lazio surpasses expectations when he reveals his own dollar totals today, the ex-Suffolk congressman will have taken in only a fraction of Cuomo's funds.

Front-runners draw contributions from the belief they will win. This money not only then helps them win - with TV ads, canvassing, and research - but helps persuade others they are going to win, thus propelling the belief and the donations.

Those who trail find frustration breeding frustration. They face trouble raising money because they haven't raised money, and that feeds the perception that they will not win.

Ironically, Lazio was just a little while ago a lobbyist for a Wall Street firm - while Cuomo was accused by some Wall Streeters of unfair bonus-bashing. You'd think that might tilt the generosity a little.

But one Republican long involved in New York races explained privately, "People give money for a reason. They decide if they want to make an investment or not. It's like you're putting money in a stock. This isn't surprising. It's transactional."

Setting this against the national backdrop, where the GOP looks forward to making some important gains in November, doesn't seem to offer comfort to a locally afflicted candidate.

"In the House and Senate, they contribute - and this is one of the hardest years I've ever seen for Democrats," said a well-known major-party fundraiser. "In a governor's race, they invest. You can't gauge the national story from New York State."

Adds Mitchell Moss, the Henry Hart Rice Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at New York University: "Money goes to power. And no one thinks the Republicans in New York have a chance of getting power - especially when Republicans around the country have terrific prospects in places like Delaware and Colorado and California."

And yet, there remains time - not too much, but some - for one of those sudden reversals of fortune. If the Spitzer story taught us anything, it is that you just never know what may lurk.

For Lazio and others who trail, the tactical trick would be to find a way to cause the favorite's poll numbers to dip more sharply and broadly than they have - and do so quickly. Lazio allies say he lost some time fending off rival Steve Levy for the nomination and that perhaps the candidate's stance against the Ground Zero mosque will earn him some momentum. Republicans around the state can point to this past winter when party long shots Ed Mangano, now Nassau executive; Rob Astorino, now Westchester executive; and Scott Brown, now U.S. senator from Massachusetts, were all sworn in.

Don't you figure that all of them would find it easier to raise funds these days?