The Fundraising Race Between Bill De Blasio And Joe Lhota

The NY Times reports that de Blasio has a slight lead over Lhota in fundraising since the primary ended.

De Blasio has $700,00 in funds, Lhota $500,000.

Both candidates have raised similar amounts since the primary ended - de Blasio $147,000, Lhota $144,000.

But de Blasio also has $500,000 in funds that were raised for a runoff that he cannot use until January.

So the fundraising totals skew how much de Blasio has raised compared to Lhota a bit.

As posted earlier this week, there's an outside PAC raising money for Lhota that has received just two donations from David Koch and his wife, amounting to a little over $290,000.

The Times reports that a spokesman for that PAC said

the group had seen “a significant pickup in interest, and that has started to translate into support,” and on Friday night it released a new television commercial praising Mr. Lhota.

We'll see about that.

With two polls out this past week showing Lhota losing to de Blasio by 41 and 43 percentage points respectively, Joe Lhota is going to have to prove he can close that 40 point+ a gap a bit before many of the plutocrats start throwing a lot of cash his way.