It’s Thursday. Today we’ll look at Gov. Kathy Hochul’s moves to raise money and her potential opponents’ moves to run in the Democratic primary next year. We’ll also look at how rainy September really was.
Gov. Kathy Hochul has been in office for only 36 days. But there are signs that the peripatetic successor to Andrew Cuomo is preparing for something that will happen on her 308th day in office, eight months 30 days from now — the Democratic primary in New York.
As my colleagues Nicholas Fandos and Katie Glueck explain, Hochul is revving up an aggressive fund-raising apparatus to build a formidable financial advantage — as much as $25 million. Her goal is to fend off potential rivals in what could become a battle for the direction of the state Democratic Party.
The moves she has made, including hiring a campaign manager and other senior political advisers, have not gone unnoticed. Jumaane Williams, the New York City public advocate, made his first public move toward running for governor on Tuesday, forming an exploratory committee and framing a progressive agenda. He also outlined contrasts with Hochul, suggesting that she had not pushed back against Cuomo when she was his lieutenant governor.
His announcement amounted to an unofficial start of the 2022 campaign for governor. Mayor Bill de Blasio — prevented from running this November for re-election by term limits — has discussed the governor’s race with allies. On Tuesday, he told reporters, “I intend to stay in public service” after his term ends, adding, “There is a lot that needs to be fixed in this city and this state.” His longtime pollster recently conducted a survey to gauge the mayor’s appeal beyond New York City.
Representative Thomas Suozzi, who represents parts of Long Island and Queens, has maintained an active fund-raising schedule.
Will Letitia James run?
But the biggest question is whether the state attorney general, Letitia James, will enter the field. Some of her allies sound increasingly confident that she will, although she dodged a question about her political future during an appearance in New York City on Wednesday. (She defended her investigation of Cuomo, which led to his resignation — and which he repeatedly assailed as politically motivated.)
James is seeking donations for her re-election as attorney general. But she could transfer that money to another statewide account. She reported that she had $1.6 million in cash on hand in her most recent campaign filing in July, slightly less than Hochul reported in August. People close to James maintain that she could draw national interest, much as Stacey Abrams’s campaign for governor of Georgia did in 2018. James, if she ran and were elected, would be the nation’s first Black woman governor.
For now, some donors are taking a wait-and-see approach or are hedging their bets with smaller contributions, in part because Hochul has only just begun to wield decision-making power in Albany. “Kathy Hochul has made promises that she is a true-blue supporter of workers, but we will see if that’s true,” said John Samuelsen, the international president of the Transport Workers Union, which gave close to half a million dollars to Cuomo’s campaigns, according to public election records, before a bitter falling out.
Cuomo was an extraordinarily fund-raiser — he took in more than $135 million in his three campaigns for governor and left office with $18 million in contributions. Hochul appears to be copying at least part of Cuomo’s approach, relying mainly on big-money donors rather than grass-roots contributors who chip in as little as $5.
But her campaign has recently hired Authentic Campaigns, a consulting firm specializing in small-donor online donations that has worked for President Biden and other prominent Democrats, to change that.
Weather
The chilly (for fall) weather continues with a mostly sunny day in the low 60s. Expect a mostly clear evening, with temps dropping to the low 50s.
alternate-side parking
In effect until Oct. 11 (Columbus Day).
The latest New York news
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Mary Bassett, who won acclaim for leading New York City through a series of health crises, was named as the state’s new health commissioner.
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Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio, who has led the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn for 18 years, is retiring weeks after a Vatican investigation cleared him of accusations of child sexual abuse. Bishop Robert Brennan, a Bronx native, will succeed him.
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On Tuesday, “Aladdin” held its first performance since Broadway closed for the pandemic. On Wednesday, the show was canceled because of several positive coronavirus tests.
A rainy summer for the books
A day of sunshine and patchy clouds like today is the perfect day to think about rain — specifically, a three-month data point that seemed to confirm what many New Yorkers sensed as summer dissolved into a memory and autumn seemed so inviting.
For the first time, New York has had three consecutive months with more than 10 inches of umbrella weather. It didn’t just seem as if July, August and September were that wet — they were, as measured by the National Weather Service in Central Park, where it has tracked the weather since 1869.
July, with 11.09 inches, was the third-wettest July on record. (Only July 1975 and July 1889 had more rain.) Last month, with 10.32 inches, was the fourth-wettest August. It trails the 19 inches of August 2011, the record-holder for precipitation in a single month, and the Augusts of 1990 and 1955. But thanks to Tropical Storm Henri, August 2021 is in the record books for the rainiest hour on record in the city — the 60 minutes between 10 and 11 p.m. on Aug. 21 — and two record-breaking days, Aug. 21 and Aug. 22.
Unless there is an unexpected cloudburst today, September will end with 10.03 inches, making this the sixth-wettest September.
There has been only one other time with even two consecutive 10-inch-plus months. That was in spring 1983, when a 10.54-inch March was followed by a 14.01-inch April.
What carried this month past the 10-inch mark was a torrential rain that swept across the city like a storm on a tropic island on Tuesday — sudden, intense and then gone. It added 0.27 inch to the month’s total.
Of course, September was rainy from the beginning. The remnants of Ida — no longer even a tropical depression by the time it swirled across New York — flooded an already-saturated city with 7.13 inches of precipitation. That fell short of the rainiest single day in the city’s history, Sept. 23, 1882, when 8.28 inches fell. (The Times credited — or blamed — “the heaviest and most drenching rainstorm which has visited this city and neighborhood within the memory of man.”)
Since then, September has been relatively dry, with only 2.9 inches of rain from Sept. 2 through yesterday. The average monthly rainfall in September is 4.31 inches.
Is the three-month record related to climate change?
“Potentially yes and no,” said Brian Ciemnecki, a meteorologist with the Weather Service. “When we’re talking about climate change, you don’t look at any one specific event and say, ‘That was caused by climate change.’”
“When we had Ida, people said, ‘This is all climate change.’ Weather is what we get day in and day out,” Ciemnecki continued. “The issue with climate change is we’re seeing more frequent weather events where we have heavier rainfall.”
What we’re reading
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There’s the Met Gala, and then there’s the Metro Gala. It’s at Union Square, amNewYork reports.
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Jon Stewart is again behind a faux anchor’s desk in a Manhattan television studio.
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Gothamist reported on a group of musicians in Harlem who found an unlikely stage for public performances: their fire escapes.
METROPOLITAN diary
Finding ‘Fischer’
Dear Diary:
I recently retired with a yen to play chess again. I love the game but hadn’t played it in years.
I remembered that Central Park has a lovely chess area perched on a shady hilltop where there is usually someone looking for a game — more often than not either a very strong player or what’s called a “patzer” (someone much weaker).
I went there and was delighted to find it much the same as I recalled. I overheard a man giving an introductory lesson to a young boy. His instructions were clear and concise and peppered with interesting historical tidbits.
When the boy left with his father, I asked the man if he’d like to play.
“Sure,” he said.
I introduced myself, and he said he was “Fischer.”
“As in Bobby?”
“Yes,” he said. “He was my favorite player.”
Expecting to be routed, I was pleasantly surprised to find that our skills were about even. Plus, if one of us blundered in the middle of a close game, the other would offer a mulligan to take the move back.
“Why let one small mistake spoil a good game for both of us?” he said when I thanked him for that courtesy.
We meet regularly now. I still don’t know his real name.
— John Jaeger
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Read more Metropolitan Diary here.
Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.
P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee. You can find all our puzzles here.
Melissa Guerrero, Jeffrey Furticella, Rick Martinez, Andy Newman and Olivia Parker contributed to New York Today. You can reach the team at nytoday@nytimes.com.
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