![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/Donations-to-Hochul-rerouted.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nThe governor\u2019s campaign encouraged donors to redirect their refunds to the state party, which later transferred $10 million to her campaign.<\/p>\n
By Nick Garber \/ New York Focus<\/p>\n
Get more Investigative Post reporting in your Google results.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
This story originally appeared in New York Focus<\/a>, a nonprofit news publication investigating power in New York. Sign up for their newsletter here<\/a>. Photo: Susan Watts \/ Office of Governor Kathy Hochul.<\/p>\n Governor Kathy Hochul had to refund millions of dollars after her primary was canceled. But in the midst of an expensive general election fight, much of that money may still be fueling her campaign.<\/p>\n In New York, individuals can\u00a0donate<\/a> up to $9,000 to a candidate for statewide office in a primary election, and another $9,000 for the general election. Over the last four years, more than 500 donors gave Hochul the maximum $18,000, anticipating that she would face both a primary and general election challenge.<\/p>\n But the June Democratic primary for governor was canceled after\u00a0Lieutenant Governor Antonio Delgado dropped his bid. That meant Hochul\u2019s campaign was required to refund each donor who had given more than the $9,000 she could raise for the general election alone.<\/p>\n Since then, Hochul has indeed been refunding those donors. But in more than 360 instances, worth a combined $2.6 million, those refunded donors quickly gave identical amounts to the New York State Democratic Committee \u2014 which has spent millions on Hochul\u2019s behalf and transferred $10 million to her campaign in September.<\/p>\n The maneuver exploits a loophole<\/a> in New York\u2019s campaign finance system: While candidates face strict limits on how much they can raise from individual donors, political parties can collect much larger donations and transfer unlimited amounts to candidates.<\/p>\n Hochul campaign spokesperson Ryan Radulovacki said the campaign contacted the donors after their money was refunded to inform them that they could donate to the state party to support Democratic candidates \u201cup and down the ballot.\u201d Those who said yes were given a form that allowed their reimbursed funds to be directed to the party committee, the spokesperson said.<\/p>\n Blair Horner, senior policy adviser for the New York Public Interest Research Group, said the setup is legal, as long as donors were told they were giving to the party and not to Hochul through a backdoor.<\/p>\n But Horner called the arrangement an example of how state officials have learned to game the system.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a ridiculous system that New York has, where the public thinks that campaign contributions are enforced, when in reality, for Albany\u2019s fat cats, they\u2019re not,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n One donor, Lou Coletti, was refunded $9,000 on Sept. 17, then made a $9,000 donation to the state party the following day. Reached by phone, Coletti \u2014 a\u00a0lobbyist<\/a> and former head of a major contractors\u2019 association \u2014 confirmed that Hochul\u2019s campaign proposed he donate to the party after giving him a refund.<\/p>\n \u201c\u200b\u200bI had maxed out with the governor, so they asked if I would consider supporting the party and I said yes,\u201d Coletti said. Hochul\u2019s name, he added, \u201cnever came up.\u201d<\/p>\n In practice, however, Hochul has been by far the biggest beneficiary of the state party\u2019s spending. The party\u2019s $10 million transfer to her campaign is its largest single expense on record, dating back to 1999. The party has reported another $1.8 million in expenses for Hochul\u2019s campaign, records show. All told, more than 80 percent of the money the party has spent or transferred in 2026 has been on Hochul\u2019s behalf.<\/p>\n Subscribe to our free weekly newsletters<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The refunded donors who made identical contributions to the state party include notable names: Steve Cohen, the New York Mets owner and casino developer; Reed Hastings, the co-founder of Netflix; Leonard Blavatnik, a billionaire businessman; and a host of prominent city real estate executives. Political action committees run by US Representative Ritchie Torres, Montefiore Health System, the state Funeral Directors Association, and the horseracing industry, among others, also redirected their refunds.<\/p>\n Another 141 donors who were refunded more than $900,000 apparently opted against making matching contributions to the state Democratic Party. (They include Nancy McCartney, the spouse of Paul McCartney and ex-wife of Hochul\u2019s Republican opponent, Bruce Blakeman.)<\/p>\n Party committees have been\u00a0useful fundraising tools<\/a> for both Hochul and Blakeman, whose campaign has received about $3.5 million in transfers from the Nassau County Republican Committee.<\/p>\n Politicians have previously landed in hot water for using party committees to skirt fundraising limits. In 2014, aides to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio solicited donations to upstate party committees that far exceeded regular campaign donations as part of his effort to help Democrats take control of the state Senate. State prosecutors investigated the effort and\u00a0declined<\/a> to bring charges, but scolded de Blasio for making an \u201cend run\u201d around donation limits.<\/p>\n Methodology: New York Focus reviewed public disclosures from Hochul\u2019s campaign and the state Democratic Party. We found 363 instances between June and September in which donors received refunds from the Hochul campaign, then contributed identical amounts to the state party within three days.<\/p>\n \t\t\tposted 2 hours ago – October 16, 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The governor\u2019s campaign encouraged donors to redirect their refunds to the state party, which later transferred $10 million…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":374748,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[3932,9,11,10,49,51,50,87],"class_list":["post-374747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-gov-kathy-hochul","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-state","tag-new-york-state-headlines","tag-new-york-state-news","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374747","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=374747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/374747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/374748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=374747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=374747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=374747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1792153090_950_Disinformation-Event-Graphics-IP-article.png\"\/)
<\/a><\/p>\n