Mayor Michael Bloomberg has sent nearly $4,000 to the re-election effort of Jonathan Bing, the Upper East Side assemblyman who represents the mayor in Albany. Bing is getting a primary challenge from Gregg Lundahl, who has been backed by the teacher's union and is targeting Bing's support for a bill that change the way teachers are laid off when cuts occur. Bing favors ending a process whereby the most recently hired teachers are laid off, and favors instead a system that would lay-off those who have been shown to be less effective.

The mayor endorsed Bing in July.

According to the filings, the mayor has sent $37,800 to Dan Donovan's attorney general campaign.

"Every time we get someone on the phone who says, 'O.K., come on over and pick up a check,' we put it on the chart, and then the next intern up has to run out and get it," said CEO Cindy Darrison, who is raising money for State Senate candidates Didi Barrett and Regina Calcaterra and for Assemblyman Jonathan Bing, and is helping to retire the campaign debt of Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance. "It's kind of like the ball boys at the tennis match."

Without a single disclosure required between January and July, this week's deadline has become a closely watched mid-summer measuring stick for the relative strength of every candidate in a contested race, which turned last weekend into a frenzied race to grab up every last dollar floating in the campaign ether. 

Last year, Ms. Darrison's office held a contest for interns: Whoever picked up the most checks, rode the most subway lines, visited the most boroughs, walked the farthest or could present a particular hardship on the way to one of their last-minute collections got a Starbucks gift card. She's sent car services to collect checks just before the deadline, and, on this Friday, one of the firm's finance associates, Hilary Keller, was getting ready to hop the Hampton Jitney to Mattituck for an overnight trip to pick up a check on Saturday morning.

"It's intense," said Ms. Darrison.

Nearly all of Ms. Darrison's clients had weekend fund-raisers scheduled, and she was offering admission to a Monday evening event at a lesser price to anyone who paid before the Sunday night cutoff.

But there would be plenty of competition, particularly in the East End, where a number of candidates were holding deadline get-togethers. Andrew Cuomo's campaign hosted its own "Hamptons Weekend," with a Friday night stop in Quogue; Saturday cocktails at the Bridgehampton home of Barnes & Noble chairman Leonard Riggio; and Sunday brunch at the East Hampton estate of the hedge fund manager Jim Chanos.

And then there was the push for online contributions:

"Filing Deadline: 61 Hours to go!" read a subject line from attorney general candidate Sean Coffey on Friday.

"32 hrs. -- Please help," pleaded an Assembly candidate on Saturday.

"24 Hours To Go," reminded a State Senate candidate that night.

"Filing Deadline: Only a few hours left!!" came Mr. Coffey again on Sunday morning.

And then, simply: "Tonight!" This from AG candidate and state senator Eric Schneiderman-or, more precisely, from his daughter, appealing on her dad's behalf.

The only campaign not counting down to Sunday night seemed to be that of Mr. Cuomo, who-sometime before he ran for attorney general in 2006-quietly solicited a clarification from a former executive director of the State Board of Elections that allows candidates to count contributions right up to the filing date, which always falls a few days after the specified cutoff date.

"It's not anything on file. It's not anything official," said Board of Elections spokesman John Conklin. "They're the only ones I've ever heard this issue raised by, or discussed by, or talked about by."

In January's filing, David Paterson and Rick Lazio stopped counting contributions on Jan. 11, but Mr. Cuomo counted contributions up to Jan. 14. In those three extra days, Mr. Cuomo notched 233 donations, for a combined total of $755,902-more cash than Mr. Lazio had on hand at the time.

The extra time could serve as a way to pad one's financial strength, although with Mr. Cuomo already smothering Mr. Lazio-by about $15 million, as of January-it doesn't seem to offer much material advantage.

Aides to Mr. Cuomo stress that filing the donations closer to the actual deadline--rather than having them appear six months later--only increases the level of transparency.

Of course, it also might mean that the scrambling last weekend was a tad premature. "It's not like it's a violation of the law," said Mr. Conklin of Mr. Cuomo's extra time. "If you want to keep adding stuff for four days after the cutoff date, to in essence pad your number, you're not necessarily going to get a letter from us saying that's a bad violation."

rpillifant@observer.com

In his speech, the governor said what he's been saying for awhile now. "Frankly, we are running out of money," he told the lawmakers who showed up. He reiterated proposed cuts of $686 million dollars in education funding and $471 million to health care funding, and he bluntly addressed his own political situation.

"I will endure the heat of the special interests. I have mortgaged my political career on this plan, but I will not mortgage the fate of the state of New York," Paterson said.

But with lawmakers looking down the barrel of a contentious special session, not all of them were happy to be there. "As a courtesy, with respect to the governor, we're here," Senator Malcolm Smith told Jimmy Vielkind. "I think we could have been better served getting eight or nine members together and negotiating for 24 or 48 hours straight."

"He didn't need to do this," said Senator Tom Libous, a Republican.

But at least one Assembly Democrat enjoyed it. "It was the best speech I've ever heard him give," said Assemblyman Jonathan Bing. "I'm serious."

As I noted earlier, Garodnick's district mirrors a good portion of the Congressional district, and he has a base of support in the voter-rich Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village area.

He also has $440,268 raised for what should be an easy re-election to the Council this year.

I emailed a spokesman for Garodnick at BerlinRosen about whether he'd run for the Congressional seat and got back this response:

"Right now I'm focused on getting things done for East Siders --like passing the City's first Green Energy Code and addressing our school overcrowding issues -- and I'm running for re-election in November. It's extremely flattering that a number of people have encouraged me to consider a run for Congress, but that's in the future and something I will consider at the appropriate time."

Other possible candidates for that seat include Assemblyman Jonathan Bing, State Senator Liz Krueger, and City Councilwoman Jessica Lappin.

This morning, I emailed Assemblyman Jonathan Bing, and asked him about the idea of running for it.

“I am focused on working with Congresswoman Maloney in support of her efforts and will consider a campaign for her seat at a later time. I am extremely gratified by the supporters of hers and mine who have encouraged me to consider running for Congress,” he replied.

If Bing runs, he’ll be vacating his Assembly seat. Same goes for the Senate seat of Liz Krueger, if she runs for Congress.

Who’d run for those seats?

She'd have to give up her House seat to do so. (Which is actually quite a good reason to believe that, at the end of the day, she won't run for Senate, and that this will all have been more about David Paterson's decision to pass her over for a junior colleague than anything else. But for the sake of this exercise, let's assume she does it.)

Who would replace her?

In Maloney's Congressional district, according to the State Board of Elections, there are 264,561 registered Democrats, 72,088 registered Republicans, and 93,304 voters not registered in any party. In the 2005 Council races in the heart of the district, the Democratic candidates (Dan Gardonick and Jessica Lappin) crushed their moderate Republican challengers (Patrick Murphy and Joel Zinberg, respectively). 

So the next representative from her East Side-plus-a-bit-of-Queens district will almost certainly be a Democrat.

With that in mind, here are some possible replacements for Maloney if she doesn't run for reelection in 2010. They are presented in no particular order.

As always, if I'm leaving anyone out, let me know.

Dan Garodnick

He’s a hardworking city councilman, a lawyer who grew up in in Peter Cooper Village, the densely populated part of the district that is driven almost exclusively by one issue: affordable housing. Gardonick's Council district includes a chunk of this area, mirroring, somewhat, the Congressional district, and giving him an edge over other electeds who are mostly known in the midtown part of the district.

Jessica Lappin

She represents the district right next door to Garodnick's, and worked as the chief of staff to the previous incumbent, the former council speaker, Gifford Miller.

She generally avoids headline-grabbing gestures and confrontation, building a profile instead through diligent constituent service. When she considered a run for public advocate earlier this year, her good working relationship with Michael Bloomberg was thought to be an asset, especially among voters in her district.

A source close to Lappin said she could consider a run if the Maloney seat were vacant.

Jonathan Bing

He was elected to the Assembly in 2002, just a few years before Garodnick and Lappin got into office in 2005. His district doesn’t go as far south, or east, as the Congressional district, but it does include a chunk of it in midtown.

He has a close working relationship with Maloney, and the two share a political club, the Lexington Democratic Club, which is a focal point of establishment power in that part of Manhattan. He's been in Albany long enough to have a legislative record to run on, but not long enough, arguably, to be considered part of what makes Albany dysfunctional.

Eva Moskowitz

The former city councilwoman who now lives and runs a charter school in Harlem seems to miss politics pretty intensely.

Coming into the race off the bench could enable her to argue that her more recent experience gives her an advantage over other candidates. She lost a race for Manhattan borough president in 2005, but has residual name recognition and working-mom biographical credibility in the district. (Images of her pushing her stroller through the district are hard to erase from my memory, at least).

The teachers union will not be helpful to her candidacy.

Liz Krueger

She came into the State Senate as a liberal champion, having nearly ousted longtime Republican incumbent Roy Goodman in 2001, then, after he retired, vanquishing Goodman's protégé John Ravitz.

After that victory, she fended off an expensive challenge from Andrew Eristoff, a self-funded candidate who was, I believe, the last serious challenger she had.

She isn’t considered as close to the Maloney political operation on the East Side as some of the other potential candidates, which, in a primary in this district, doesn't help.

Eric Gioia

He’s an exceptionally energetic councilman from the Queens side of the district who will have just gone through a citywide campaign for public advocate by the time this seat opens up next year. Even if he loses—and right now he's polling last—the money and effort spent in that race could greatly help his name identification.

He’s good at raising money in small, publicly matchable increments, and he's exceptionally good at getting media attention. 

While only a small part of the district is in Queens—his personal narrative of growing up the son of a florist may not help so much on the Upper East Side—a divided field of Manhattan candidates, plus a near-perfect campaign, could get him there.

Michael Gianaris

He’s an assemblyman, also from the Queens side of the district. He’s a Harvard graduate and former counsel to Sheldon Silver who did an amazing job of early fund-raising for an attorney general race back in 2006.

He skipped the race then, but made valuable contacts. He's smart and has the everyman thing.

Again, the combination of a crowded Manhattan field and a near-perfect campaign—especially if Gioia isn't around—makes his candidacy a totally credible idea.

George McDonald

He's the founder and president of The Doe Fund. Spokesman Ken Frydman, who once worked for Rudy Giuliani, sent a statement to reporters saying McDonald "will form an exploratory committee to run in the Democratic primary for Carolyn Maloney's Congressional seat should she chose to run for the senate." He ran for the seat in 1988, when it was held by Republican Bill Green. Four years later, Green was defeated by Maloney.

Assemblyman Bob Reilly led the charge against the measure, making the case that "violence begets violence" and that the state should make a moral stand. He showed a video clip of Dana White, an official with Ultimate Fighting Championship, profanely berating the author of a critical sports article as a "fucking dumb bitch," amid other choice outbursts.

Reilly's tactics apparently didn't work this time around--he was able to kill the bill in 2008. Assemblyman Jonathan Bing made the case for mixed-martial arts, saying it would bring necessary revenues and is very well-regulated. He also said it was no worse than boxing or other legal sports.

"I am not a fan of mixed-martial arts," Bing said, "but I enjoy Olympic-caliber types of competition and New York State gaining the revenue to provide for its residents."

Assemblyman Sam Hoyt, who voted to advance the bill, said the bouts would be far from unsupervised.

"New York State should do what it does best," he said. "Regulate the hell out of it."

In the end, five legislators on the Tourism, Arts and Sports Development Committee voted no: Reilly, as well as Assembly members Danny O'Donnell, Jack McEneny, Teresa Sayward and Marge Markey.

The measure will now go before the Assembly's Codes Committee. It's State Senate sponsor is Kevin Parker.

Bing joins Assemblyman Danny O'Donnell of the West Side, who is also supporting Aborn.

The statement from the campaign, quotes Bing saying Aborn "has a vision to revitalize the office to ensure that Assistant District Attorneys are asking how to prevent crime, not just react to it. His long record as a prosecutor, national gun control leader, and managing partner of a law firm demonstrate he has the experience, guts, and vision for the office.”

In other endorsement news, Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum endorsed Cy Vance earlier. It's the first endorsement in the D.A. race from a citywide official.

They’re two of the major cogs in the East Side Democratic power establishment led by Representative Carolyn Maloney.

Yassky is the only candidate in the race not from Queens. Conventional wisdom is that Yassky -–a wonky legislator who has ties to Michael Bloomberg and got an endorsement from the New York Times during his 2006 congressional race--is best-positioned to win over liberal voters in Manhattan, who don’t have a favorite son or daughter in the race.

The other candidates are Melinda Katz, David Weprin and John Liu, all from Queens.