NEW YORK MINUTE: The state budget is going to be late. Most lawmakers will depart Albany for the Easter weekend today without inking a deal by Monday when the state’s fiscal year begins. Gov. Kathy Hochul will send a temporary stop-gap spending bill to lawmakers funding the state government until April 4. The Assembly and Senate today will approve the debt service bill, the first of 10 budget measures needed to get a spending plan in the books. — Nick Reisman MORE THAN JUST BOWMAN: Groups with pro-Israel messages have been preparing to play an outsized role in New York’s congressional races this year. Now, they’re also making clear they’ll be spending in state-level primaries. The New York Solidarity Network debuted in 2022 with plans to act as a state-level AIPAC. Individuals involved with the network filed to create “Solidarity PAC” last month, New York Focus first reported, and it’s now raising money for nine Assembly candidates who are facing opponents to their left. It plans to support candidates “who value the American alliance with Israel, and the tight-knit relationship the majority of New Yorkers, including Jewish New Yorkers, have with Israel,” the group’s website says. Among its preferred candidates are Assemblymembers Michael Benedetto and Stefani Zinerman, who are both facing opponents endorsed by NYC-DSA. (The political entity has been vocal in its call for a cease-fire in Gaza.) The network’s political role has been limited so far to coordinating super PAC efforts, such as an aborted $400,000 spend against then-City Council Member Kristin Richardson Jordan last year. It has worked with Voters of NY Inc., the big business funded independent expenditure committee endorsing moderate Democrats last cycle. This year, consultant Jeff Leb has renamed Voters of NY “Defeat the DSA” to make its focus clear. And he told Playbook he’s open to working with the New York Solidarity Network again this year. The Solidarity Network didn’t return a call for comment earlier this week, but its targets were eager to speak on its efforts. “A Republican dark money group coming in to support my opponent does not seem like the answer that voters in Morningside Heights and the West Side need or deserve,” said Eli Northrup, who has the Working Families Party’s backing for an open Assembly seat in Manhattan. Several of the targets of these groups noted their ties to real estate figures who have spent against progressives in recent elections when Israel was not a leading campaign issue. Solidarity was founded with the help of hedge funder Daniel Loeb, who has spent over $9 million in recent years boosting state moderates and Republicans and once compared Senate Democratic Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins to the KKK. “We’re fully expecting GOP operatives and real estate executives to spend against us, but they’re doing that because they know we’re going to stand up for tenants and working families,” said Claire Valdez, a DSA-backed challenger to Assemblymember Juan Ardila in Queens. Meanwhile, the spending by groups with pro-Israel messages will continue to ramp up in congressional races. The Jewish Democratic Council of America announced a round of endorsements this morning. It includes George Latimer in NY-16, in what the seven-year-old organization said is its first endorsement against a sitting Democratic incumbent — Rep. Jamaal Bowman, whom POLITICO reported this week had called reports of sexual assaults in Hamas’ attack “propaganda.” (In a cleanup statement he noted, “the UN confirmed that Hamas committed rape and sexual violence, a reprehensible fact that I condemn entirely.”) But JDCA’s money is a tiny fraction of the tidal wave Bowman’s team expects to be spent against him. The AIPAC-affiliated United Democracy Project is widely expected to drop some of its $40 million in the race. “You don’t need the ability to see into the future,” Bowman campaign spokesperson Bill Neidhardt told Playbook, “to know for a fact that come very soon, there will be millions and millions from Republican mega-donors spent on New York airwaves to attack Jamaal Bowman on behalf of George Latimer.” — Bill Mahoney and Jeff Coltin HAPPY THURSDAY: Got news? Send it our way: Jeff Coltin, Emily Ngo and Nick Reisman.
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