Today the Times teaches us about the strategies of two underdogs. First, we learn about City Comptroller Bill Thompson, who in the last two months tripled the rate of his fund-raising for his bid to oust Mike Bloomberg as mayor of New York. (He raised $201,000.) While that is a big increase, it's still a slower rate than that of Mark Green and Fernando Ferrer, the last two Democrats to face off against Bloomberg. The mayor, for his part, has already spent $37 million on his campaign, four times what he spent in previous campaigns at this point.

Meanwhile, Governor Paterson hasn't kicked his own fund-raising machine into gear. The governor, who, despite his incumbency, is an underdog because of his extremely poor approval ratings, raised $2.4 million in the first half of the year. That's less than half the $5.1 million that Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who has high approval ratings but hasn't even announced his candidacy for governor, raised. “If the governor were to put the full-court press on people, he would raise the money,” a Democratic campaign consultant told the Times. “The question is, when is he going to do that?” Looks like we've got not one, but two New York politicians now banking on the tortoise and the hare campaign strategy. We'll be interested to see how that pans out for them.

Thompson Picks Up Fund-Raising Pace in Mayoral Bid [NYT]
Cuomo Leads in Fund-Raising, but Paterson Spends More [NYT]