NEW YORK, NY January 18, 2006 —New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer has amassed a huge war chest in his campaign for Governor. But Nassau County Exeuctive Tom Suozzi, who only formed a fundraising committee last week, has $5 million in the bank. WNYC's Andrea Bernstein has more.

Spitzer has $19 million in the bank. That's more money than the last Democrat who ran for Governor, Carl McCall, spent in his entire campaign. And it's more than George Pataki had in his campiagn coffers at this point four years ago.

But Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi is reporting that he transferred more than $3 million from his recent campaign for Nassau County executive and collected another $1.6 million in the last week. Though Suozzi has a quarter of what Spitzer has, his relatively large initial filing is expected to spark some interest in his upstart candidacy, which is opposed by virtually the entire Democratic party establishment in New York.

The Republicans who filed yesterday had far less than either Spitzer or Suozzi. Former Massachusetts Governor William Weld reported raising two million dollars, former Assemblymen John Faso has just under a million. For WNYC, I'm Andrea Bernstein.