Monroe County Executive Adam Bello raised nearly $487,000 in the last six months for his re-election campaign, pulling in more than five times what his challenger, Mark Assini, did in the same period.
Assini, the Republican former supervisor of Gates, raised about $92,400 since announcing his candidacy for county executive in January.
The figures for both candidates were revealed in campaign finance records submitted to the state Board of Elections on Monday, part of periodic disclosure filings required of all candidates who are running for office and raising money for their respective races.
Most of Bello’s donations were amassed during a single fundraising event in February at the Rochester Riverside Convention, where individuals tickets sold for $500 and packages of 12 VIP tickets went for $10,000.
At the same time, his filings are rich with the sorts of small donations that politicians often use to present themselves as having broad grassroots support. Worth noting, however, is that many of his donations under $100 were received in bulk from partners in influential legal and accounting firms, including Harter Secrest and the Bonadio Group.
Records also show that Bello has wasted no time shelling out what he has brought in, outspending Assini this year by a margin of about $3 to $1, with Bello’s filings detailing $192,700 of expenditures and Assini’s campaign spending $65,200.
But Assini has been here before.
In 2014, Louise Slaughter outspent him by the same margin in his bid to unseat her in Congress. He was unsuccessful, but came within two-tenths of a percentage point of winning.
The lesson, Assini said, is that he cannot be counted out, especially in an age when the process of buying traditional television campaign advertising, on which candidates so frequently rely, is complicated by the abundance of streaming services.
“I think people are going to be very surprised by the end of this race,” Assini said. “It’s not always about in a fight who’s the biggest and the strongest, sometimes it’s about strategy and how to attack an opponent’s weakness and how to exploit your strengths.”
Assini said he has knocked on the doors of more than 1,000 voters, and worn out a pair of Bostonians in the process.
“I’m everywhere, and that’s the interesting part,” he said. “You don’t see that in any of the filings.”
Still, Bello has a considerable lead in fundraising, with a war chest balance of about $533,900 compared with the $27,200 that Assini has on hand.
Bello, a Democrat, wrested the County Executive Office from three decades of Republican control when he defeated incumbent Cheryl Dinolfo in 2019.
Over the course of that year, according to financial disclosure filings, Bello's and Dinolfo's campaigns collectively spent more than $1.7 million, making the race the most expensive in county history. Dinolfo spent $1 million, while Bello spent $737,000.
Neither Bello nor his representatives returned messages seeking comment on his latest filings.
