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🚨🚨MUST READ🚨🚨: Mayor Zohran Mamdani and a group of fellow basketball enthusiasts have been secretly using the NYPD Police Academy’s gymnasium in Queens to play pickup ball, according to four people familiar with the games. The mayor and his crew typically show up around 10 or 11 p.m. and enter surreptitiously through a loading dock before hitting the court. While sports fanaticism has often buoyed the political brand of past mayors, Mamdani’s choice of venue is raising eyebrows. Read the story from POLITICO’s Graham Rayman, Chris Sommerfeldt and Joe Anuta here . FINANCE FLAWS: Republican gubernatorial candidate Bruce Blakeman’s campaign finance disclosure reports have been plagued by inaccuracies since the spring. Copies of the campaign’s bank statements obtained by POLITICO suggest his filings might have even more problems than previously suspected. According to a disclosure report submitted to the state Board of Elections earlier this month, the Blakeman campaign had only $178,000 in the bank as of Sept. 28. Yet the campaign’s checking account had a balance of $1.7 million on Sept. 28, according to TD Bank’s monthly statement. The bank records also show dozens of transactions that are missing from his campaign finance filings. On July 29, for example, the bank statements identified the campaign using a check with the number 1156 to make a $13,500 payment to an unspecified recipient. Yet Blakeman’s campaign finance reports do not identify any transactions that used check number 1156. It also hasn’t shown a single payment totaling $13,500 at any point over the past year. In addition, there are instances in which the bank records show apparent contributions to the campaign that never show up in the disclosure reports. The statements show Blakeman was wired $18,000 by actress Lois Robbins on Sept. 2, for example, while the filings don’t show any transactions totaling $18,000 within two weeks of that date or any donations from Robbins. An $18,000 wire from attorney and campaign finance chair Howard Fensterman in July similarly doesn’t match anything in the disclosure reports. Blakeman is the first gubernatorial candidate in state history to participate in the new matching funds program that lets him receive up to $3.5 million in public money. Then-Mayor Eric Adams was blocked from participating in a similar New York City program last year due to discrepancies between his bank statements and disclosure reports. Reinvent Albany’s Kyle Kennedy said he didn’t know the cause of the discrepancies, but that it could just be due to “the timing of when things were recorded.” But, he noted, Blakeman’s campaign “will automatically be audited by the Board of Elections after the election. … Campaign finance enforcement takes place after elections, not in real-time.” Blakeman’s campaign didn’t respond to a request to explain the discrepancies. It has previously said its campaign finance problems are due to technical issues caused by a large number of donors. Several of the candidate’s campaign finance disclosure reports have been repeatedly amended, often in ways that made the initial numbers wildly inaccurate. His July report showed him with $4.7 million in the bank; that was changed a week later to show his balance was $6.1 million; then in August it was changed to $4.3 million. As POLITICO reported earlier this month , Blakeman has received about $360,000 in donations over the contribution limit that he still needs to return. Many of the donations he has already returned have been highly unusual — one person who gave $1 in July was quickly refunded $780.76. His campaign then said he accidentally submitted some duplicate contributions. Nearly a month later, it hasn’t amended the filing to show which transactions were real. And as New York Focus reported , the Blakeman campaign submitted requests to receive matching funds for 2,600 donations that were ineligible for matches. From the Capitol THE WEEKEND TURNOUT: Early voting turnout has s…

Disgraced ex-con and Democratic former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Sunday urged voters to cast ballots for Republicans, griping socialists such as Zohran Mamdani have “hijacked’’ the Dem Party.