Less than a week has elapsed since Election Day, and already New York Democrats are starting to plan for Election Day 2009.

A number of top Democrats, including the city comptroller, William Thompson Jr., and the president of the Bronx, Adolfo Carrion Jr., traveled to Puerto Rico this weekend for the Somos el Futuro Conference. The annual meeting is a kind of debutante’s ball for rising politicians looking to come out as candidates and to begin amassing support.

By early next year, Mr. Thompson, Mr. Carrion, and Rep. Anthony Weiner, all of whom are likely mayoral candidates for 2009, are expected to set up exploratory committees and launch their fund-raising operations.

Political analysts and insiders say the rush to raise money isn’t an entirely new phenomenon, but they say this year’s effort to gather funds early is largely driven by the failure of the Democratic mayoral nominee, Fernando Ferrer, to raise sufficient campaign funds and his resulting inability to spend enough money as the primary and the general election approached.

Mr. Ferrer did not raise a penny during Mr. Bloomberg’s first year in office. In 2003, as Mr. Bloomberg’s approval ratings in public opinion polls tanked, Mr. Ferrer raised a paltry $84,450.

According to the most recent Campaign Finance Board filings, Mr. Ferrer spent $5 million on his primary campaign and just $4 million on his general election race against the Republican incumbent. Mr. Bloomberg, who did not face any primary challenge, spent about $67 million on his campaign as of November 8.Both figures are likely to jump dramatically higher when the mayor and Mr. Ferrer file their final two expenditure reports over the next two months.

“There’s really no time like the present to begin,” a political consultant who works for the New York State Democratic Committee, Howard Wolfson, said. He said money isn’t the sole factor in the campaign, but, “a significant amount of it is money, and you ought to do everything you can to maximize your potential on all fronts. Nobody is going to win just because of money, but money is a huge advantage.”

Mr. Ferrer’s campaign pollster, Jef Pollock, cautioned that while money is important to a campaign, money alone wouldn’t solve all its problems. “Gifford Miller raised all the money the world,” Mr. Pollock, the president of Global Strategy Group, said. “Raising money early isn’t the only solution to everything. … It doesn’t work miracles.”

Mr. Miller, the City Council speaker, raised significant campaign cash early. Yet his campaign flopped. He came in last place in the Democratic primary, winning just 46,454 votes. He spent a total of $142 for each vote he received, more than what Mr. Bloomberg will have ended up spending. According to the most recent filings, the mayor spent about $93 a vote (compared with Mr. Ferrer’s $19 a vote). Even if the mayor’s spending skyrockets by more than $30 million to $100 million, which seems unlikely, he will still have spent less for each vote he received than Mr. Miller.

Mr. Pollock said it wasn’t possible for Mr. Ferrer to start fund raising early because he had not yet decided whether to run. “I would have loved for Freddy to have decided he was running the day after the election four years ago,” he said. “It would be great if you could max out and everything and then keep going, raising general election money. That’s unrealistic.”

Moreover, he said, even if Mr. Ferrer had collected the maximum amount of money allowed under the city’s campaign finance rules, he would not have been able to compete with a self-financed billionaire candidate. In general, he said, the limits are unreasonable.

“I honestly, truly believe the campaign finance caps are too low,” he said. “A $6 million campaign in New York City is not a lot of money.”

A veteran political consultant, Joseph Mercurio, said a Democrat didn’t need tens of millions of dollars to compete with Mr. Bloomberg.

“Freddy had an unusually large Hispanic vote that was going to be overwhelmingly for him. There was a 5-to1 Democrat to Republican enrollment advantage. All of that made up for incumbency,” he said.

Mr. Mercurio said Mr. Ferrer would have had to spend the maximum of $5.7 million in the primary and about $15 million in the general election to compete with Mr. Bloomberg. He did not.

“He didn’t start raising money until 2004.He should have been raising money right from the get-go. They claim they didn’t know if they were running,” he said, adding that he didn’t believe it. “They should have made a special effort early to max out with donations from small donors.”

He said if he were advising the current round of Democrats he would tell them to start fund raising now – while proposing substantive ideas: “Start raising money early. Make the issue agenda more than a litany of the things that need to be solved. Do the solutions rather than the list of problems. Talk more positively about the city and its future.”