Three former governors of New York are adding their voices to the list of those who are expressing the hope that The New York Sun will find the funding needed to avoid a close-down.

Their comments came in the wake of the publication in the Sun last week of a letter to readers from its editor, Seth Lipsky, reporting that new capital would have to be secured by the end of September or the paper faces having to cease publication. That news was met with an outpouring of support from the city’s political, cultural, and labor leaders, which was reported in an article in Friday’s Sun.

In recent days expressions of support for the paper have also come from leaders in the worlds of politics, culture, and the press. Governors Cuomo, Pataki, and Spitzer said they are regular readers of the Sun and praised the newspaper’s coverage of local politics, sports, and arts, as well as its opinion pages.

“I read it every day. I have subscribed to it for some time,” Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat who served three terms as governor, said. “I read it because I like the arts section. I like the sports, the political news, and, most of all, I like understanding from the op-eds and editorials the conservative view of things. It would be a shame if the Sun could not continue to write. The paper is important to the state and city. The more diversity, the better citizens we are.”

Mr. Pataki, a Republican who served three terms, said: “I just happen to think that the Sun is the best paper in New York. It really presents not just national politics but state politics in a way that others miss. It is fair, knowledgeable, but most important, the Sun’s writing is intelligent.”

Mr. Spitzer, in his first public comments on any topic since he resigned from office, said in a telephone interview: “The Sun has been a spectacular addition to the city’s political discourse and is one of the finest papers in terms of editing, writing, and analysis that one can find anywhere.”

Their comments echoed earlier words of support expressed by Mayor Bloomberg; Edward Cardinal Egan; the New York City comptroller, William Thompson Jr.; the speaker of the New York City Council, Christine Quinn, the public advocate, Betsy Gotbaum; the district attorney of New York County, Robert Morgenthau, and the president of the United Federation of Teachers, Randi Weingarten, among other city leaders.

A former American ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, said the Sun has the “best, most comprehensive coverage of the U.N. by any newspaper, anywhere.” It was a reference in part to the work of the Sun’s Turtle Bay-based correspondent, Benny Avni, who files daily from the headquarters of the world body.

The director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Philippe de Montebello, noted what he described as the Sun’s “expansive” culture coverage, saying: “Its extraordinary critics would be much missed if the paper were to cease publication. I very much hope that the paper survives and thrives. For every New Yorker who cares about museums, it has become essential reading.” Earlier, the director of the Museum of Modern Art, Glenn Lowry, had expressed support for the paper.

A former chairman of Dow Jones and Company, Inc., and former publisher of the Wall Street Journal, Peter Kann, a Pulitzer Prize-winner, said the Sun, “quite simply, is the best general interest daily in the country. From local to national to international, from arts to politics to world events, the Sun is fearlessly independent, eminently fair, and dedicated every day to breaking news I can find nowhere else. The Sun deserves a long life.”

Another famed editor, Sir Harold Evans, said the closing of the Sun would be a “great tragedy,” adding that the paper in a short time “has established itself as an independent voice in New York and a lively read, splendid arts pages, provocative editorials.” A former editor of the Times of London who is now editor-at-large of the Week magazine, Mr. Evans once guest-edited the Sun for a week while Mr. Lipsky was on vacation.

A former foreign and national editor of the Washington Post, Peter Osnos, who is a senior fellow at the Century Foundation and the founder of PublicAffairs Books, wrote that the Sun has “solid municipal coverage, excellent arts reporting, and a handsome feel that is old-fashioned in an elegant way, especially at a time when everyone else is trying to be jazzy.” He wrote, “there is no doubt that the city benefits from its perspective.”

A columnist of the Village Voice, Nat Hentoff, said, “Nobody in this city does a better job on a regular basis, both in the news and the opinion page, covering the schools and other local matters.” Mr. Hentoff singled out the Sun’s arts coverage, particularly its criticism of jazz, of which Mr. Hentoff is an aficionado. Mr. Hentoff doesn’t always agree with the Sun’s editorials, a fact that he makes evident by leaving, from time to time, long and eloquent dissenting messages on the editor’s voice mail. “There is no paper that has an arts section that goes anywhere near on a daily basis what the Sun has. I would bet that in America, there may be no other daily paper in American journalistic history that has an art section like The New York Sun,” he said.

Support for the Sun was even heard from one of its competitors, the Daily News, which published an editorial last week that said: “New York would be the poorer without The New York Sun.” The editorial praised the paper for its “smart coverage” and said the loss of it would be “a shame.”