The four Democrats hoping to oust Mayor Bloomberg in November’s election have doled out hundreds of thousands of dollars for campaign consultants and press liaisons in the past two months.

In disclosures made public yesterday by the Campaign Finance Board, it appears that the borough president of Manhattan, C. Virginia Fields, spent more than any of the other Democratic candidates for those services during the past two months.

Between mid-March and mid-May, Ms. Fields – who has been edging up in the polls, but has less money in the bank than her Democratic rivals – paid more than $200,000 to about a dozen campaign consultants, staff members who deal with the press, and firms that either help to shape her image or gauge how she is being perceived.

She paid $20,000 to Baraff Communications, a firm that specializes in direct mailings; $30,000 to National Political Services, which her campaign manager, Joseph Mercurio, heads; and $7,840 to Stanford Research, an “opposition research” company based in Austin, Texas. Ms. Fields also paid $7,000 to the McCaffrey Group, a consulting company founded by a former City Council member from Queens, Walter McCaffrey, and $24,852 to Prime New York, which compiles voter lists.

A spokesman for Ms. Fields, Nicholas Charles, said the borough president was simply spending wisely.

“One of the reasons we are doing so well in the polls is because we have really top-notch people,” Mr. Charles said, adding, “It’s minuscule compared to what the mayor is spending.”

Mr. Bloomberg, a billionaire businessman, has already spent more than $10 million on his campaign, and yesterday he launched a $1 million advertising blitz.

The mayor’s other three Democratic challengers – Rep. Anthony Weiner of Queens; the speaker of the City Council, Gifford Miller, and a former borough president of the Bronx, Fernando Ferrer – have all attacked the mayor’s spending, saying he is trying to buy the election.

In the primary, however, the four Democrats are facing off only against each other, and they are all getting advice from various places.

In the most recent cycle, Mr. Weiner spent $40,335 on Benenson Strategy Group, a polling firm; $28,875 on his chief campaign consultant, Thomas Freedman, and thousands more on other consulting-type services.

Mr. Miller reported spending roughly $150,000 on consulting, which included more than $100,000 to his high profile campaign consultant, Mandy Grunwald, who has served as an adviser to campaigns of both President Clinton and Senator Clinton.

Mr. Ferrer paid his chief consulting company, the Global Strategy Group, handsomely. Experts said they are not surprised at how much the candidates have been spending.

“Communicating with an electorate is getting increasingly complicated,” a political science professor at Columbia University, Steven Cohen, said. “You have to know not just about mass mailings, but you need e-mail lists and need to know how to buy key words on search engines.”