Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who has positioned himself as an enforcer against special interests, has turned to lobbyists who represent special interests to help him raise money for his gubernatorial bid.

At a major fund-raising gala in December at the Sheraton Hotel in New York City, lobbyists raised nearly $1 million for Mr. Spitzer’s campaign, according to sources. The amount that lobbyists brought in at that one event is equal to about 5% of Mr. Spitzer’s entire campaign war chest.

Some of the most powerful lobbyists in the state were on hand that evening, collecting checks from their clients or donating thousands of dollars themselves.

It’s perfectly legal for lobbyists to give money to a political campaign or round up bundles of contributions. But the amount of money being raised by Mr. Spitzer from those who are paid to influence policy is raising questions about his pledges to stamp out what he has called the “pay-to-play culture” in Albany.

“Why would the lobbyists raise the money except in expectation that they would have access to a Spitzer administration?” said Blair Horner, legislative director of the New York Public Interest Research Group, a state government watchdog group.

The fund-raising help provided by lobbyists to Mr. Spitzer is in part a reflection of the fact that many in Albany presume that he will be New York’s next governor and are eager to form a relationship before the election in November.

The significant involvement of lobbyists in Mr. Spitzer’s fund-raising efforts also is part of a national trend in political fund raising and, spurred by the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, comes amid renewed calls for a tightening of restrictions.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that a review of Federal Election Commission records conducted by the Center for Public Integrity shows that the number of national lawmakers who list lobbyists as treasurers of their reelection or political action committees has increased to 71 from 15 in 1998.

Lobbyists who attended the gala denied that they were attempting to buy influence from the leading candidate for governor and insisted Mr. Spitzer is not a politician who is susceptible to influence peddling.

“If you get any influence, you earn it through being scrupulously honest and giving good advice,” said one of Albany’s most successful lobbyists, James Featherstonhaugh, who raised $25,000 for Mr. Spitzer through the event in December. He said he and other lobbyists at the gala raised money from sources such as their clients and Democratic Party activists.

While accusing Mr. Horner of being “a little paranoid” about the influence that lobbyists have through their fundraising efforts, he said “clients like their lobbyists to be active politically and show they can raise money politically.”

Among the clients of his firm, Featherstonhaugh, Wiley, Clyne & Cordo, is the health care workers union, 1199 SEIU, which pays the company an annual fee of $60,000.

Many of the lobbyists who raised an estimated $935,000 at the event have deep Democratic Party roots and several served in the Cuomo administration.

Another powerful lobbyist at the event who raised money was Sid Davidoff of Davidoff Malito & Hutcher.

Mr. Davidoff, who was a close adviser to Mayor Dinkins, and who decades ago was an aide to Mayor Lindsay, raised $10,000, sources said. Altria (formerly Philip Morris) is paying his firm $171,000 to lobby the governor, the Senate, and the Assembly on the subjects of cigarettes and tobacco, according to filings with the state lobby commission.

Roy Lasky, the executive director of the New York State Dental Association, which represents 13,000 dentists in New York, co-chaired the fund-raiser at the Sheraton and pledged to raise $75,000.

Mr. Spitzer’s campaign did not return calls for comment yesterday.

Mr. Spitzer is one of several candidates in the governor’s race to claim the mantle of reform. In speeches, the attorney general has railed against the influence wielded by special interest groups and has called for stiffening the laws governing gifts to state employees and candidates. As Albany is considering tightening gift restrictions, Mr. Spitzer, Governor Pataki, and the Senate majority leader, Joseph Bruno, have said they favor a ban on all gifts to lawmakers.

“We need to reduce the undue influence of special interests by ending the pay-to-play culture that exists in Albany,” Mr. Spitzer said in a November speech at the Rockefeller Institute of Government. “Too often decisions about how to spend the peoples’ money are based on who pays for a dinner or a golf outing, or who contributes the most to the campaigns of decision makers. It has to end.”

In that speech, Mr. Spitzer proposed prohibiting those “who do business with the state from giving gifts of any sort to state employees.” He said if he were governor he would push the state to adopt a “blanket ban on contributions to state candidates from those who do business with the state.” Mr. Spitzer himself has vowed that will not accept donations from anyone with “pending business” before his office.

He said: “In Albany – as it was on Wall Street – the status quo is a system that lacks accountability. It is a system that is controlled by special interests. It is a system that is not efficient, is not open and transparent.”

Mr. Spitzer reported two weeks ago that he had more than $19 million in the bank, about four times more than his Democratic rival, Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi, reported having. A former governor of Massachusetts, William Weld, led the Republican field in fundraising with $2 million.

Mr. Spitzer’s campaign in December said that the attorney general expect ed to raise $4 million to $5 million at the Sheraton fund-raiser.