The sleaze never ends when it comes to New York’s gambling-addicted politicos and the fat cats who stuff their campaign coffers in the hopes of scoring big wins.
The latest: Gov. Kathy Hochul (no stranger to overt pay-for-play schemes and other shady shenanigans) palled it up recently with billionaire/Mets owner/would-be gaming magnate Steve Cohen at a game at Citi Field — a hair’s breadth from the site where Cohen is hoping to build a gaming den if he wins the one license for a New York City casino.
Cohen has already spent a fortune trying to make this happen: a million-dollar application fee; $69,700 to Hochul’s campaign war chest; $125,000 to the state Democratic Campaign Committee; $25,000 to the state Democratic Assembly Committee; more than $475,000 in lobbying related costs; $22,600 to disgraced ex-Lt.-Gov Brian Benjamin (talk about a bad bet).
For Hochul to be seen hobnobbing with Cohen is slimy optics, at the very least: a strong sign the gov simply doesn’t care about avoiding the appearance (at least) of corruption.
And with her long and demonstrated history of what sure looks like baksheesh — the scandalous $637 million she shelled out in overpayments on a COVID test contract to a bigtime donor, for example — she’s long lost the benefit of the doubt.
Cohen’s far from the only deep-pocketed plutocrat wooing Hochul and other pols on this front. There’s also:
Of course, most have (like Cohen) also given big to Democratic state committees and the campaigns of other key officeholders.
And plenty of other big fish are in the mix: supermarket mogul John Catsimatidis; Thor Equities founder Joe Sitt; Bally’s chairman Soo Kim.
Remember: The license itself would cost at minimum half a billion — but, per the state, “an applicant may propose to pay a higher license fee.”
In other words: let the bidding start, ladies and gentlemen!
Casinos are terrible investments from the public’s perspective. They fail year after year to generate promised revenues and — as with so many other policies beloved of New York electeds — do massive damage to the social fabric by jacking up crime and fostering addiction.
New York’s entire embrace of casino gambling, in short, is all about the payoffs to the politicians — at the expense of the people they allegedly serve.