Cuomo beats back ‘surprise’ AOC challenge to lead NY delegation to DNC, See NY Const Art 1 Sec 3
Claude Solnik
Long Island Business News
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Stop scratching on holidays
Published: June 1, 2012
Off Track Betting in New York State has been racing into a crisis called shrinking revenue. Some people have spitballed a solution: Don’t close on holidays.
New York State Racing Law bars racing on Christmas, Easter and Palm Sunday, and the state has ruled OTBs can’t handle action on those days, even though they could easily broadcast races from out of state.
“You should be able to bet whenever you want,” said Jackson Leeds, a Nassau OTB employee who makes an occasional bet. He added some irrefutable logic: “How is the business going to make money if you’re not open to take people’s bets?”
Elias Tsekerides, president of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, said OTB is open on Greek Orthodox Easter and Palm Sunday.
“I don’t want discrimination,” Tsekerides said. “They close for the Catholics, but open for the Greek Orthodox? It’s either open for all or not open.”
OTB officials have said they lose millions by closing on Palm Sunday alone, with tracks such as Gulfstream, Santa Anita, Turf Paradise and Hawthorne running.
One option: OTBs could just stay open and face the consequences. New York City OTB did just that back in 2003. The handle was about $1.5 million – and OTB was fined $5,000.
Easy money.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo easily defeated Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Tuesday in a surprise challenge to determine who will head New York’s delegation to the Democratic National Convention.
Democratic Party chairman Jay Jacobs — a Cuomo ally — fumed that he was “blindsided” when a motion was made to nominate AOC to head the delegation during an online Democratic Committee meeting.
Still, Cuomo received 218 votes compared to the 34 votes gleaned by the first-term congresswoman, who represents portions of Queens and The Bronx, Jacobs said
“It was a bad performance. AOC got 13 percent of the vote. She did vote for herself,” Jacobs said following the meeting.
Jacobs said he was disappointed because he wanted party unity before heading into the convention, which takes place in Milwaukee Aug. 17-20, though the coronavirus pandemic has scaled back in-person events.
“It surprised me. I was blindsided by it. It was bad faith,” Jacobs said.
Jacobs said it appeared that “rogue operators” were behind the AOC nomination and that he didn’t think the congresswoman herself instigated the challenge.
As governor, Cuomo is considered the de-facto head of the state Democratic Party.
Through a rep, AOC distanced herself from the insurgency. The spokeswoman noted that AOC didn’t even personally participate in the meeting — though a staffer represented her and voted for her to lead New York Democrats at the convention.
“We didn’t want to lead the New York delegation at the DNC convention. We have no plans to go,” said Ocasio-Cortez spokeswoman Laurent Hitt.
“Alexandria was surprised someone nominated her. We didn’t ask anyone to nominate her. We did not attempt to whip any votes. We had no premeditated thoughts about this whatsoever.”
It’s not the first time Ocasio-Cortez has faced off with Cuomo. She helped spearhead opposition to the the abandoned Amazon plan to open a headquarters bordering her district in Queens. Cuomo negotiated the deal with Amazon, which included billions in subsidies.
She has also criticized for Cuomo for refusing to back higher taxes on the rich to help preserve services for needy New Yorkers during the COVID-19 fiscal crisis.
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