Cuomo Jumps to the Front Line in
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.
Battle Over Separated Children
ALBANY — The week began with a feint from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo.
His office released a statement on Monday saying that New York would not deploy its National Guard to the nation’s southern border, saying the state would not be a part of “this inhumane treatment of immigrant families.” Only later, however, did his office concede that the federal government had never asked to send the New York National Guard.
“Pre-emptive,” as one aide described it.
But as the week progressed, Mr. Cuomo’s gestures gained gravitas, as it became clearer that New York — unbeknown to the governor and other local public officials — was being sent hundreds of the children separated from their parents at the border.
On Tuesday, his administration announced its intention to sue the federal government over the border policy. On Wednesday, as the Legislature left the Capitol without addressing some key legislation, leaving it to expire with little more than a shrug from the governor, Mr. Cuomo spent the day in Albany making a series of appearances on cable news shows and writing an Op-Ed for The New York Times.
On Thursday, he took a helicopter to a suburban facility that housed about 15 of the separated children, and held a lengthy news conference where he spoke angrily about the federal government sending hundreds of other children to New York with no notice or personal information.
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“They are in my state,” Mr. Cuomo said. “They are my legal charge.”
Although the governor’s initial gesture may have originally seemed to some to have been driven by political opportunism, Mr. Cuomo, a second-term Democrat seeking re-election in the fall, now finds himself on more powerful footing, both from a political and policy perspective.
The push against President Trump’s policy has dovetailed nicely for Mr. Cuomo’s recent embrace of broader national themes, evidenced by his increasingly vocal attacks on Washington’s and New York’s congressional Republicans. The governor has been mentioned as a possible presidential candidate in 2020, although he denies those ambitions.
Advocating for the separated children also gives Mr. Cuomo, a combative and sometimes savage political veteran, a chance to inspire sympathy, which is not something he always evokes.
“Forget everything else, forget the politics and the garbage and the lunacy of this administration,” Mr. Cuomo said on Friday on MSNBC. “Help the children at least.”
On Friday, the governor released a letter sent to Alex Azar, the secretary of Health and Human Services, asking for information on the 345 separated children the state has managed to count thus far.
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In the letter, the governor underscored “the deeply traumatic effects and life-altering consequences of separating children from their parents,” and outlined the state’s duties to “ensure appropriate services are being provided.”
A similar plea on the governor’s campaign website, and linked to a page where people can donate to Mr. Cuomo’s re-election effort, drew criticismfrom his Republican opponent, Marcus Molinaro, who called such a pitch “despicable.”
“It’s rank hypocrisy to suggest compassion while fund-raising on these stories,” Mr. Molinaro said on Friday.
The Cuomo campaign said the short video was not meant to be a solicitation, but a plea for signatures for an online petition, and argued that Mr. Molinaro’s own website highlighted social issues like the opioid crisis on pages that also offered opportunities to donate.
Abbey Fashouer, a spokeswoman for Mr. Cuomo’s campaign, said that Mr. Molinaro “and the G.O.P. have been working to advance Trump’s hateful, divisive agenda since day one,” while Mr. Cuomo has worked for immigrants and their children.
To be sure, Mr. Cuomo’s efforts on behalf of the migrant children have earned praise from advocates, who have been equally outspoken about the president’s so-called “zero tolerance” policy of separating children, which he revoked amid public outcry earlier this week.
“The fact that the governor is so active on this is a good sign,” said Steve Choi, the executive director of the New York Immigration Coalition. “We need our elected officials to push back on this.”
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