Thanks for the help. The item’s below. I’d be happy to mail you a copy, if you give me a mailing address.
Claude Solnik
Long Island Business News
2150 Smithtown Ave.
Ronkonkoma, NY 11779-7348
Home > LI Confidential > Stop scratching on holidays
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.
Sean Patrick Maloney Jumps Into New York Attorney General’s Race
Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, a Hudson Valley Democrat and New York’s first openly gay member of Congress, will run for New York attorney general, shaking up the field in what will be a 100-day sprint for one of the state’s most powerful posts.
“I’ve been down here fighting the Trump administration and playing some pretty good defense but I want to get on offense,” Mr. Maloney said in a phone interview Tuesday from Washington. “This job is an opportunity to do it.”
Mr. Maloney, a three-term congressman who has $3.15 million in his campaign account, will not as yet abandon his re-election efforts while running for attorney general in the Democratic primary.
His entry immediately raises a pair of legal questions: Can he tap those $3 million in congressional funds for a state race? And can he legally seek both seats at the same time, despite a statute seemingly prohibiting that?
ADVERTISEMENT
Mr. Maloney and his lawyers believe the answer to both questions is yes (the primaries for Congress and attorney general are on different days, so he technically wouldn’t be nominated for two posts at the same time), though the propositions could be tested in court.
The congressman is joining a field that already includes Letitia James, the New York City public advocate who won overwhelming backing at the state party convention last month; Zephyr Teachout, a law professor who previously ran for governor; and Leecia Eve, a former adviser to Hillary Clinton and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo who is now a lobbyist and top government affairs official for Verizon. (She plans to go on leave from that post on June 15, her campaign said.)
The post opened up last month following the sudden resignation of Eric Schneiderman, whom multiple women accused of physical assault.
“Obviously, none of us expected to be here,” Mr. Maloney said.
The job of New York attorney general, with oversight over everything from Wall Street to Albany corruption, has long been a political launching pad, as it was for Mr. Cuomo and Eliot Spitzer, the state’s last two elected governors. Following President Trump’s election, the office has also been a bulwark of the Democratic legal resistance to the White House.
Much of the Democratic primary is expected to focus on who can oppose Mr. Trump the loudest.
Ms. Teachout, who ran against Mr. Cuomo from the left in 2014 and surprised many by winning 34 percent of the vote, kicked off her campaign Tuesday outside of Trump Tower in Manhattan.
ADVERTISEMENT
She pledged to make “fighting Trump” her top priority. “I will use law as a sword, not just a shield,” she said. At one point, Ms. Teachout, who is pregnant, placed her hand on her abdomen and declared, “I feel the future growing inside me — and with every kick I feel more determined.”
Mr. Maloney’s candidacy could also have implications for the Democratic efforts to win the House.
If Mr. Maloney wins the attorney general primary on Sept. 13, he said he would step aside from his congressional re-election. He is one of just a dozen Democrats nationally who occupy a district that President Trump carried in 2016 (Mr. Trump won 49 percent there) — potentially opening a swing seat less than two months before the general election.
“I care intensely about keeping this seat in the blue column,” Mr. Maloney said.
In a truncated attorney general’s race, Mr. Maloney’s money, if he can use it, would make him formidable. His opponents would have to raise roughly $30,000 every day of the race just to equal the war chest that Mr. Maloney could begin with.
Election attorneys were split in interviews on whether he can transfer all those funds, with some believing federal committees can only transfer $1,000 to a state race.
“My understanding is we can spend almost all of it,” Mr. Maloney said of his war chest.
Then there is the question of running for two offices at once. Mr. Maloney believes he can do so, at least during the primaries. But tight election deadlines — including the timing in a law for sending ballots overseas — could complicate matters.
Joshua L. Oppenheimer, a top election lawyer in New York, said overlapping federal law, state law and court orders make the issue particularly complex. “There are too many novel legal questions,” he said. “If anyone gives you a slam-dunk answer, they’re leading you the wrong way.”
In fact, Representative Kathleen Rice, a Long Island Democrat who also had considered running for attorney general, cited “current state law prohibiting candidates from seeking two offices simultaneously” in her decision not to run last month.
ADVERTISEMENT
Mr. Maloney, 51, has been in and around politics for decades, serving as a senior White House adviser in the Clinton administration in the late 1990s. He also served as a top adviser to both Mr. Spitzer and Gov. David A. Paterson, after he finished third in his first run for attorney general, in 2006, to Mr. Cuomo.
In his concession speech, he presaged a future run. “This day may not be the outcome we hope,” Mr. Maloney said then, “but I make you a promise that there will be another day.”
He won a seat in Congress in 2012, ousting a Republican incumbent. But Mr. Maloney said Tuesday in the interview that he has “always wanted to do this job” of attorney general.
“This the best job in New York politics because it has the most power to help people,” he said.
Ms. James, who is seeking to become the first African-American woman elected to statewide office in New York, already has the backing of Mr. Cuomo, as well as several powerful labor unions. She also secured the support of roughly 85 percent of the delegates at last month’s state party convention, automatically winning a spot on the ballot.
Mr. Maloney, Ms. Teachout and Ms. Eve all must gather signatures to get on the ballot.
Best known in New York City, Ms. James has been traveling upstate in recent days, to Madison County, Syracuse and Albany, where she announced the endorsement of Mayor Kathy M. Sheehan on Tuesday.
The remaining wild card in the race may be Preet Bharara, the former United States attorney for the Southern District of New York, who has not ruled out a run, though he would soon have to register to vote as a Democrat and begin gathering signatures if he planned to enter the party’s primary. He could wait until next month to mount an independent bid.
On the Republican side, Keith Wofford, a partner at the law firm Ropes & Gray, is running with the backing of the party.
Follow Shane Goldmacher on Twitter: @ShaneGoldmacher
A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: Hudson Valley Democrat In Attorney General Race. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
No comments:
Post a Comment