Why on earth is the New York Post carrying water for Steve Cohen and his Metropolitan Park megaresort? It’s a done deal and hardly needs any special pleading. Some of the Post‘s coverage of the New York City casino derby has been excellent. However, that hardly applies to a recent editorial, masquerading as “news” coverage. It was a bizarre—and more that a little bit racist—take on what is otherwise old news.
The Post breathlessly reported that Assemblywoman Claire Valdez (D) “annually accepts as much as $20,000 from a Texas casino despite voting to foil a union-backed gaming project in her own borough.” Land sakes alive! Before you get your knickers in a twist, the Texas casino had no business pending before the Big Apple. Never has and probably never will. It’s a big coincidence. A put-up job. An anti-tribal, anti-Hispanic BOGO. (Incidentally, we’d never even heard of Valdez until the Post ran this scandal-sheet item, so congratulations to the paper for unwittingly raising her political profile.)
Valdez is an enrolled member in the Ysleta Del Sur Pueblo, owner of Speaking Rock Casino. As such, she receives (or “rakes in,” in loaded Post parlance) annual distributions between $5,000 and $20,000 … hardly enough to keep someone off the dole, incidentally. What does Speaking Rock have to do with casinos in New York City, you might ask? Nothing. It’s a baseless canard, drummed by the Post to bolster the election chances of would-be congressman Antonio Reynoso (D). It also apparently chaps the Post‘s ass that Valdez is supported in her congressional aspirations by NYC’s populist mayor, Zohran Mamdani (D).
Alleged reporters Craig McCarthy and Hannah Fierick don’t blush to sling loaded verbiage at Valdez. They mock her “notably thin political resumé” and “socialist comrades.” Funny. We’re not a newspaper but we don’t refer to GOP politicians as “MAGA cronies.” The Post ought to hold itself to a higher standard than it does—and refrain from making sinister imputations about supposedly shiftless Native Americans getting rich off casino lucre. Dredging up that bigoted bogeyman is so 1993, by the way.
As for Valdez’s alleged hypocrisy, even the lazybones Post has to concede that Valdez supported $4 billion Bally’s Bronx. Which is also going to be a union-friendly project. She explained her opposition to Metropolitan Park by saying “Many constituents and residents across Queens vocally opposed the Metropolitan Park casino project. I cast my vote with them.” They’re still trying to fight the it in court but lost yet another challenge last week. The Post tries to spin that Valdez quote as some kind of prima facie evidence of dark-skinned duplicity. If McCarthy and Fierick had done actual journalism, they would know that Cohen is partnering with Hard Rock International, a Native American-owned enterprise. So you might even say Valdez was voting against indigenous interests. (Gasp!) But that would take thinking … a commodity evidently in short supply at Post HQ.
Setting new standards for spinelessness, Garden State Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D) pushed Atlantic City‘s casinos under the bus last week. According to The Press of Atlantic City, Sherrill will take no position on whether or not casino gambling should be enabled in northern New Jersey. In doing so, Sherrill took with one hand what she had given with the other: She’d betrayed her anti-smoking supporters already by putting the question of a Boardwalk smoking ban entirely in the hands of the Lege. And it when comes to ruffling the feathers of Big Gaming, you’ve never seen a more pusillanimous pack of cowards. The votes to ban smoking in the casinos are there but lawmakers are too scared to actually do anything.
As for expanded competition within the Garden State, casinos may be in luck. Fairleigh Dickinson University polled New Jersey residents and found half of the electorate already opposed. Racinos at Monmouth Park and the Meadowlands garner 44% support, which is an improvement on previous election cycles but not by much. Even the most-supportive demographic, young voters, is 49% against. (And the Meadowlands area is 56% opposed!)
Anyway, quickie racinos as a solution are like trying to cure terminal cancer with bandages. When Resorts World New York City goes Class III later this year, the change could be seismic and likely to get worse once Metropolitan Park and Bally’s Bronx come on line, much later. New Jersey can’t compete with that kind of product and, if smoking stays in place at newer joints in the Garden State, that’s one more (big) reason patrons will have to visit Big Apple casinos instead. As for Sherrill, she’s trying to stay off the losing side—whichever one it might be—but is likelier to be remembered as someone who could have made a difference and chose not to, twice over.