After shedding to Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) in a Lengthy Island race that helped hand Republicans management of the U.S. Home, Democrat Robert Zimmerman has grow to be one in all Santos’ fiercest critics within the press. Zimmerman has denounced Santos on tv, canvassed for petition signatures demanding Santos’ resignation and earned the eye of The Washington Put up’s fashion part, which profiled his distinctive post-election life.
And whereas Zimmerman has not introduced plans to run once more, he has entertained the concept on social media.
“George, if that’s even your actual title, when you’re so satisfied that #NY3 voters nonetheless belief you - resign & run towards me once more in a particular election,” Zimmerman tweeted in late December.
However Zimmerman’s work as a high-powered public relations guide might complicate one other potential congressional run.
Newsday reported in January that Las Vegas Sands had employed Zimmerman’s agency, ZE Inventive Communications, to help it in its bid for on line casino rights on the website of the Nassau Coliseum, a longtime Lengthy Island sports activities area and humanities venue. The on line casino bid has the help of the NAACP New York State Convention and quite a lot of constructing trades unions, whose members packed an area assembly in help of the undertaking.
In its present kind, Las Vegas Sands is the product of the entrepreneurial handiwork of the late Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson, who grew the corporate right into a gaming and hospitality big after buying the Sands Lodge in 1988.
After Adelson’s demise in January 2021, his widow, Dr. Miriam Adelson, grew to become the multibillion-dollar firm’s majority shareholder.
Miriam Adelson additionally resumed her late husband’s function as a significant benefactor in Republican politics. Adelson, a doctor, contributed $12.5 million every to the primary Republican Senate and Home tremendous PACs within the 2022 election cycle — a complete of $25 million to these two teams alone.
As a Democratic pundit and donor, Zimmerman has a historical past of deriding the late Sheldon Adelson’s maintain on the Republican Social gathering.
In a March 2012 look on CNN, Zimmerman likened Adelson’s monetary help for Newt Gingrich, then a Republican presidential candidate, to a “sugar daddy” who sponsors a “trophy candidate,” simply as a rich man may use cash to woo a “trophy spouse.”
Talking to Politico in 2015, Zimmerman argued that billionaire mutual fund founder Warren Buffett’s speech at a fundraiser for then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was totally different than an Adelson or David Koch fundraiser for Republican candidates as a result of folks really wish to hear what Buffett has to say.
“The one people who find themselves coming to a Sheldon Adelson or David Koch occasion are individuals who wish to stroll away with a test,” he stated, referring to Republican political candidates in search of the 2 billionaires’ backing.
Requested to reconcile his work for Las Vegas Sands with Miriam Adelson’s standing as a Republican megadonor and his previous feedback about her husband, Zimmerman instructed HuffPost that there was no battle between his work for Las Vegas Sands and his views on the Adelson household’s political giving.
“My agency’s work under no circumstances compromises my integrity and rules,” he stated in an announcement.
Zimmerman is collaborating on the Las Vegas Sands undertaking with Theresia “Resi” Cooper, a registered lobbyist who's dealing with direct contact with lawmakers. Las Vegas Sands has retained Cooper and Lauren Corcoran-Doolin, Cooper’s colleague at Ten Key Methods, for $15,000 a month, in keeping with a disclosure that Cooper filed with the state.
As a public relations guide somewhat than a lobbyist, Zimmerman will not be required to reveal the compensation his agency is receiving for its work on behalf of Las Vegas Sands. HuffPost requested a spokesperson for Zimmerman how a lot his agency is incomes from the association, however Zimmerman didn't present a response.
Las Vegas Sands will not be Zimmerman’s first controversial shopper. Within the mid-2000s, he collaborated with Cooper on an effort to assist Broadwater Power — an organization owned by Shell Oil — get state approval for a pure gasoline terminal alongside the Lengthy Island Sound. The proposed terminal, which might have linked to an present pipeline transporting pure gasoline from Canada, drew rapid opposition from members of each political events involved about its potential impression on the regional ecosystem and nationwide safety.
Then-state Sen. Carl Marcellino, a Lengthy Island Republican who chaired the state Senate Environmental Conservation Committee, questioned a Broadwater govt in a 2005 listening to about whether or not the terminal may make a juicy goal for a possible terrorist.
“Are we constructing a bomb in the midst of Lengthy Island Sound?” he requested.
In the end, in 2008, opposition to the undertaking prompted the state authorities to deem it inconsistent with environmental tips for the Lengthy Island Sound. Dealing with an all-but-certain defeat, Broadwater formally pulled the plug on the undertaking in 2012.
Zimmerman apparently didn't see a contradiction between that work and his help for environmentalist insurance policies. As a candidate towards Santos in 2022, he touted his dedication to defending the Lengthy Island Sound from air pollution.
“I pledge to be a stalwart defender of the Lengthy Island Sound ecosystem and to work daily to safeguard the general public well being of the constituents of the third Congressional District,” Zimmerman wrote in a September tweet celebrating an endorsement from the League of Conservation Voters.
Nonetheless, Zimmerman’s work for Las Vegas Sands is more likely to have the largest impression on one other run for Congress as a result of horse buying and selling and lobbying that characterizes gaming license fights through which billions of dollars are at stake.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) successfully controls the state’s gaming fee, which will get the ultimate say on who receives the brand new “downstate” on line casino licenses. Alongside the way in which, different state and native elected officers can have the possibility to weigh in on proposals submitted by firms competing for the brand new licenses. That, in flip, makes the licensing course of a possible fundraising alternative for politicians with sway within the matter, and a profitable opening for the assorted consultants and lobbyists who focus on securing affect in Albany.
The nation’s largest casinos have lengthy fantasized about breaking into the metropolitan New York Metropolis market, which at the moment has two “racinos” — partial casinos with horse betting — however not full-scale on line casino operations. The New York state legislature’s April authorization of three on line casino licenses in or round New York Metropolis has set off a scramble for a license through which Las Vegas Sands is now competing.
If Las Vegas Sands wins its bid for a on line casino license on Lengthy Island, the placement would be the firm’s solely home property. Las Vegas Sands, which has huge properties in China and Singapore, offered its final remaining Las Vegas complexes — the Venetian and the Sands Expo and Conference Heart — in March 2021.
Many states have embraced authorized playing for the brand new income it offers. And in union strongholds like New York, casinos that agree to not battle unionization drives usually additionally profit from the political help of influential labor unions just like the Lodge Trades Council.
It stays unclear how Las Vegas Sands plans to strategy relations with organized labor in New York. The corporate famously employed a scorched-earth strategy towards unionization efforts at its former Las Vegas properties.
However the gaming big’s proposal to redevelop the Nassau Coliseum website has the help of John Durso, the president of the Lengthy Island Federation of Labor, an umbrella group for the area’s unions.
“We should not miss this chance to ship for our residents,” Durso instructed Newsday in January.
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