Party members claim Rich Schaffer, the incumbent party chairman for the Suffolk Dems, secretly sabotaged their candidates to protect Republicans.
Page A10From§Eachthe sunrise edition — 31 August 2026
Dems battle to slash casino's 72% tax rate while own chairman faces backroom deal accusations with GOP.
As it ran on the front
Pour one out for the New York State Democratic Party, currently fighting itself on two separate fronts, in two separate boroughs of the same story. Front one: Albany Democrats are pushing Governor Hochul to block a 72 percent tax rate on the state's first full casino, because apparently the house always wins, and now the house has friends in the legislature working overtime to make sure the house keeps winning. Front two: out on Long Island, the party's own members are accusing their chairman of cutting backroom deals with the other side. Two stories, same week, same party, and if you squint they're the same story.
Here's the thing nobody wants to say out loud at the meeting: a 72 percent tax rate on a casino sounds like a lot until you remember what a casino is. It's a building designed, floor to ceiling, to take money from people who can least afford to lose it, and hand a slice to the state in exchange for the privilege of running that operation legally. Seventy-two percent isn't punitive. It's the state finally getting a normal cut of a very abnormal business. And the people rushing to lower that cut are calling themselves the party of the working guy while doing it.…
…(cont) Meanwhile out on Long Island, the accusation on the table is that the county chairman has been quietly cutting deals with Republicans behind the membership's back. I don't know the man, I don't know his calendar, I just know that every time a party's own membership starts using the phrase 'backroom deals,' it's because somebody found a door they weren't supposed to know existed. That's not a scandal invented by the other side. That's the membership doing the one job a membership has left: noticing.
Put those two next to each other and you get the actual state of the party in one week: fighting to protect a casino's profit margin with one hand, getting quietly out-negotiated by its own leadership with the other. That's not two unrelated local stories. That's a party that has forgotten which side of the table it's supposed to be sitting on, twice, in the same news cycle, and didn't notice either time.
“You want to know who a party actually works for, watch which fights it picks fast and which fights it lets simmer for years. Cutting a casino's tax bill? Fast. Cleaning up its own backroom? Not so much.”
“Bipartisan cooperation on Long Island isn't a scandal, it's how government used to function before everything became about optics — though I'll grant 'backroom' is doing some of the messaging for us there.”
The receipts
"The governor's office has to step in and resolve this issue. The Gaming Commission falls under the auspices of the governor."
This page is a back-issue: the story as it ran, receipts as they were. The current edition is at the front.