In the battle between billionaires and billionaires to open a casino in the United States' last, great untapped gambling market, an erroneous email can become a dangerous weapon in the hands of an adversary.

That's a lesson that New York Mets owner Steve Cohen and Hard Rock International, his casino partner, have learned the hard way in recent weeks.

The central players in this episode of casino palace intrigue include Mr. Cohen's team and a rival casino interest: Las Vegas Sands, which wants to build a resort on the Nassau Coliseum site on Long Island, about 16 miles east of Mr. Cohen's proposed casino. development at Citi Field.

The problem started when one of Mr. Cohen's lobbyists accidentally sent a brief strategy note to a Sands executive.

At first glance, the contents of the email seemed relatively innocuous, reflecting a routine attempt by lobbyist Michael McKeon to contact Hofstra University, which opposes the Sands project due to its proximity to campus .

Mr. McKeon wanted to let the Cohen team know that he would ask Hofstra whether it planned to challenge Sands' attempt to move forward with its development plans even after a judge's ruling appeared to complicate control of the site .

“I am reaching out to Hofstra to see if they will oppose this move,” he wrote.

But in that one sentence, Sands supporters saw an abomination.

The email soon found wider circulation. Public accusations of conspiracy were made. Subpoenas were issued. And there was a brouhaha going on.

“The stakes are very high,” said Marc Edelman, a law professor at Baruch College who studies the gambling industry. “It is very rare that a company has the opportunity to bid for an oligopoly, if not a shared monopoly, over an entire sector.”

At stake are three licenses for full-fledged casinos in the New York City area, at a time when developers face a languishing office market. The opportunity has created a rush among the nation's top real estate operators and casino companies, including Hudson Yards developer Related Companies and its partner Wynn Resorts, which want to build a casino on Manhattan's Far West Side; SL Green Realty Corporation and Caesars Entertainment, which want to put a gambling hall in Times Square; and Bally's Corporation, which wants to create a gambling house in the Bronx at the site formerly known as Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point.

There is a casino proposal for Coney Island, and another for Midtown East. Larry Silverstein, the developer of the World Trade Center, is expected to submit a bid. This also applies to the two existing electronic gaming emporiums in the region, whose owners want to convert their properties into large-scale casinos.

But few contenders have been as aggressive in their public quest for community support as Las Vegas Sands and the Cohen team. To bolster its $6 billion bid, Sands has been courting Nassau County with sports clinics featuring megawatt soccer celebrity David Beckham and the golf star Collin Morikawa, and promises of millions of dollars in payments to both the City of Hempstead and Nassau County.

Some observers believe that two of the three licenses will go to the existing electronic gambling facilities at Aqueduct Racetrack and Yonkers Raceway. And due to political opposition to a casino in Manhattan, the third license may go to Queens or Long Island.

Mr. Cohen and Hard Rock have hired an army of consultants to convince politicians and community leaders that their $8 billion proposal for a casino next to Citi Field, known as Metropolitan Park, will enhance the local neighborhood with top-notch live music and abundant parkland. and thousands of jobs.

And they have paid one consulting firm, Mr. McKeon's firm Actum, at least $45,000 a month to support their efforts.

To that end, Mr. McKeon sent an email to Michael Sullivan, Mr. Cohen's chief of staff, and Sean Caffery, Hard Rock's Senior Vice President of Business and Casino Development, on January 5 at 4:19 p.m. According to an advisor on the project, the email would also go to Edward Tracy, the CEO of Hard Rock Asia. Instead, the email was sent to Tracey Edwards, a director at Sands, according to two people familiar with the email's trajectory.

By January 11, the contents of the email had found their way from Ms. Edwards' inbox to an op-ed in Newsdaythe Long Island newspaper.

On the night of January 16, Howard Kopel, the pro-Sands chairman of the Nassau County Legislature, had issued subpoenas to Susan Poser, the president of Hofstra University.

By January 17, the email itself — with Ms. Edwards' name redacted by a thick black box — had found its way onto an oversized poster board that served as a prop for a news conference whereupon Bruce Blakeman, the fervently pro-Sands Nassau County executive, accused Hofstra and the Cohen team of possible “collusion.”

“Hofstra is on an island alone, and now we have reason to believe that they are working or colluding with another casino applicant, and we want to know the nature of it,” Mr. Blakeman said in a recent interview. “Is it innocent, is it appropriate or is it shameful?”

A Hofstra spokesman denied there was any collusion between the university and Mr. Cohen's bid. “Hard Rock has had no communication whatsoever with Hofstra University or its president,” said Gina Massiel Cadahia, a spokeswoman for Hard Rock, said.

Mr. McKeon did not respond to requests for comment. Neither does Mrs. Edwards.

But even if Hofstra and Cohen's bid had spoken, the argument that such communications were illegal is unlikely to hold water, said Bennett Liebman, a government attorney in residence at Albany Law School.

State Gambling Rules prohibit collusion among competitors to prevent casino bidders from conspiring for their mutual benefit. An example of this is proposing artificially low tax rates, Mr. Liebman said, adding: “It's a nice topic of conversation, but I don't think it's really a valid legal argument.”

The state's process for choosing a casino site is progressing, albeit slowly. The State Gaming Commission has collected answers to hundreds of questions from potential bidders. Thirty days after the commission formally releases the answers to these questions, bidders' tenders will be in, and their arduous journey through the approval gauntlet will begin.

The email has given supporters of the Sands proposal early ammunition. It has also spotlighted the enormous amount of money that casino competitors pour into shaping the politics surrounding their bids – from lucrative contracts with lobbyists to generous political donations to Governor Kathy Hochul, who effectively controls the Gaming Commission.

The email outage also underscores one of the vulnerabilities of the Sands proposal: opposition from Hofstra, Long Island's largest private university and a key community stakeholder. The school board wrote this in a letter open letter that the location at the Nassau Coliseum was a “completely inappropriate location for a casino.”

“Colleges are places that uplift people and prepare them for a better life,” George Krug, a Hofstra alumnus, said at a recent public hearing. “Casinos are places that lift and shake people until all the money falls out.”

Donald J. Laughlin, who transformed a stretch of desert about 100 miles south of Las Vegas into a sprawling casino boomtown he named after himself, died there on Oct. 22 in Laughlin, Nevada. He was 92.

The death was confirmed by his grandson Matt, who now runs a resort complex that Mr Laughlin built.

The spot on the Colorado River in southern Nevada that would become his gambling oasis was nothing more than a dirt road and a boarded-up eight-room motel when Mr. Laughlin first saw it in 1964.

Today the city has eight casino resorts, two million visitors a year, a population of more than 9,000 and, across the river in Bullhead City, Arizona, a partially financed jet airport that can carry Boeing 737s. (The bridge that takes visitors to and from there was also partly paid for by him.)

Mr. Laughlin chose his resort where land was cheap and parking lots for recreational vehicles could grow indefinitely. The RV was the key: he realized that not everyone who wanted to gamble also wanted to pay for a hotel room in Las Vegas.

“We’ve noticed that RV customers are spending as much money as people staying in our rooms,” he told The Las Vegas Review Journal in 1999.

After dropping out of high school, Mr. Laughlin became a billionaire, running his own 1,350-room resort complex, a bowling center and a movie theater complex. In 1988, Laughlin was the fourth largest gambling destination in the country.

“Don Laughlin was unique,” ​​Michael Green, chairman of the history department at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, said by phone. “He built his own city. There’s really no one else in the industry who can say that.”

“He saw the opportunity that existed,” Professor Green added, “if he played his cards right.”

Donald Joseph Laughlin was born on May 4, 1931 on a dairy farm run by his parents, Raymond and Olive (Benalleck) Laughlin, outside Owatonna, Minnesota, about 65 miles south of Minneapolis. His father was also a part-time truck driver.

Taking risks seemed natural to Donald. As a teenager, he collected money from catching mink and muskrats and used it to buy mail-order vending machines, which he installed himself in local pubs.

Demand was high and he was soon earning $500 a week (almost $7,000 in today’s terms).

The principal of the one-room schoolhouse where he attended high school was not amused. “He said he had to leave the gambling business or drop out of high school,” Mr. Laughlin told The Review-Journal. “I said, ‘I make three times as much as you, so I’m going out.'”

He moved with his young wife to Las Vegas in 1953, the only place in the United States where slot machines were legal at the time. He worked as a bartender and attended a school for card and dice dealers in the evenings. By 1954, he had saved enough to buy a restaurant in North Las Vegas, the 101 Club. He got a gambling license, posted “families welcome” and “steak and eggs” on the sign and started playing what he believed was the only blackjack game in the area.

But Mr. Laughlin was restless. He learned to fly – it became his passion – and began exploring the state in search of an alternative to Las Vegas. He found it at the very southern tip of Nevada, a place of mountains, desert and river where the state of Arizona meets California. A failing bar and motel on a dirt road on the Colorado River seemed like the ticket.

He sold the 101 Club for $165,000 and put down $35,000 cash for that motel and six acres on the Colorado River, ultimately paying a total of $235,000. Something told him that the isolation of the place would be an advantage: as soon as gamblers reached him, he had them in his grasp.

In 1966, Mr. Laughlin reopened the motel as the Riverside Resort. He advertised unlimited chicken dinners for 98 cents, 12 slot machines and two gambling tables. He and his family lived in four of the motel’s eight rooms. One day a postal inspector told him that he could not continue receiving mail if the town did not have a name. The inspector introduced Laughlin.

The confluence of three states was a blessing, with a never-ending stream of motorists traveling between them. He continued to expand his operations, adding 48 rooms in 1972, 52 rooms three years later, a 14-story tower in 1983, and another 307-room tower in 1986.

“He didn’t go with the flow,” said Bruce L. Woodbury, a longtime county commissioner in Clark County, Nevada. “He had his own ideas. He was independent. He didn’t care what other people thought.”

In 1988, when he was a reporter for The New York Times visited, Mr. Laughlin’s resort was worth $167 million. He spent $5 million on a bridge over the Colorado River to Bullhead City, which would make it easier for employees and customers to reach his gaming machines. He cleverly placed one end of the bridge near his parking spot.

That spring, President Ronald Reagan brought Mr. Laughlin, not usually a major political player, to the White House to recognize his contributions to the area.

Mr. Laughlin’s wife, Betty, died in 2022. In addition to his grandson Matt, he is survived by three children, Dan, Ron and Erin Laughlin; a sister, Patricia Miller; four other grandchildren; 12 great-grandchildren; and two great-great-grandchildren.

Mr. Laughlin worked fourteen hours a day well into his eighties, mingling with employees and customers in what is now called Don Laughlin’s Riverside Resort Hotel and Casino. “He was always there on the casino floor,” said Malibu Diaz, executive director.

And yet he shunned the spotlight that more notable players like Steve Wynn and Sheldon Adelson gravitated toward in Las Vegas.

“He did his business off the beaten track,” Professor Green said. ‘You didn’t see stories about him in the newspaper, and he liked that. The generation he was part of that came into the business did not want personal attention.”

Ms. Diaz said of the venture, “This is all an opportunity that has paid off.”

Kirsten Noyes research contributed.

For months, talks over a new casino deal between New York State and the Seneca Nation of Indians have been deadlocked, with the two sides deadlocked over the size of the state’s rebate of hundreds of millions of dollars in gambling revenue, and what the tribe will do in would get an exchange.

With a few precious hours left before state lawmakers break for the year, that suddenly seemed to change: Gov. Kathy Hochul, who has faced questions about her husband’s ties to commercial gambling interests, sought to speed up a bill that would overthrow her administration. given the general authority to negotiate a new pact with the Indian nation — and remove the surveillance that accompanied the old.

But now the attempt, characterized by secrecy and a lack of consultation with virtually anyone but tribal leaders, has failed spectacularly. It has alienated local officials and gambling and labor interests that are powerful forces in New York State politics and has failed to move the state and the Senecas closer to a new casino pact.

While Mrs. Hochul’s office kept private all the crucial details of what had been negotiated with the tribe, one element in particular proved fatal in the legislature: an agreement to allow the Senecas to build a casino, part four of the tribe, in or near Rochester, part of an upstate market that the state’s own study found was “saturated” with gambling options.

The Senate passed the bill almost unanimously, but as news of the proposed Rochester Casino spread, opposition mounted and the Assembly stopped voting, returning the negotiators to the negotiating table.

Lawmakers from both parties said they didn’t know what was in the deal to vote on. Even some sponsors of Seneca-related legislation said they were not told about it by the governor’s office. Nor did Senator Liz Krueger of Manhattan, a Democrat who heads the Senate Finance Committee.

“We’ve kind of been fooled,” she said.

Backroom deals are common in Albany, but few involve issues as controversial as the location of a new casino. At commercial casinos, such decisions typically require multiple layers of approval and hundreds of millions of dollars in licensing and application fees.

The process for making a gambling pact with a Native American tribe is different, requiring federal approval, but not compliance with the rules and laws that commercial casino operators must follow.

Federal law also requires the state to provide something of value to the tribe — such as a ban on neighborhood gambling or a new casino — if the state wants to claim a share of the revenue as part of a new pact. Under the current deal, which was ratified more than 20 years ago, the state receives 25 percent of the casino’s revenue from slot machines, one of the highest rates paid by any tribe in the United States.

According to four people in the know, who spoke on condition of anonymity to disclose details of ongoing negotiations, the new pact would have resulted in a lower rate in addition to the opening of the Rochester-area casino.

The failed attempt to gain general authority from the legislature was the culmination of nearly a year of talks about a new pact, which would remain in place 20 years after the current deal expires in December.

As with the first Seneca compact, billions of dollars in gambling revenue were at stake. But unlike the previous negotiations, lawmakers and voters were not given basic information about what was in the deal.

When the details of the deal emerged, they were panned by Democrats and Republicans alike, especially in the Rochester area, not far from where Ms. Hochul grew up, where she was first elected and where she still lives.

“How dare anyone think they can do anything in the city of Rochester and not contact the mayor of the city?” Rochester Mayor Malik Evans said at a recent press conference. “I have a serious problem with that.”

Rachel Barnhart, an elected member of the Monroe County legislature, which includes Rochester, said she and other Democrats felt “deeply betrayed.”

“How could she allow something to get this far without informing our community?” said Mrs. Barnhart, who is against a casino. “This is a big problem.”

U.S. Representative Joseph D. Morelle, a Democrat representing Rochester, said he is asking the U.S. Department of the Interior, which reviews Native American gambling deals, for local input into any new casino deal.

“I can’t recall a case where something so important could be done without virtually not only debate, but without knowing what you are being asked to vote for,” he said.

Others also expressed frustration at the secretive behavior of the administration. When lobbyists and lawmakers, including Councilman Harry Bronson, a Democrat from the Rochester area, contacted the governor’s office for details, they were told that members of the team negotiating the deal were bound by secrecy under federal law. a non-disclosure agreement, they said. (Ms. Hochul’s office later said no non-disclosure agreements were signed as part of the negotiations.)

Every decision related to gambling in New York State is fraught for Ms. Hochul. Her husband, William Hochul, is senior vice president and general counsel of Delaware North, which operates more than 2,000 slot machines in New York and is a major competitor to the Seneca Nation. The relationship prompted the governor to say she is withdrawing from the compact renewal negotiations.

Nevertheless, Ms. Hochul has taken measures that are in line with the interests of Delaware North. But her aides have said the decision to allow the Senecas to build a casino in or near Rochester showed that Delaware North was not getting any special treatment.

Indeed, on June 14, Ms. Hochul’s office made a last-ditch effort to shut down Rochester’s proposal. Zoom call led by a top Hochul aide, Kathryn Garcia, with Democratic lawmakers in the Rochester area, participants said.

The governor’s team cited a study they say supported the feasibility of a casino near Rochester, participants said — a conclusion that differed from that in a 2021 state report of the Gaming Commission who called that market ‘saturated’. But the administration refused to release the study to lawmakers, according to one of the lawmakers on the call, Senator Jeremy Cooney. Ms. Hochul’s office also refused to release the study to The New York Times.

Mr. Cooney was one of the few senators to vote against the bill that would have given the governor broad powers to reach an agreement with the Senecas. He said he had suspicions about a new Seneca-run casino in Rochester, an idea he had stirred controversy in 2014, but also called the lack of transparency and failure to communicate about the proposal “alarming”.

After the bill was approved in the General Assembly, Seneca Nation President Rickey L. Armstrong Sr. issued a statement accusing Ms. Hochul’s staff of deliberately sinking the deal to take the company from the Mrs. Hochul’s husband.

“Governor Hochul may have withdrawn from negotiations, but apparently she could not withdraw her own staff from the expectation that they would put corporate interests, Delaware North first and foremost, ahead of those of a sovereign Native Nation,” said Mr. Armstrong, who had previously said, sought protection from the legislature in part because of fears that Delaware North could influence the outcome of compact negotiations.

Hochul spokeswoman Julie Wood called the Seneca president’s statement “unfair and untrue.”

“We spent months negotiating in good faith, advocating strongly for the legislature to pass the bill and working around the clock to address the concerns of all parties involved,” she said.

Senator George Borrello, a Republican whose district includes key Seneca territories, said Ms. Hochul’s failed compact deal and challenge policy, which lacks an enforcement mechanism, underlines the need to bring in an “objective third party” to provide oversight. hold on to the negotiations. He suggested the independently elected state comptroller for the job.

“It is the only common sense way to restore confidence in this process,” Mr Borrello said.

The General Assembly ended its session last week, and Ms. Hochul might need to convene a special session of the legislature to approve a new Seneca pact before the old one expires — a power that cannot be delegated despite her revocation policy.

The window to a Seneca-run casino in Rochester, part of the tribe’s original homeland but not part of today’s territories south of Buffalo, may have been closed. The tribe has let go of its insistence on getting one, said those with knowledge of the negotiations.

However, without the new casino, the state is likely to see a drop in revenue from the Senecas’ three existing casinos in western New York, as the latest plan calls for a reduction in the amount of gambling revenue it takes from the tribe receives. Seneca leaders have ruled out paying the 25 percent rate in a new compact deal. The shortfall could lead to even more clashes over the deal before the next one is signed.

The Senecas and the governor’s office have vowed to work on a new deal nonetheless.

Joining the pack of millionaires and billionaires vying for the right to build a casino in New York City is now Larry Silverstein, the real estate magnate who took over much of the World Trade Center site after the September 11 terrorist attacks. redeveloped.

Mr. Silverstein, 92, has never owned or invested in a casino. But he manages a site on 11th Avenue and 41st Street, four blocks west of Times Square, which he says is perfect because it borders several neighborhoods but is not central to any of them. For that reason, his team argues, residents’ neck hairs are less likely than other locations to be raised.

For casino expertise, he teams up with Watche Manoukian, a businessman based in London who owns Parx Casino in Bensalem, Pennsylvania, that state’s most profitable location.

In an interview on Thursday, Mr. Silverstein suggested his bid was largely selfless: New York State, he said, needs tax revenue to support the transit system on which New York’s economy depends. Casinos can offer it, and as a major landlord, he invests in the future of the city.

“We see it as a real need that the community, the city and Albany have,” said Mr. Silverstein, the president of Silverstein Properties. “Will it be profitable? I assume so, as this has generally been the case with casinos in general.”

It’s a new argument in a crowded, well-funded field of competitors teeming with unique pitches (one proposal involves a roller coaster, the other a Ferris wheel). About 10 teams are expected to bid for one of up to three full casino licenses in the region.

The field includes SL Green Realty Corporation, which calls itself the city’s largest commercial landlord and plans to build a casino in Times Square with Caesars Entertainment; the Hudson Yards developer Related Companies and Wynn Resorts, which have proposed a casino on Manhattan’s Far West Side; the hedge fund manager Steven A. Cohen, owner of the New York Mets and has made an offer with Hard Rock for a casino adjacent to the team’s Queens Stadium; and Las Vegas Sands, which plans to build a casino in Nassau County.

Some people involved in the bidding process expect two of the three available licenses to go to Resorts World New York City at Aqueduct Racetrack in Queens and the Empire City Casino in Yonkers. The two so-called racinos, or slot machine parlors attached to horse racing, are seeking full casino licenses.

“We think one is going to Yonkers,” said Marty Burger, the CEO of Silverstein Properties. “And one goes to Aqueduct, and the third is up for grabs.”

State officials have not set a deadline for submitting bids, and the approval process is expected to last until next year. But Mr. Silverstein’s announcement is likely one of the last major proposals to be unveiled before formal bidding begins.

Mr Cohen has not revealed his proposal, but some details are beginning to leak. It involves turning a parking lot into a 25-acre park with a casino and connections to Flushing Bay, with a design by SHoP Architects, the company that designed Barclays Center, according to one person who saw the proposal.

On Wednesday, on the 38th floor of 7 World Trade Center, which Silverstein Properties owns and is headquartered in, business leaders presented local elected officials about their project, a 1.8 million square foot development called the Avenir.

Co-designed by Nancy Ruddy of the CetraRuddy architectural firm, the building would consist of two 46-story towers connected by a skybridge and resting on an eight-story podium. The development would house at least one hotel, about 100 social housing units, a penthouse performance hall and, at the base, the casino.

Like the related companies’ proposal, the Silverstein casino would be near the Javits Convention Center and the steady stream of people it draws to events.

Political sentiment in Manhattan remains an obstacle.

“I don’t feel like actual voters or people who live here are going to get an impulse for a casino in Manhattan,” said Liz Krueger, a Democrat who chairs the Senate Finance Committee.

State Senator Brad Hoylman-Sigal and Councilman Erik Bottcher, whose districts include the proposed site, attended the meeting on Wednesday. Both declined to comment on the proposal.

Casinos are a recently discovered interest for Mr. Silverstein. In 2017, he told luxury real estate publication Mansion Global that he didn’t like gambling. “I don’t go to racetracks,” he said. ‘I don’t go to the casinos. I don’t do any of that, but I enjoy buying real estate.”

On Thursday, Mr. Silverstein said his own aversion to gambling is irrelevant.

“My personal preferences are secondary to the needs of the community at large,” he said.