This week’s biggest Winners & Losers

New job, who this? State Secretary of State Robert Rodriguez is swapping out one position in the Hochul administration for another. He’s heading over to the Dormitory Authority of New York, which is one of the more powerful agencies that you have probably never heard of. Instead of the largely administrative and ceremonial position that Rodriguez now holds, he’ll soon have authority over any number of construction projects – and a good deal of pork spending for favored projects across the state. Not to mention the role he’ll get to play in the state’s burgeoning pot marketplace, which DASNY has a hand in, too.

And the crowd goes wild! Council Member Francisco Moya’s longstanding fight to bring a professional soccer stadium to Queens has at long last soared across the goal line. The New York City Council voted Thursday afternoon to approve a sweeping redevelopment plan for his district in Willets Point. Beyond building a new home for the New York City Football Club, the plan will infuse an area once known as the “valley of ashes” with scores of affordable housing, businesses, and open green space.

Two Hudson Valley Democrats reported massive first-quarter fundraising hauls this week. George Latimer, fresh off of very promising polling, announced he pulled in $2.2 million for his primary against lefty Rep. Jamaal Bowman (who announced raising an impressive $1.3 million) in the 16th Congressional District. Next door, former Rep. Mondaire Jones’ campaign announced raising $1.75 million for his comeback bid against Republican Rep. Mike Lawler. Jones has outraised Lawler in the past two quarters, but Lawler hasn’t released his latest fundraising totals yet. Denizens of the Hudson Valley, get ready to view some high quality ads.

Pro tip for Mark Poloncarz: even the Titanic captain stayed. The Erie County executive and astronomy buff is facing criticism for abandoning cloudy Buffalo to watch the eclipse in sunny Ohio – but Poloncarz has defended living it up in Ohio. If Poloncarz’s vagabond shoes had stayed back in the New York groove, maybe he could have been interviewed by the enterprising 13-year-old middle school reporter who interviewed Gov. Kathy Hochul about being in a New York eclipse state of mind.

Alison Esposito, a Republican candidate for the 18th Congressional District, reportedly doesn’t pay her campaign staff.. Whether they are paid at all, or by whom, remains unclear. According to her campaign filings, Esposito didn’t spend any money on personnel. Instead, the money apparently flowed in the opposite direction, with her staff donating their own money to her campaign. Inflation is through the roof and everyone is saving money where they can, but rather than cutting out Starbucks or sharing a Netflix password, Esposito seems to have shifted staffers from the “need” to “want” category in her budget.

These two pieces of work facilitated malicious robo-calls targeting Black New Yorkers to discourage them from voting – and now they’re paying for it. More than 5,000 people in New York received calls claiming that absentee voting would draw law enforcement and creditor scrutiny, part of a national scheme that targeted about 85,000 people. State AG Letitia James announced this week that the two scammers agreed to pay $1.25 million for their misdeeds – on top of $5 million in fines from the Federal Elections Commission and various penalties from other states home to affected voters.