State Senator Jessica Ramos was one of only five senators to vote against Steve Cohen’s Queens casino. Three days before her June 23 primary, a Delaware company created in mid-May has dropped a record $850,000 into the race to beat her, and her campaign says the money is Cohen’s. If you vote in Jackson Heights, East Elmhurst, Corona, or Elmhurst, this is one of the strangest, most expensive fights in the city.
The fight is over a casino. Mets owner Steve Cohen spent years pushing “Metropolitan Park,” a sprawling casino and entertainment complex on the parking lots next to Citi Field, right in the heart of the district. State Senator Jessica Ramos, whose district it is, fought it. She called casinos predatory, refused to hand over the parkland, and voted against the bill when it reached the floor in May 2025, per QNS. “I’m going to stand on my principle,” she said. But she lost. The casino was approved anyway, clearing its final state hurdle at the Gaming Commission in December 2025, according to the project’s official timeline, with an opening planned for 2030.
So the primary is partly a referendum on a fight Ramos already lost, and her challenger is on the other side of it. Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas, who represents an overlapping western Queens district, launched her campaign against Ramos in July 2025 on a promise of “bold, values-driven leadership” and, unlike Ramos, supports the casino. Ramos has not been subtle about the contrast, calling her opponent the candidate “whose launch was sponsored precisely by consultants of the casino.”
That company is Progress for New York Inc., incorporated in Delaware only in mid-May, NY Focus reported. The $850,000 is the largest outside spend ever in a New York legislative primary, in a race where both candidates were sitting on roughly $200,000. Cohen, per NY Focus, did not comment, and the company’s paperwork does not say who funds it. Three days out, the senator who said no to a casino is getting buried by an untraceable corporation, and she is pointing at the billionaire whose casino she blocked.
The Cohen connection is Ramos’s accusation, not a proven fact. Nobody has shown who actually funds Progress for New York Inc. What is documented is the $850,000 and its timing. Who paid for it is unknown.
Ramos has her own baggage. She endorsed Andrew Cuomo in the 2025 mayoral primary, a move that alienated a lot of the progressives she needs, while González-Rojas has aligned herself with Mayor Zohran Mamdani, NY1 noted.
The clearest question on Tuesday is about the money. If a Delaware shell can spend a record sum to unseat the one local official who told a casino no, every other elected official in the city is watching to see whether it works. The primary is June 23, early voting is on now, and the donor behind that record sum still has no name.
