A leading candidate for city comptroller has found himself in a political pickle weeks before the primary election, stemming from a developer’s quest to build a casino in Coney Island in his district.
City Councilman Justin Brannan is running in the June 24 Democratic primary to become the city’s next fiscal watchdog, where he faces a tough race against Manhattan Borough President Mark Levine. Thor Equities, the lead developer of the $3 billion casino proposal, has tried to propel Brannan’s bid by funneling $30,000 into a super PAC supporting his campaign.
The project puts Brannan in a tough spot: Helping the developers could spark anger in his South Brooklyn home turf, where neighborhood groups have organized against the casino. On the other hand, the powerful Hotel and Gaming Trades Council union is supporting Brannan in the primary and is pressuring politicians to give all casino bids the permits they need to compete for one of three licenses that the state will award this year.
The situation pits financial and union supporters of Brannan’s citywide comptroller race against many voters in his City Council district who oppose the casino.
All that will come to a head at a June 12 hearing that the council will hold on zoning changes that the developers are seeking as part of the Coney Island casino — inconveniently scheduled for just two days before early voting begins in the comptroller race and other city primaries. It will put an unwelcome spotlight on Brannan, who previously said he was completely opposed to the casino but has softened his position in recent months, saying he might allow the zoning process to play out and declining to rule out supporting the project in the end.
The hearing will likely put Brannan across the table from the same developers pouring money into the PAC supporting his campaign, with which he is legally barred from coordinating. The dynamic will be highly unusual, although two ethics experts told Crain’s there is no indication that Brannan would be improperly coordinating with the developers if he asks them questions at a public hearing.
Brannan, in a statement, said that “it would not be my style to short-circuit what I hope to be a robust, community input process that includes official public hearings that we haven’t even held yet.”
“I want to allow the state-mandated Community Advisory Committee process to play out so that all stakeholders have the opportunity to make their voices heard,” he said. “It is not up to me to determine whether there is adequate support for the proposal — it is up to the community. That is who I’ll be listening to, and there is still a long way to go.”
Joseph Sitt-led Thor Equities and its partners on The Coney project — Saratoga Casino Holdings, the Chickasaw Nation and hospitality firm Legends — want to build a 350,000-square-foot casino, plus a hotel, convention center and food hall, spread across four blocks near the Coney Island waterfront. Before even applying for a state casino license, the developers need approval for city-level zoning changes because their plan involves taking over a city street and buying air rights to build above-ground skybridges.
Unlike some other casino bidders who needed similar land-use approvals, the Coney Island developers say they plan to apply for a casino license even if they fail to get the zoning changes passed — although they would presumably need to revise their design. (If the rezoning passes but they ultimately fail to get a casino license, the site’s zoning would revert back to its current use.)
“Throughout this process, The Coney has continued to build support for its groundbreaking proposal to revitalize Coney Island by uplifting the community with thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in investments,” said project spokesman Rob Busweiler in a statement.
Years of lobbying
Lobbyists for the Coney Island developers have been trying to influence Brannan and his aides on the project since 2023, public filings show. One of those lobbyists, Patricia Lynch, is now listed as a paid employee of the Thor Equities-funded PAC supporting Brannan’s campaign. (The other employee, Dmitriy Kugel, is a former Republican candidate for state Assembly in Brooklyn.)
The so-called independent expenditure committee, dubbed New Yorkers for Accountability, has $32,500 banked but has not reported spending any of it to boost Brannan yet.
Richard Briffault, a Columbia Law School professor and former chair of the city’s Conflicts of Interest Board, said in an email that Brannan’s interaction with the developers at the hearing would not be improper, since city laws against coordination with super PACs require “an actual agreement” with the candidate about the contents of the PAC’s advertisements. John Kaehny, executive director of the watchdog group Reinvent Albany, agreed, though he called the setup “unseemly.”
“That conflict would be within the realm of the Conflicts of Interest Board, and not within the realm of a campaign finance violation,” Kaehny said.
After the June 12 hearing, the council will have an early July deadline to vote on the Coney Island rezoning. Meanwhile, the eight expected bidders for a New York City-area casino will need to submit their applications to the state by June 27 and must have all local land-use issues resolved by Sept. 30.
Casinos have emerged as an unexpected factor in the comptroller race. When the HTC union announced its endorsement of Brannan in April, officials told the Daily News that they were swayed by Levine’s decision to oppose the Related Cos.’ casino bid at Hudson Yards.
Levine is the favorite in the race, holding a 51%-23% lead over Brannan in an Emerson College poll released May 28. But Brannan has made the race competitive, thanks in part to endorsements from powerhouse unions like HTC and the building workers’ group 32BJ SEIU; the Working Families Party; and a dozen of his City Council colleagues.
