Raymond Lesniak to Steve Fulop: ‘If you don’t want a casino in Jersey City, we’ll take it in Elizabeth…’

Fulop toured the ailing Boardwalk Empire with Atlantic City Council President Marty Small earlier this week, and came away with harsh comments about the multi-billion dollar industry that has been so badly managed since Republican Christie took control over the state.

Tensions between North and South Jersey Democrats, which are always simmering, have been at the boiling point for weeks as questions about whether to allow gambling in North Jersey, how many new casinos to open and where they should be located.

Many among New Jersey’s political establishment consider Fulop something of a poppinjay, but his local critics are fiercely angry that he has turned into a raging hypocrite.

Once the scourge of unethical behavior in politics, Fulop has become a petty tyrant, drawing in secret million donations through an evil super PAC and firing city workers and public officials who dare to cross his political ambitions.

“If Mayor Fulop doesn’t want a new casino for Jersey City we will take it for Elizabeth, and we will take the jobs, the economic growth, the private-sector investment and the property tax relief that will come with it,” said Lesniak, who .

“This will be a multi-billion dollar facility that could produce 20,000 jobs, leverage up to four billion dollars in private investment and generate 60 million dollars in property tax relief for local residents,” said Lesniak. “We have a marketable location, an available workforce and public officials who will work to get it constructed and succeed. We even have waterfront property.”

“What’s not wanted in Jersey City is an opportunity that is more than welcome in Elizabeth. What is lost to Hudson County will be gained by the entire Union County region,” said Lesniak, who is considered a contender for governor in next year’s Democratic primary contest.

Assembly Speaker Vincent Prieto is playing games with the fate of financially strapped Atlantic City, against the political interests of Gov. Chris Christie and Senate President Stephen Sweeney.

Fallout from Atlantic City’s financial meltdown could mean trouble beyond the gambling resort’s borders. “Bond markets don’t like uncertainty and we’re nothing but uncertainty right now,” said Marc Pfeiffer, a senior policy fellow and assistant director of Rutgers University’s Bloustein Local Government Research Center.

Atlantic City’s instant troubles are tied to, among other things, the rapid cratering of its gaming industry, which has been marginalized by competition elsewhere, including in New York, Pennsylvania and Delaware.

Now the city itself is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, under state control but without the financial means to pay its bills.

During the tour, which featured long looks at vast tracts of empty ocean front property, and a couple of the city’s four empty casinos, Revel and Showboat, Fulop uttered platitudes that underscore his lack of understanding about the fundamental economics that plague New Jersey and its communities.

Prior to the visit, Fulop posted this message on Twitter: “need to better understand casino culture and pros/cons for residents directly. Maybe I need to rethink my position.”

In his Jersey City fiefdom, violent crime rages out of control with a majority of offenses unsolved but Fulop boasted in his State of the City address that people feel safer. A woman was gunned down on the street that same day.

Development projects that began decades before Fulop burst into the mayor’s office in 2013 proceed with new corporate welfare deals tossed on top and citizens are suing to force his administration to end a generation of tax injustice that shifts costs of municipal government from the richest homeowners to the poorest.

Lesniak has been viewed as the state’s most ardent advocate for the betting industry. He authored a plan to rescue Atlantic City that was unwisely ignored as a third of the casinos there shut down, he led a fight to overcome federal obstacles to sports wagering, he wrote laws allowing online gambling linked to New Jersey and he devised a way to help keep the southern region alive with new revenue from new gaming parlors to open in the north.

Gambling in New Jersey includes casino gambling in Atlantic City, the New Jersey Lottery, horse racing, off-track betting, charity gambling, amusement games, and social gambling. New Jersey’s gambling laws are among the least restrictive in the United States; legal, in-state online gambling was instituted in New Jersey in November 2013, and the state is challenging Nevada’s grandfathered federal statutory monopoly on legal sports betting.

In 2011, New Jersey’s casinos employed 33,000 workers, had 28.5 million visitors, made $3.3 billion in gaming revenue, and paid $278 million in taxes.In October 2014, New Jersey state regulators reported revenue of over $100 million since a bill sponsored by Lesniak allowed online gambling by New Jersey residents over the age of 21.

New Jersey’s four racetracks and four off-track betting (OTB) halls are regulated by the New Jersey Racing Commission and yield billions more in state revenue and wages from jobs.

The two biggest Showboats in Atlantic City have been Christie and his rival-turned-master, Donald Trump, and between the two of them, they killed the goose that laid golden eggs for so long at the Jersey shore. If his intellectual assessment of things, based on a four hour jitney ride with local malcontents, Fulop may have the ability to be a destructive force as gargantuan as Christie and Trump if he event makes his way into the State House.