NYS Focus27%
Mystery Donor Spends Record-Breaking $850K on Jessica Ramos’s Senate Challenger 3%
By Nick Garber18% Chris Bragg26%
6/18/2026, 1:16:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 1 faulty reasoning type, including Ad Hominem, with Ad Hominem as the most egregious example at 5.2% saturation with 46 hits. Analysis detected 46 faulty-reasoning hits from 880 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 8% and a BS Rank of 3% (29,114 of 29,795 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 97.70% of the article peer group.
Days before the June 23 state primary elections, a mystery donor has given $850,000 to a super PAC dedicated to defeating state Senator Jessica Ramos in what appears to be New York’s biggest-ever donation to an independent expenditure committee focused on a single state legislative primary race.
The outlay is an extraordinary sum to spend in the race’s final stretch.
As of last week, Ramos’s challenger, Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas, had $236,400 on hand and Ramos had $181,100.
The entity that made the $850,000 donation, a Delaware-based corporation called Progress for New York Inc., was incorporated in mid-May.
It made the donation on Tuesday to a super PAC with an identical name, which had been registered by the New York Board of Elections on the same day and disclosed that it plans to support González-Rojas.
Paperwork filed by the super PAC lists a Philadelphia-based election law compliance consultant as the committee’s treasurer and a paralegal at a Midtown law firm as the person who “exerts managerial or operational control” over the entity; neither immediately responded to requests for comment.
The same day, the super PAC reported paying $781,300 to a Louisiana political consulting firm for TV , mail, and phone advertisements, records show.
A photo posted to a Jackson Heights Facebook page on Sunday shows a billboard truck bearing the PAC ’s name displaying a photo of González-Rojas with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
“A partner for Mayor Mamdani in Albany!”
the message reads.
A website for the super PAC says only that the group supports “equitable economic growth, accessible public services and stronger local communities” and “promotes practical solutions that encourage long-term social and economic well-being for every neighborhood in New York.”
The contest between Ramos and her challenger, Assemblymember Jessica González-Rojas, has been defined in part by Ramos’s steadfast opposition to New York Mets owner Steve Cohen’s casino project, which was ultimately approved over her objections last year.
González-Rojas supported the project.
A spokesperson for Cohen’s casino, Metropolitan Park, did not answer questions for this story.
Hank Sheinkopf, a spokesperson for Ramos, accused Cohen of being behind the donation.
“A criminal billionaire is spending millions to unseat a senator who is a daughter of her district, simply because he wants to profit from her working class neighbors,” Sheinkopf said in a statement.
(Cohen’s former hedge fund pleaded guilty to insider trading charges and paid a record $1.8 billion fine, but Cohen himself was never indicted.)
“The chief enforcement counsel ought to be pursuing these structures aggressively.”
—Alex Camarda, Reinvent Albany
Cohen made two $850,000 donations between 2018 and 2019 to a pro-charter school super PAC that was involved in several state races in that time.
The same amount was given to the new pro–González-Rojas group for a single state Senate contest.
Alex Camarda, senior policy advisor at the government reform group Reinvent Albany, believes using a shell company to obscure the source of a donation to an independent expenditure committee would be illegal.
“ NYS Election Law requires contributions be made in the ‘true name’ of the donor,” Camarda told New York Focus in an email.
“Often these middleman shell company structures are designed specifically to do exactly the opposite — veil the true donor.
So in my opinion, they violate state election law and the chief enforcement counsel ought to be pursuing these structures aggressively.”
In at least one prior instance, state election regulators have targeted campaign giving where the original source was difficult to trace.
In 2018, the Journal News reported that an enforcement counsel for the State Board of Elections recommended a man for criminal prosecution after he allegedly routed $217,000 through a limited liability company, obscuring his giving to party committees that spent much of the funds to sway a local Rockland County race.
The board’s then-associate enforcement counsel reportedly wrote in a memo that credible evidence pointed to a “scheme” whereby a single “shell LLC with no contribution history, no identifiable business characteristics or profit-based source of income” was used to make nearly $270,000 in contributions.
It’s unclear if the board would consider the recent $850,000 donation, which went to an independent expenditure committee rather than a political party, in the same light.
Spokespeople for the board did not immediately respond to questions.
Outside spending has emerged as a major force in this year’s state and congressional elections, including a hard-fought US House primary in Manhattan that has seen tens of millions of dollars in super PAC spending, much of it by technology companies supporting or opposing candidate Alex Bores.
At the state level, bespoke super PACs have been created to boost mostly moderate candidates fending off socialist challengers.
Ramos’s seat has been vulnerable since she endorsed former Governor Andrew Cuomo in last year’s mayoral primary after ending her own ill-fated campaign.
González-Rojas has the support of progressive groups like the Working Families Party, and has won the endorsements of establishment figures like Attorney General Letitia James — an unusual feat for a primary challenger.
Ramos maintains the support of some labor unions, as well as Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins.
González-Rojas’s campaign, which is legally barred from coordinating with any super PAC , did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Speakers
2speakers18%attributed speech724writer words
Selected voice
100%flagged-word coverageHank Sheinkopf
46 attributed words29% of attributed speech0% writer coverage
Attribution is sentence-level. Pattern percentages are calculated only from words assigned to that voice.
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