This week’s biggest Winners & Losers

NYC Hotel and Gaming Trades Council President Rich Maroko and the Hotel Association of New York City reached a historic, tentative eight-year contract agreement covering nearly 30,000 workers at over 250 hotels. Housekeepers will see their pay jump from slightly below $40 to over $61 an hour by 2034, putting cleaners’ annual salaries on track to surpass $100,000. And it couldn’t come at a better time as the city anticipates a massive tourism surge with the World Cup.

It’s the story of one Trump cabinet member picked to decide the same square block as the powerful owner of the world’s most famous arena, and what happens when they stop being polite and they start getting real. U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy’s approved plan for Penn Station won’t move Madison Square Garden – which is exactly what MSG owner James Dolan wanted to hear from the road trip-loving “Real World” party boy and one-time log-rolling champ. Now, let’s go Knicks!

The World Cup is getting its own golden tickets. The Mamdani administration announced that it secured 1,000 $50 tickets for seven of the eight World Cup matches being played in New Jersey this summer – exclusively for New York City residents. The extremely lucky winners (we’re talking around 150 seats for each match in the 82,500-seat stadium) will also get free transit to New Jersey. It’s a win for World Cup Czar Maya Handa’s efforts to make the event more accessible.

After failing to muster up enough support to override Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s first veto, City Council Speaker Julie Menin has resorted to introducing a new, more specific, version of the bill aimed at directing police to plan protest buffer zones around schools. While the new bill is likely to pass easily, it  sets a less than ideal precedent for the new speaker. It’s even more unfortunate for Council Member Eric Dinowitz, who sponsored the initial bill but has been replaced as sponsor on the new one.

If at first you don’t succeed, fail, fail again. Decades after she unsuccessfully tried to unseat her former boss Gov. George Pataki to lead New York, Betsy McCaughey decided to run for governor in Connecticut – and things aren’t going much better for her this time around in the Constitution State. The Connecticut GOP held their state convention to nominate a candidate for governor, and McCaughey left with just 8% of the vote in a two-way contest, less than the 15% needed to make it onto the primary ballot.

Rep. Dan Goldman is down more than 20 points in a race against challenger Brad Lander, according to a recent Pix 11/Emerson College poll. That would be bad news for anyone, but especially for an incumbent who just pledged to drop $1 million on his own reelection campaign. Of course, there’s still time for the race to tighten up, and there will be multiple debates where the candidates can opine on the policies of the Park Slope Food Coop.