For A Personal Cause, Casino Owner Bets On Gingrich
by PETER OVERBY
One of the defining elements of the 2012 presidential campaign is money. Not that the candidates themselves have raised all that much; except for President Obama, they haven’t. But two dozen wealthy Americans have put in at least $1 million each.
Mostly, they’re a mix of Wall Street financiers and entrepreneurs. One of the biggest donors is Sheldon Adelson, a casino magnate who is worth about $25 billion.
Since January, he has put more than $10 million into the superPAC backing Newt Gingrich. And that money has kept Gingrich’s presidential hopes alive when the candidate’s own campaign was out of cash.
Why is Adelson doing this? He sees Gingrich as the guy who can get what Adelson wants for Israel. For Adelson, Israel is a personal cause.
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“It’s because of my father, who never came to Israel and he always wanted to do so but couldn’t. And then when he could do so, he was too old and too sick,” Adelson said in a video for Birthright Israel, a charity that flies thousands of Jewish teenagers and young adults to the Jewish state every year from all over the world. “So I want to see the young people come and experience Israel before they get too old and too sick.”
Adelson has given Birthright Israel tens of millions of dollars.
Early Success
The casino tycoon grew up poor in Dorchester, Mass. His parents were immigrants. His father drove a cab.
“When I was 12, I bought my first business,” said Adelson, who started out selling newspapers on the street. He told the story four years ago, in a videotaped court deposition.
“You know, you hold the newspaper in your hand and say, ‘Hey, get your Daily Record.’ We would yell that out. We would hawk newspapers,” Adelson said.
By age 16, he had bought his second business — vending machines. And he kept on selling — packages of toiletries, spray cans of windshield de-icer. He ran a tour business and got into venture capital.
Then, early in the personal-computer era, he bought the computer expo called Comdex and held it every year at the Sands on the Las Vegas Strip.
Comdex took off, so Adelson built a million-square-foot convention center. And there was the new Las Vegas, a place that catered to big conventions all week long — not just the weekend crowd that came in for gambling and the shows.
“I think if you had to single out one individual who brought that kind of component to the city, it would be Sheldon Adelson,” said Sig Rogich, a long-time Las Vegas communications consultant. “He was a transformational figure in Las Vegas history.”
Breaking Ground
Big conventions call for bigger hotels.
In 1996, Adelson imploded the Sands and built the Venetian. Now it’s part of a complex with more than 8,000 rooms and more than 150 stores and restaurants. Adelson talked about it on Charlie Rose’s TV show in 2006.
“Since 1931 when gaming was first legalized in the state of Nevada, people were very casino-centric. Today, Las Vegas is the fully matured capital of entertainment. Gambling only contributes 31 percent to our bottom line,” Adelson said.
It’s a model that Adelson has taken to China and Singapore with enormous profit.
Along the way, Adelson has had battles. In the Comdex days, he fought the other casino owners. When he put up the Venetian, he froze out the unions that had represented workers at the old Sands.
A Record Of Charity
In Las Vegas, though, Adelson is known as much for his philanthropy as for his casinos.
He and his wife, Miriam, a doctor, support a school, a hospice, a medical research foundation and a long list of other organizations stretching from his old hometown in Dorchester to Las Vegas to Jerusalem.
Rabbi Shea Harlig is director of Chabad of Southern Nevada, an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community center largely financed by the Adelsons. Harlig says the restrooms are tiled with marble left over from the Venetian.
During an interview, Harlig reached for a pushke, a small box with a coin slot on the top, and said Adelson once recalled the pushke on the dining table when he was a child.
INTERACTIVE: The SuperPAC Super Donors
“I believe he asked his dad, ‘What is that for?’ So he said, ‘We give a couple of cents every day, every week and to help the poor,’ and Sheldon told his dad, ‘But we’re poor,’ and he says, ‘But there’s people out there who are poorer than us,’ ” said Harlig.
Harlig and others said Adelson may be a tough businessman, but he would give a friend the shirt off his back.
“There isn’t the arrogance, the aloofness that you would expect or that you could see from other people. No, absolutely not. He’s very down to earth, approachable,” Harlig said.
One thing Adelson won’t do is talk about politics. NPR sought to interview him on all aspects of this story. After several days of negotiations, Adelson declined because NPR wouldn’t take politics off the agenda.
Federal records show that since 1999, Adelson and his wife have made disclosed political contributions of $21.6 million, and 82 percent of it has been for the benefit of Gingrich.
“He knows I’m very pro-Israel, and that’s the central value of his life,” Gingrich told NBC News back in January. “He’s very worried that Israel is going to not survive.”
Longtime Bond
This bond goes back to the 1990s, when Gingrich was speaker of the House. Adelson wanted Congress to require that the U.S. Embassy in Israel be moved to Jerusalem.
Gingrich not only spearheaded the effort; he’s campaigning on it now.
“As president, on my first day in office, I will issue an executive order directing the U.S. Embassy in Israel to be moved to Jerusalem as provided for in the legislation I introduced in Congress in 1995,” Gingrich said in a December speech in Beverly Hills, Calif.
Adelson has also backed scores of other GOP candidates and party committees. Four years ago, his money fueled a group called Freedom’s Watch. Mostly, Freedom’s Watch ran attack ads pushing a conservative agenda. And that’s what the pro-Gingrich superPAC Winning Our Future has done with most of Adelson’s money.
Adelson recently told Forbes magazine that he doesn’t believe in negative campaigning. But the ads from the pro-Gingrich superPAC were crucial in the candidate’s biggest victory nearly two months ago in South Carolina.
It appears that Adelson’s millions helped mold the GOP contest into the three-way affair it is today — two conservatives, Rick Santorum and Gingrich, vying with the establishment candidate Mitt Romney and with one another.
@ Shy Guy:
I see, Shy Guy — it’s the stuff Ted has been talking about.
The story, Isaac, as I understand it, is this: If Mitt Romney doesn’t secure a majority of delegates for a first vote victory at the convention, then the delegates are released from their obligation to vote for the candidates they were pledged to. The race then becomes wide open, and anyone can become selected as the Republican candidate. This Palin business is an indication of how strong the Republican Party is: Deadlock or no, they will field a candidate this Fall who is a serious contender against Obama. Mitt Romney, Rick Santorum and Ron Paul are all within a couple of points of Obama in the polls. Gingrich was lagging quite a bit behind, the last I checked. I haven’t seen any serious poll of Palin lateley: The PPP poll was not a serious indication of how well she would do against Obama; it was more of a popularity contest. Nevertheless, if she were the Republican candidate, she certainly would get widespread support.
I’m not sure how the election is going lately. Romney has been winning in states that went for Obama in 2008, probably with the help of a crossover vote. If Santorum wins convincingly in Pennsylvania and Texas, it could be close. Apparently, Gingrich is helping Santorum by staying in the race: If he were to drop out, his voters would split between Obama and Santorum. I think the same applies for Ron Paul.
Palin would certainly bring enthusiasm into the election.
@ BlandOatmeal:
Perhaps Isaac is referring to this.
@ Isaac:
Certainly nothing is happening in Oregon, Isaac — not even a headline the past year about “Tea Party”. There is an English lady with an American husband who serves tea in Florence, Oregon. Nice atmosphere, but I think the bikkies, scones and clotted cream are too rich for me. The shop next door sells fudge; but I think it’s lost a bit of atmosphere since the elderly Christian couple owned it. My favorite place in Old Town Florence is still the fishing boat harbor. You can buy fresh-caught fish there; and once, we were greeted at close quarters by a begging harbor seal.
As I say, not even the scones and bikkies have made news this past year, much less the political Tea Party. The Occupy movement was active in town last year, but the weather has kept it out of action lately. Oregon will probably vote for Obama, unless he sells the country to the Iranians in the meantime for a couple of hot Oregon Ducks football tickets. They voted for him in 2008 for no good reason, and will probably repeat the performance for the same lack of reasoning.
Something interesting is happening with the Tea Partiers and Sarah Palin. Just my speculation. Would like feedback please. This Romney nonsense is not sitting well with many in the GOP.
‘H-e-a-r-t’ ha! Yeah every d-i-c-t-a-t-o-r pretends they have a heart – makes good propaganda. The same heart that kills millions of Americans by denying them H-e-a-l-t-h-c-a-r-e and a share of the wealth and prevents them from making their own prosperity.
He is rich because he caters to American V-i-c-e – g-a-m-b-l-i-n-g and uses political connections to maintain it. This is the American hope and dream, the only one that is left – become a m-a-f-i-o-s-o —— f-a-s-c-i-s-t.
Sure- take his money , but don’t let the f-a-s-c-i-s-t-s buy you.
(Some word here is verboten -don’t know which one it was, but by putting hypens in slelected words , it finally posted. You see! Techno-fascsim , dictatorship by machines is heartless, ruthless and senseless! 🙂 ))
My other comment still in moderation.
If the rest of it becomes unmoderated I will have done a great service for your minds.
Look for it! 😉
Right. That’s why Reagan wasn’t elected in 1980; got it.
This is horse-pucky, Arnold, and you can do better.
Santorum didn’t squander anything “to drag religion into American politics.”
He DIDN’T “drag religion” into the campaign at all.
He merely responded forthrightly to questions that were put directly to him in relation to remarks he had previously made (pre-campaign) to religious gatherings where he’d been asked to speak; nothing more.
He’s never injected the issue into the discussion.
The whole contraceptive flap — as well as the abortifacient ramifications of it (which you euphemistically characterize as “the biological reproduction rights of American women”) — was a completely created gambit, which began when George Stephanopoulos (the Demos’ 1992 spinmeister) broached the subject during the first week in January — completely off the wall, at the New Hampshire debate [“Should states be able to ban contraception?”], and when Stephanopoulos then insisted on pushing the matter, despite the repeated booing of the audience (which saw thru it like it was rainwater).
It was a totally devised & fabricated issue, intended to shore up Obama’s shockingly flagging numbers — especially with women, who were seen by the DNC to be losing their erstwhile enthusiasm for His Wonderfulness. It was also a set-up for the Administration to later propose rules under Obamacare which would require free contraception be provided irrespective of conscience by individuals or institutions.
But the kicker is that it fell flat for him. BHO’s female support is still way below what was projected for this juncture in the campaign.
And Romney is the one-and-only candidate who CANNOT use the most powerful weapon in the GOP arsenal this time out
— Obamacare.
If you don’t think the Obami are well-aware of that, think again.
Romney will be the Republican candidate. He represents the fiscal conservative side of Republican politics, in strong contrast to Santorum, who represents the social conservative side. Nobody who strays far from the center position is electable to the Amrican presidency.
Santorum foolishly has squandered time, energy and his never-sufficient campaign finances to drag religion into American politics, and especially, in appearing to threaten not only the biological reproduction rights of American women, but even of their right to readily obtain contraceptives.
I carefully studied some of the data taken from exit polling in the large industrial states where Romney beat Santorum in recent weeks. It turns out that Catholic women, whom one would have thought to be super-Catholic Santorum’s strongest supporters, have strongly turned against him.
What Republicans mostly want is two-fold:
1. They want a candidate who can beat Barack Hussein Obama Jr in the November 2012 general election.
2. They want a new president who can begin reducing the US deficit, which threatens to destroy this country’s economic system, and who will take steps such as reform of the bloated US tax code and trimming government expenditures that we as taxpayers can no longer afford, for purposes of stabilizing the economy and starting our country back onto the road to prosperity once more.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
If N.Gingrich had the amount of money Mit Romney is spending on a daily basis to propel himself to the level he is now… I think N. Ginrich could have faced Obama with authority, he could have been the national contender.
M. Romney is going to have an uphill battle… I wish him luck for America cannot carry on the way it is doing reaching 16 Trillion dollars in the red and unemployment reaching 14%…
So Adelson was poor and became enormously successful the old fashioned way by pulling himself up by the bootstraps. He didn’t expect or demand entitlements. This is the American way or at least it used to be, not the nanny state.
I was for Gingrich but it would appear he’s finished.
The latest Real Clear Politics poll averages & delegate counts:
34.9 Romney 554 delegates
29.5 Santorum 247 ”
14.4 Gingrich 141 ”
11.0 Paul 66 ”
I would say Gingrich and Paul have no chance of winning.
Romney is poised to take California, and Santorum to take Pennsylvania. The last I checked, Romney and Santorum were neck and neck in Texas.
A fool and his money. Gingrich had more baggage than Joan Rivers on a trip to Siberia. He never had a chance.