Munshi Ahmed/Bloomberg News
Sheldon Adelson
Sheldon Adelson, one of the world’s richest men, has long been active in conservative causes. By some estimates worth as much as $25 billion, Mr. Adelson presides over a global empire of casinos, hotels and convention centers whose centerpiece is the Venetian in Las Vegas, an exuberant monument to excess.
While Mr. Adelson’s activism in Israel has been very high-profile, he had been much more private about his political efforts in the United States. That changed in 2012, when Mr. Adelson and his wife, Dr. Miriam Adelson, moved to the forefront in a new trend of the super-rich giving larger than ever support to candidates. By June, the couple had donated at least $35 million to pro-Republican groups known as super PACs, along with several hundred thousand dollars’ worth of $2,500 checks directly to federal candidates.
That was more than twice as much money as the closest competitors for the title, the conservative Texas billionaire Harold C. Simmons and his wife, Annette, making Mr. Adelson a uniquely powerful force in the annals of presidential politics.
Mr. Adelson was also committed to give at least an additional $10 million to conservative organizations known as 501(c)(4) groups. They are named after the section of tax law under which they are organized and are not allowed to engage in full-time campaign activity. Unlike super PACs, they are not required to disclose their donors.
Mr. Adelson has committed to donate at least $10 million to the Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, founded by Karl Rove, according to people with knowledge of his donations. He has discussed contributing another $10 million to groups aligned with Charles and David Koch, the billionaire oil and chemical executives who founded Americans for Prosperity, another issue group.
In an interview with Forbes magazine, Mr. Adelson suggested he would consider personally spending as much as $100 million on the 2012 elections.
Big Gingrich Supporter, Wooed by Romney
During the Republican primaries, Mr. Adelson stood out for his willingness to spend money on super PACs, which must register with the election commission and disclose details of their contributions and spending. The Adelson family almost single-handedly bankrolled Winning Our Future, a super PAC backing Newt Gingrich during the primaries, giving the group more than $20 million.
Winning Our Future pounded Mitt Romney, the Republican frontrunner, with millions of dollars in radio and television advertisements this winter, injecting into the race some of the toughest and most sustained attacks on his record at the private equity firm Bain Capital.
Mr. Adelson has in the past publicly expressed doubts about Mr. Romney, describing him as timid in comparison with Mr. Gingrich. But although Mr. Romney is barred from specifically asking Mr. Adelson to contribute large checks to a super PAC that supports him, Restore Our Future, he has been courting Mr. Adelson since January. At the time, Mr. Adelson relayed assurances that he would support Mr. Romney’s super PAC even more generously should he become the nominee, saying that he was committed to defeating Mr. Obama.
Background
Mr. Adelson has kept a low profile nationally, but people in Las Vegas know him as a querulous figure who has existed in a near-constant state of embattlement since building the Venetian in the late 1990s. He filed claims and counterclaims against scores of contractors who worked on that project, and over the years he has started legal fights with the local A.C.L.U., the Culinary Workers, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and even the power company, which he thought should pay the cost of removing utility poles from the Venetian site.
Longtime friends and associates said his hard exterior was rooted in his days growing up in a rough-and-tumble section of Boston, where his father drove a cab.
After high school, Mr. Adelson had stints working as a mortgage banker, running a business packaging toiletries for hotels and operating a charter travel company. But he hit the jackpot with a computer trade show, Comdex, which he started in Las Vegas in 1979. Comdex became the signature annual event for the computer industry, attracting more than 200,000 visitors at its peak.
In 1988, Mr. Adelson and his partners bought the historic Sands Hotel and Casino and built a convention center to accommodate their thriving trade show. Eight years later, after they sold Comdex for $862 million, Mr. Adelson used his profits on a risky new venture: tearing down the aging Sands and spending $1.5 billion to develop the Venetian, the lavish hotel and casino, which opened in 1999.
With the Venetian, Mr. Adelson broke the basic rules of casino design by building a facility that was geared toward conventions rather than centered on the casino. Where the old way was to motivate guests to spend time on the casino floor by offering few amenities in the room, the Venetian parted from Las Vegas tradition, installing minibars and fax machines in each guest room.
Mr. Adelson’s plans were met with skepticism, if not scorn. But by 2008 the Venetian was the Strip’s second most profitable casino hotel, behind only the Bellagio, said Robert A. LaFleur, an industry analyst with the Susquehanna Financial Group, and that is with only a third of its revenue coming from its gambling floor.
He then turned his attention to Asia. China in 1999 reclaimed the former Portuguese colony of Macao, and a few years later ended a casino monopoly that had existed for many years. Mr. Adelson’s company, the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, bid for one of the licenses offered by the Chinese and won, leading to the opening of the $240 million Macao Sands in 2004.
Potential Liabilities
The question of what motivated Mr. Adelson’s singular generosity toward the former House speaker emerged front and center during the primaries. People who know him say his affinity for Mr. Gingrich stems from a devotion to Israel as well as loyalty to a friend. A fervent Zionist who opposes any territorial compromise to make way for a Palestinian state, Mr. Adelson has long been enamored of Mr. Gingrich’s full-throated defense of Israel.
But for any recipient of his largesse, Mr. Adelson comes with potential liabilities. His empire is founded on casinos, which could upset some social conservatives. That he operates in China could rankle isolationist voters, while some of his views on Israel are hawkish by mainstream Republican standards.
The Justice Department is also investigating accusations by a former casino executive that Mr. Adelson’s operations in Macao may have violated federal laws banning corrupt payments to foreign officials. In addition, a Chinese businessman accused Mr. Adelson of reneging on an agreement to share profits from the Macao project. In March 2012, Asian American Enterprises, which is controlled by the businessman, Shi Sheng Hao, who also goes by the name Marshall Hao, filed suit against Las Vegas Sands, alleging breach of contract and seeking compensation of 3 billion patacas, or more than $375 million.
Mr. Adelson has a reputation for irascibility and has left a trail of angry former business associates. Even his two sons sued him at one point, accusing him of cheating them, though they lost. He filed a libel suit against a Las Vegas newspaper columnist, John L. Smith, who eventually had to declare bankruptcy, and he waged a bitter court battle with a former employee whom he accused of spreading lies about him.
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