Salon.com > Sheldon Adelson

How much did Sheldon Adelson spend on the 2012 election?

Sun, 23 Dec 2012 13:00:00 +0000

Exactly how much, you ask?

We don't really know, and it's likely we never will. Many of the groups that spent the most on the election aren't required to report their donors. But thanks to recent campaign finance filings, we can get a better idea.

We dug through Federal Election Commission and Internal Revenue Service records and found that Adelson and his wife, Miriam, spent at least $98 million this election cycle. The money went to at least 34 different candidates and groups, with contributions ranging from $2,000 for a Florida congressional candidate to $30 million for Restore Our Future, the super PAC that supported Mitt Romney.

Adelson also gave $20 million to Winning Our Future, a super PAC backing Newt Gingrich; $23 million to American Crossroads, a conservative super PAC; and $5 million each to the Congressional Leadership Fund and the YG Action Fund, both of which supported Republican candidates for Congress.

Revenge of the GOP billionaires

Wed, 12 Dec 2012 15:01:00 +0000

I keep hearing that the billionaires and big corporations that poured all that money into the 2012 election learned their lesson. They lost their shirts and won’t do it again.

Don’t believe that for an instant.

It’s true their political investments didn’t exactly pay off this time around.

“Right now there is stunned disbelief that Republicans fared so poorly after all the money they invested,” said Brent Bozell, president of For America, an Alexandria-based nonprofit that advocates for Christian values in politics.

“Congrats to @KarlRove on blowing $400 million this cycle,” Donald Trump tweeted. “Every race @CrossroadsGPS ran ads in, the Republicans lost. What a waste of money.”

Rove’s two giant political funds — American Crossroads (a Super PAC) and Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies (a so-called nonprofit “social welfare organization” that doesn’t have to report its donors) — backed Mitt Romney with $127 million spent on more than 82,000 television spots. Rove’s groups spent another $51 million on House and Senate races. Ten of the 12 Senate candidates they supported lost.

Sheldon Adelson plans to double down on campaign donations

Wed, 05 Dec 2012 16:32:00 +0000

Despite spending $100 million on the 2012 elections and seeing most of his chosen Republican candidates lose their races, Sheldon Adelson says he'll double down on the next campaigns.

"I'll spend that much and more," he told the Wall Street Journal. "Let's cut any ambiguity."

Adelson's 2012 spending was double what he spent in 2008, according to the Journal.

"I happen to be in a unique business where winning and losing is the basis of the entire business," Adelson said. "So I don't cry when I lose. There's always a new hand coming up."

Who will win the Adelson primary?

Mon, 03 Dec 2012 18:29:00 +0000

Mitt Romney may still be grieving his loss (mostly by eating pizza, it seems), but 2012 is sooo last month and 2016 is just around the corner. Politico’s Ken Vogel reports today that potential candidates of both parties have already started courting potential donors, including Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson. Adelson is the top prize for any GOP White House hopeful, with pockets deep enough and political instincts dull enough to single-handedly fund a presidential campaign. He spent, we learn today, an absolutely astonishing $150 million backing Republicans this year, including $20 million on Newt Gingrich's failed bid. So the stakes are high for the suitors, but to whom will Adelson give his rose?

America’s first class-warfare election

Sat, 17 Nov 2012 15:00:00 +0000

In 2012, class warfare broke out in American politics. And from the president to key Senate races, the middle class won.

When the 2012 campaign began, the lousy economy made President Obama vulnerable. Republicans were favored to take back the Senate, given retirements in conservative states. Republican billionaires — the Koch brothers, Adelson and others — put up big money in the effort to have it all. Instead the president swept to victory, and Democrats gained seats in the Senate and the House.

Many factors contributed. Republicans learned once more the shortcomings of a stale, male, pale, Southern-based party in a nation of diversity. The GOP “legitimate rape” caucus helped give away two Senate seats. But too little attention has been paid to the new emerging reality. This was the first class warfare election of the new Gilded Age — and the middle class won big.

Sheldon Adelson had a bad night

Wed, 07 Nov 2012 20:47:00 +0000

After pouring millions into the 2012 elections, conservative billionaires have little to show for it.

Sheldon Adelson, the Las Vegas casino magnate who gave Mitt Romney's super PAC $20 million, also backed a heap of Republican candidates who lost last night. The Forward reports:

"In Virginia, Tim Kaine won the governorship over George Allen, whose super PAC had received $1.5 million from Adelson. In Florida, Bill Nelson won the Senate seat over Connie Mack, who Adelson had backed with $1 million. And in New Jersey, Adelson-backed Orthodox Jewish Republican Shmuley Boteach lost to Democratic incumbent Congressman Bill Pascrell."

In addition, Adelson backed Allen West, who wound up losing his House seat in Florida. The one bright spot for Adelson was Shelley Berkley's loss to Republican Dean Heller in Nevada's Senate race.

The Washington Post also reports that despite the unprecedented money poured into the races by rich conservatives like Adelson and super PACS, there was not much to show for it:

Six 1 percenters desperate to elect Mitt

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 13:23:00 +0000

The following 1 percent wonders are doing just fine under Obama, but since their worldview is largely restricted to an obsession with their marginal tax rate, they can’t refrain from denouncing the president and thinking of new ways to thwart his re-election bid. The Romney men desperately want to see the first financier president, a man after their own cold hearts.

1. David Siegel, the Bitching Billionaire

Thanks to folks over at Gawker, we’ve gotten a look at the noxious activities of David Siegel, founder and CEO of national timeshare giant Westgate Resorts. Siegel is filthy rich and wants you to know it, building himself the largest (and possibly the tackiest) house in America. The documentary The Queen of Versailles follows Siegel and his wife Jackie in pursuit of obscene excess in the form of a 90,000-square-foot homage to bad taste, complete with a 20-car garage, a two-story wine cellar, and a 30-foot stained glass dome.

Romney thinks his low tax rate is fair

Mon, 24 Sep 2012 12:25:00 +0000

Romney defends fairness of his tax rate: The Obama campaign is seizing on comments Mitt Romney made yesterday on "60 Minutes" in which he said he thinks it’s fair for his tax rate to be lower than that of someone making $50,000 a year because his earnings come from investments, which should be encouraged. Romney had an effective tax rate of about 14 percent in 2011, according to tax returns released Friday, well below the 35 percent top marginal tax rate for someone in his income bracket. "It is a low rate. And one of the reasons why the capital gains tax rate is lower is because capital has already been taxed once at the corporate level, as high as 35 percent,” Romney said. He added: "I think it’s the right way to encourage economic growth -- to get people to invest, to start businesses, to put people to work."

Romney fund bankrolled Adelson

Thu, 23 Aug 2012 16:48:00 +0000

A fund partially owned by Mitt Romney lent GOP mega donor Sheldon Adelson's company $3 million, according to hundreds of pages of previously confidential documents obtained by Gawker and published today.

Romney and his wife have millions of dollars invested in a blind trust, which owns dozens of opaque funds and investment vehicles, including one called Sankaty High Yield Partners II LP. The content of the fund and others like it were a mystery before the documents came to light. While there will undoubtedly be more discoveries to come from the cache, one immediate revelation is that Sankaty fund, based in Delaware for tax purposes, lent over $3 million to Las Vegas Sands, the casino company owned by Adelson. The fund made two loans of $2.4 million and $600,000 in 2009 to the Sands. Romney's IRA held between $250,000 and $500,000 in the partnership, and made $50,000 and $100,000 from it in 2011.

Adelson has become the largest donor to the Republican Party and conservative outside groups, dropping at least $70 million. Adelson initially supported Newt Gingrich in the GOP primary, but switched his allegiance to Romney and has since given $10 million to the main super PAC backing the presumed GOP nominee.

Ryan’s secret Adelson fundraiser

Wed, 15 Aug 2012 12:47:00 +0000

Ryan and Adelson: Rep. Paul Ryan held an event in Las Vegas last night with GOP-backing casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, but the press was barred from covering it “in apparent violation of the Romney-Ryan campaign's oft-strained agreement with the reporters who cover the campaign.” The Romney campaign justified barring reporters from the event by calling it a “finance event” and not a fundraiser, but failed to explain the difference.

Adelson’s Chinese business practices have been under increasing scrutiny lately. Noting that other candidates have returned money from less suspicious donors, the New Republic’s Marc Tracy wrote yesterday that Adelson has given so much money to GOP causes that “the Republican establishment has put itself in a position where almost nothing could make it return the money.”

EuroVegas, baby

Mon, 06 Aug 2012 16:13:00 +0000

BARCELONA, Spain — Laid-off businesspeople in designer clothes eating in soup kitchens. Young people flocking to study German in the hope of emigrating. Frantic regional governments battling to outdo each other to attract scant investment.

Spaniards are desperate.

Enter American casino magnate Sheldon Adelson.

The controversial owner of the Las Vegas Sands Corp. and third-richest American wants to build a version of the Nevada gambling mecca in the outskirts of Madrid or Barcelona. A mega-resort dedicated to entertainment and business conferences, it would include 12 hotels, six casinos and three golf courses spread across 2,000 acres — the biggest urban development project in Spain since the 1992 Olympics.

The main hook: EuroVegas would create up to 250,000 jobs in a country where almost 6 million people, up to a quarter of the workforce, are unemployed.

At least that was the pitch until the projected number fell to 14,000 when the company’s directors visited Spain in June, when they also announced a drop in investment from $21 billion to $7.3 billion, two-thirds of which would have to come from Spanish banks.