Bill Berkowitz for BuzzFlash: Casino Magnate Sheldon Adelson Pumps Millions Into GOP and Trump’s Coffers

September 8, 2020

Sheldon Adelson, chairman of Las Vegas Sands and Hong Kong-listed subsidiary Sands China, at a press conference held at the Four Seasons Hotel, following China Sands AGM (Bectrigger)

By Bill Berkowitz

Over the past twenty years, casino magnate Sheldon Adelson has been the biggest donor to political causes and candidates in the United States. With an estimated worth of $26.8 billion – give or take, considering fluctuations in the stock market and the affects of COVID-19 on the gambling industry -- Adelson, a leading supporter of Israel’s rightwing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, is the founder and chairman of Las Vegas Sands, whose company owns and operates The Venetian and Palazzo on the Las Vegas Strip. Adelson was the first to develop the Cotai Strip in China’s Macau. After the Republican National Convention ended, Adelson, along with Home Depot founder Bernie Marcus, jumped aboard Preserve America, a new conservative Super PAC, which is in the process of spreading $30 million worth of anti-Biden TV ads. 

Adelson and his wife had recently donated $25 million to a Republican super PAC, that is aimed  at insuring that the GOP maintains its majority in the U.S. Senate. According to Forward’s Marcy Oster, each recently wrote a check “for $12.5 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, according to reports. The Republican fund, which is controlled by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, raised a total of $30 million in June.”

Politico’s Alex Isenstadt reported in early August about a contentious phone call between Adelson and Trump. Apparently, the 87-year-old casino magnate was concerned about the coronavirus relief bill that was stalled, while Trump pivoted to talk about why Adelson hadn’t given more money to his campaign. According to Isenstadt, “Adelson's allies say it’s unclear whether the episode will dissuade the Las Vegas mogul — long regarded as a financial linchpin for Trump’s reelection — from helping the president down the home stretch.”

The phone call was obviously not that contentious as Adelson has ramped up his GOP-earmarked contributions.

If you don’t know the name Sheldon Adelson, you haven’t been paying attention to the scourge of big money in politics. According to Casino.org’s Devin O’Connor, Adelson, and his wife, Miriam “donated more money to federal political campaigns over the past two decades than anyone else in the United States.” Adelson is ranked 28th of the world’s 2,095 billionaires listed in Forbes annual “World’s Billionaires List.” He is also a prime financial backer for Israel’s ultra-conservative Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is currently trying to extricate himself from his corruption indictment and possible incarceration. 

Adelson money is part of an unsettling trend “predominately due to a 2010 Supreme Court ruling that allowed companies and outside groups to spend unlimited amounts on elections,” Devin O’Connor wrote. “Campaign contributions from US billionaires have skyrocketed from $32 million in 2010 to $611 million in 2018, according to a report by Americans for Tax Fairness and the Institute for Policy Studies.” 

O’Connor reported that “After the Adelsons, former 2020 Democratic presidential candidates Tom Steyer and Mike Bloomberg are second and third in political donations since 1990. They’ve respectively contributed $275 million and $181 million (their totals do not include what they spent on their 2020 campaigns.)”

The Adelson’s $25 million was an installment of a pledge they made to plop down $100 million as part of Trump’s re-election campaign, and the efforts by the GOP to hold onto the Senate. According to The Guardian’s Peter Stone, “Adelson’s hefty checks are expected to be written to several Super Pacs – political groups that have to disclose their donors – as well as ‘dark money’ not-for-profit organizations that can keep their donors secret, say the fundraisers.”

Stone wrote that, in 2018 the Adelsons “spent a personal record of $124m – just in publicly disclosed donations to Super Pacs, campaign committees and candidates, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.”

The Center for Responsive Politics found that “the Adelsons gave a whopping $55m to the Congressional Leadership Fund, which spent a total of $138m in the last elections in an unsuccessful effort to hold on to the Republican House majority.”

As a major funder and board member of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Adelson’s money may play a particularly important role in wooing Jewish voters in such swing states as Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio.  

How powerful is the 86-year-old Adelson? “I would put Adelson at the very top of the list of both access and influence in the Trump administration,” Craig Holman of the watchdog group Public Citizen, told ProPublica in 2018. “I’ve never seen anything like it before, and I’ve been studying money in politics for 40 years.”

“After decades as a major Republican donor, Adelson is known as an ideological figure, motivated by his desire to influence U.S. policy to help Israel,” ProPublica’s Justin Elliott wrote in an October 2018 story. “I’m a one-issue person. That issue is Israel,” Adelson said last year. “On that issue — Israel — Trump has delivered. The administration has slashed funding for aid to Palestinian refugees and scrapped the Iran nuclear deal.” Adelson also attended the opening of the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem. 

Elliott added: “Adelson’s influence reverberates through this administration. Cabinet-level officials jump when he calls. One who displeased him was replaced. He has helped a friend’s company get a research deal with the Environmental Protection Agency. And Adelson has already received a windfall from Trump’s new tax law, which particularly favored companies like Las Vegas Sands. The company estimated the benefit of the law at $1.2 billion.”

Casino.org’s Devin O’Connor pointed out that “Las Vegas might be known as Sin City and America’s Playground, but when it comes to politics, the area’s richest members are overwhelmingly conservative. They’ve made large contributions to President Donald Trump’s run in 2016 and his 2020 reelection campaign.”