Sheldon Adelson’s $10 Million Donation to Romney Super-PAC: Tip of The Iceberg?

Sheldon Adelson.<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/38069266@N05/4348594290/sizes/m/in/photostream/">the7eye.org.il</a>/Flickr

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Sheldon Adelson, the conservative billionaire casino mogul, has reportedly given $10 million to the pro-Romney super-PAC Restore Our Future. All told, Adelson and his wife, Miriam, have pumped at least $25 million into outside political groups so far this election cycle. Most of that money went to Winning Our Future, the now-dormant super-PAC that backed Newt Gingrich’s presidential bid.

But is Adelson’s latest eight-figure donation as sign of more to come?

The Wall Street Journal, which reported Adelson’s $10 million gift on Wednesday, says Adelson’s 2012 spending could eventually total as much as $100 million. Earlier this spring, Adelson said he’d be making one more “small donation”—presumably, this most recent $10 million—to a super-PAC and then would consider future giving to 501(c)(4) nonprofits that don’t disclose the names of their donors. Adelson is already the largest donor to candidate-specific super-PACs in this election cycle. He’s also now the biggest donor to outside spending groups in American history.

Adelson met with Romney in late May in Las Vegas, and had previously said he’d spoken with Romney “many, many times.” That said, Adelson has criticized Romney in the past, claiming “he’s not the bold decision maker like Newt Gingrich is.” Adelson has direct ties to the Romney super-PAC Restore Our Future in the form of Carl Forti, the political guru who runs the group. In 2008, Forti helped run the 501(c)(4) nonprofit Freedom’s Watch, which was bankrolled by Adelson’s money. Created to counter progressive outside groups including MoveOn.org, Freedom’s Watch was largely considered a bust after internal problems and a bloated infrastructure led to it shutting down in December 2008.

Here’s more from the Journal on Adelson’s $10 million donation:

People close to Mr. Adelson said that he wants to be certain about Mr. Romney’s positions on key issues, including support for Israel against aggressors in the Middle East. Mr. Adelson has publicly criticized President Barack Obama’s support of Israel as too weak.

Mr. Adelson has told friends that he intends to give at least $100 million to conservative causes and candidates this election cycle. He contributed some $250,000 to Republican Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who just won against a labor union-forced recall election there.

But he has also told his friends and colleagues that he would prefer to keep his contributions under wraps in order to avoid controversy, and will likely focus donations mostly on non-profits affiliated with political PACs, which don’t have to disclose the names of donors. He is expected to donate to the conservative non-profit Crossroads GPS, which was founded by Republican strategist Karl Rove, a longtime friend of Mr. Adelson, according to Republican fundraisers.

Adelson’s politics are vehemently pro-Israel and anti-union. He once called radical Islam and so-called “card check” legislation to make it easier for workers to unionize the two most “fundamental threats to society.”

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate