Why GOP Mega-Donor Sheldon Adelson Is Mad, Bad and a Danger to the Republic

Time may be up for Newt Gingrich; but his biggest backer is not going away. Sheldon Adelson, the casino billionaire who with his wife donated $16.5 million dollars to a Newt-linked Super PAC – and later said he might be willing to up that to $100 million – has made it plain he’ll eagerly switch his allegiance to whichever Republican faces Barack Obama in the fall.

But the reporting about the 78-year-old mogul – listed by Forbes in 2008 as America's third-richest man – has frequently been misleadingly incomplete. Take this front-page New York Times profile from January 29. Adelson's devotion to Newt Gingrich, the Times explained, "stems from a devotion to Israel.... 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 the Gingrich-Adelson romance was no doubt fueled as well by their shared devotion to crushing labor unions to dust – a passion mentioned only in passing in the 37th paragraph of a 48-paragraph piece. Indeed, Adelson's anti-union mania (I would argue) is the most important thing to know about him. For it reveals just how crazy, and how unscrupulous, the man is.

Let's start at the very beginning. Adelson remembers meeting Gingrich in Washington in 1995, when Gingrich was House Speaker and Adelson was lobbying to get the U.S. embassy in Israel moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Other reports have them being introduced in 1996 by a far-right anti-union operative in Nevada who worked for Adelson. Details of the subsequent courtship are murky, although the huge favor Gingrich did for Adelson in 1996 by turning off a federal investigation of the gambling industry probably did a lot to cement their friendship.

Two years later, Nevada conservatives sponsored a "Paycheck Protection" ballot initiative – the right-wing term for measures weakening unions by banning them from automatically deducting dues from members' pay. Adelson was gung-ho for it – and "would spend any amount of money," D. Taylor, secretary-treasurer of Las Vegas's Culinary Workers Union Local 226, told me; however, the Nevada Republican Party was split over whether to take on the powerful Vegas unions. That was when Gingrich did the anti-labor side a solid, recording a videotaped message in support of the measure at a Nevada GOP dinner at the height of the intra-party civil war. And, in another detail the Times missed, Gingrich also promised to block an IRS proposal to tax meals that casinos provide employees. (An amendment to that effect, costing the U.S. Treasury $316 million, indeed ended up in an IRS reform law.) Soon after, Gingrich enjoyed a fundraiser at the Vegas convention center owned by Adleson. Ah, young love.

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/national-affairs/why-gop-mega-donor-sheldon-adelson-is-mad-bad-and-a-danger-to-the-republic-20120410#ixzz1rhssdIMx

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