Thread: Billionaire gives $5M to pro-Gingrich group

Billionaire gives $5 MILLION to pro-Gingrich group

By Beth Fouhy
Associated Press
Sunday, January 8, 2012

MANCHESTER, N.H. (AP) — A Las Vegas billionaire has contributed $5 million to an independent group backing Newt Gingrich, breathing new life into the former House speaker’s struggling campaign for the GOP presidential nomination and casting renewed attention on the role of such groups in the 2012 contest.

A person familiar with the development said Sheldon Adelson, a casino mogul and longtime donor to Republican candidates, made the contribution Friday to Winning Our Future, a super PAC run by Gingrich allies. The person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity and was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said Mr. Adelson is expected to contribute as much or more to groups backing the Republican nominee, be it Mr. Gingrich or one of his rivals.

Rick Tyler, a former top Gingrich strategist and spokesman for Winning Our Future, declined to comment on the donation, which was first reported by The Washington Post. Politico reported last month that Mr. Adelson was prepared to spend $20 million to help Mr. Gingrich.

A 2010 Supreme Court decision easing restrictions on corporate and individual spending laid the groundwork for these political action committees, or super PACs, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money to influence elections as long as they do not coordinate directly with a candidate’s campaign. The identities of those who contributed to super PACs in the second half of 2011 won’t be reported until the end of January.

Many donors’ names will never be known. Some super PACs have established nonprofit arms that are permitted to shield contributors’ identities as long as they spend no more than 50 percent of their money on electoral politics. Crossroads, the giant conservative outfit tied to former George W. Bush political adviser Karl Rove, operates both a super PAC and a nonprofit.

Crossroads and other Republican-leaning super PACs played a significant role in the 2010 midterm elections, helping deliver the House to the GOP and boost the number of Republicans in the Senate. The 2012 contest is the first to test the influence of such groups in presidential politics.

No candidate has seen his fortunes affected by the emergence of super PACs more than Mr. Gingrich.

Riding high in polls just a month ago, he became the target of a $3 million advertising barrage sponsored by Restore Our Future, a super PAC supporting former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and run by several of Mr. Romney’s allies. The ads, which pounded Mr. Gingrich for his ties to federal housing giant Freddie Mac and his reversal on issues such as climate change, sent his political fortunes plunging in Iowa. Mr. Gingrich finished fourth in the state’s caucuses last week.

Mr. Gingrich has vowed to carry on and is hoping to resuscitate his campaign in South Carolina, which holds its primary Jan. 21. Since Mr. Romney is heavily favored to win the New Hampshire primary Tuesday, his rivals are looking to slow his momentum when the contest moves to the South.

Several super PACs have already played a role in the Republican campaign. They include Make Us Great Again, a super PAC backing Texas Gov. Rick Perry; Our Destiny, supporting former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman; and the Red White and Blue Fund, which helped revive former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum’s campaign in Iowa and is running ads in South Carolina.

Priorities USA Action, a super PAC backing President Obama’s re-election campaign, has spent modestly during the Republican nominating contest and is expected to step up its role in the general election.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/...ingrich-group/

More illegal alien supporter money coming out of Vegas from the same people that committed mass felonies with waves of illegal aliens voting to save Harry Reid from our endorsed candidate Sharon Angle.

W

Not the case with Adelson. He gave the max to both Sharron Angle and Michele Bachmann in 2010, and NONE to Harry Reid.

Originally Posted by dogpile

Not the case with Adelson. He gave the max to both Sharron Angle and Michele Bachmann in 2010, and NONE to Harry Reid.

Why Newt? Angle, Bachman? Very understadable....I'll keep an open mind till my day comes to pull the lever....Lots to sort through. Except for One Thing!
ABO.

Gingrich implies Romney is buying the election

The Daily Caller – 8 mins ago...

MANCHESTER, N.H. �“ Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich took a not-so-veiled swipe at former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney on Sunday, casting himself as the “normal, middle class” candidate fighting an uphill battle to compete in a system that he said allows the wealthy to effectively buy elections.

“I think that all of these election regulations have made it harder to be a middle class candidate, and have made it harder for middle class candidate to raise money,” Gingrich said at an Hispanic town hall meeting at the Don Quijote Restaurant in Manchester.

“We are drifting into a society where millionaires buy office, and it’s very dangerous,” the former speaker continued. “And I think when Mayor Bloomberg basically bought the mayorship, he drowned his potential opponents — he spent hundreds of dollars per vote. Now that’s just wrong.”

The comment was evidently aimed at Romney, who has poured millions of dollars into the race, and whose supporting super PAC spent a large chunk of money running attack ads on Gingrich in Iowa. Gingrich has said repeatedly that these ads played a major role in his poor performance in the caucuses, something he is clearly still smarting over.

At the debate this morning, he went after Romney on the subject, saying, “I wish you would calmly and directly state it is your former staff running the PAC. It is your millionaire friends giving to the PAC.”

Gingrich has significantly less money than his front-runner opponent, as do the super PACs supporting him — a fact he has acknowledged in his stumping. At an anti-Romney town hall he held on Thursday, Gingrich told the crowd, “I don’t have their kind of money. But if I have you as supporters, I can have human beings who offset every vicious negative ad.”

To allow “normal, middle class candidates,” like himself, presumably, to compete more effectively with a millionaire candidate like Romney, Gingrich said, an election law should be passed that allows anyone to donate as much money as they wish to a campaign, as long as they report the sum that same day on the Internet.

“What would happen is normal middle class candidates would suddenly find that they could find fairly wealthy people who didn’t like the incumbent, and those fairly wealthy people could fund a really big campaign. And you would suddenly have equality between incumbents and challengers, and I think it would make for a much healthier system,” Gingrich said.

Gingrich also went after Romney for comments in the debate on Sunday that “you shouldn’t run if you have to win in order to pay your mortgage,” something Romney said his dad had told him when the elder Romney was running for governor of Michigan.

That, Gingrich said, is “the opposite of the American tradition historically. We want everyday normal people to be able to run for office, not just millionaires.”

http://news.yahoo.com/gingrich-impli...zRmNg--;_ylv=3

Sheldon Adelson

From Wikipedia

Born
August 6, 1933 (age 7
Boston, Massachusetts, USA

Occupation
Gambling/leisure businesses

Net worth
$21.5 billion U.S. dollar (2011)[1]

Sheldon Gary Adelson (born August 6, 1933) is an American casino and hotel magnate. Adelson is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Las Vegas Sands Corp., the parent company of Venetian Macao Limited which operates The Venetian Resort Hotel Casino and the Sands Expo and Convention Center. Adelson vastly increased his net worth upon the initial public offering of Las Vegas Sands in December 2004. He is currently the 8th wealthiest American[2] and 16th wealthiest person in the world,[3] with a net worth of $21.5 billion.
[edit] Biography

Adelson was born and grew up in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts.[4] He worked as a mortgage broker, investment adviser and financial consultant. He started a business selling toiletry kits, and in the 1960s he started a charter tours business.[4] Adelson went to college at the City College of New York, but dropped out.

Originally a Democrat, Adelson became a Republican as his wealth increased. "Why is it fair that I should be paying a higher percentage of taxes than anyone else?" he once asked. He began making major contributions to the Republican National Committee following clashes with labour unions at his Las Vegas properties.[5]

Adelson divorced his first wife Sandra in 1988 and met his current wife Miriam Ochsorn, an Israeli physician, on a blind date the following year. They were married in 1991.[6]

[edit] COMDEX and casinos

The original source of Adelson's wealth and current investments was the computer trade show COMDEX, which he and his partners developed for the computer industry; the first show was in 1979. It was the premier computer trade show through much of the 1980s and 1990s.[4]

In 1988, Adelson and his partners purchased the Sands Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas, Nevada, the former hangout of Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, in order to bring Las Vegas to a new phase of business through the exhibition industry. The following year, Adelson and his partners constructed the Sands Expo and Convention Center, then the only privately owned and operated convention center in the United States.

In 1991, while honeymooning in Venice with his second wife, Miriam, Adelson said he found the inspiration for a mega-resort hotel. He razed (by implosion) the Sands and spent $1.5 billion to construct the The Venetian, a Venice-themed resort hotel and casino. The luxurious, all-suite Venetian revolutionized the Las Vegas hotel industry, and has been honored with architectural and other awards naming it as one the finest hotels in the world. In 2003, The Venetian added the 1,013-suite Venezia tower - giving The Venetian 4,049 suites, 18 leading-chef restaurants, a shopping mall with canals, gondolas and singing gondoliers.

In 1995, Adelson and his partners sold the Interface Group Show Division, including the COMDEX shows, to SoftBank Corporation of Japan for $862 million; Adelson's share was over $500 million.[4]

Adelson spearheaded a major project to bring the Sands name to the Macao SAR, China, the Chinese gambling city that was a Portuguese colony until December 1999. The one million-square-foot Sands Macau became the People's Republic of China's first Las Vegas-style casino when it opened in May 2004. Adelson made back his initial 265 million dollar investment in one year and, because he owns 69% of the stock, he increased his wealth when he took the stock public in December 2004. Since the opening of the Sands Macao Adelson's personal wealth has multiplied more than fourteen times.[5]

In May 2006, Adelson's Las Vegas Sands was awarded a hotly contested license to construct a casino resort in Singapore's Marina Bay. The new casino, Marina Bay Sands, opened in 2010 at a rumored cost of US$5.4 billion.

In August 2007, Adelson opened the $2.4 billion Venetian Macao Resort Hotel on Cotai and announced that he planned to create a massive, concentrated resort area he called the Cotai Strip, after its Las Vegas counterpart. Adelson said that he planned to open more hotels under brands such as Four Seasons, Sheraton and St. Regis. His Las Vegas Sands plans to invest $12 billion and build 20,000 hotel rooms on the Cotai Strip by 2010.[7]

In September 2007, Adelson announced that the Sands would open its second hotel, the Sands Macao Hotel in Macau in October of that year.[8]

In 2007, Adelson made an unsuccessful bid to purchase the Israeli newspaper Maariv. When this failed, he proceeded with parallel plans to publish a free daily newspaper to compete with Israeli, a newspaper he had co-founded in 2006 but had left.[9] The first edition of the new newspaper, Israel HaYom, was published on July 30, 2007.

According to Target Group Index(TGI) survey published in July 2011, Israel Hayom, which in contrast to all other Israeli newspapers is distributed for free, surpassed all other newspapers, including Yedioth Ahronoth and became number one daily newspaper (for weekdays) four years after its inception.[10] This survey states that Israel Hayom has 39.3% weekdays readership exposure , Yedioth Ahronoth 37% , Maariv 12.1% and Haaretz 5.8%. But Yedioth Ahronoth’s weekend edition is still leading with 44.3% readership exposure compared to 31% of Israel Hayom weekend edition, 14.9% of Maariv and 6.8% of Haaretz. This trend was already observed by TGI survey in July 2010.[11]

[edit] Philanthropy

Adelson donated over $25 million to the M.I.S. Hebrew Academy in Las Vegas to build a high school. In 2005, Adelson and his wife contributed $250,000 each (thus the total contribution from the couple was $500,000) to the second inauguration of President George W. Bush.[12][13][14] In 2006 Adelson contributed $25 million to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority.[15] Since 2007 the Adelson Family Foundation has made contributions totalling $100 million to Birthright Israel, which finances Jewish youth trips to Israel.[16]

Adelson also has funded the Boston based Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Medical Research Foundation. AMRF is a private foundation committed to a model of open and highly integrated collaboration among outstanding investigators who participate in goal-directed basic and clinical research to prevent, reduce or eliminate disabling and life-threatening illness.[17] This foundation initiated the Adelson Program in Neural Repair and Rehabilitation (APNRR) with $7.5 million donated to collaborating researchers at 10 universities.[18]

[edit] Politics

In 2010, Adelson donated $1,000,000 to Newt Gingrich's organization, American Solutions for Winning the Future.[19]

Adelson donated an additional $5 million to a pro-Gingrich PAC on 7 January, 2012, in an effort to bolster Gingrich's bid for the U.S. Presidency.[20] Although $20 million had been rumored for the entire campaign, there has been no documentation of this.

[edit] Controversies

A June 2008 profile in The New Yorker detailed several controversies involving Adelson. In 2008 Richard Suen, a Hong Kong businessman who had helped Adelson make connections with top Chinese officials in order to obtain the Macao license, took Adelson to court in Las Vegas alleging he had reneged on his agreement to allow Suen to profit from the venture. While Suen won a $43.8 million judgement, Adelson's lawyers have vowed to appeal. Adelson faces another trial by three alleged "middlemen" in the deal who are suing for at least $450 million.[5]

During the Suen trial Bill Weidner, the president of Adelson's Las Vegas Sands company, testified about a telephone conversation between Adelson and his friend then-House Majority Leader Tom DeLay(R) about a bill proposed by Representative Tom Lantos(D) that would have prevented the US Olympic Committee from voting in favor of the Chinese bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympics. A few hours later DeLay called back and told Adelson he could tell the mayor of Beijing "this bill will never see the light of day." The resolution did not pass. Adelson testified in court that the demise of the resolution "...resulted from the press of other legislation, (not from) a deliberate move by DeLay to help his benefactor.[5]

CONTINUE BELOW.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Adelson

The New Yorker article also described how Shelley Berkley, a Nevada Democratic Party congresswoman who had worked for Adelson in the nineties as vice-president of legal and governmental affairs, quoted Adelson as saying that “old Democrats were with the union and he wanted to break the back of the union, consequently he had to break the back of the Democrats.” The Boston Globe also noted that Adelson has "waged some bitter anti-union battles in Las Vegas".[5][21] Congresswoman Berkley also claimed in the New Yorker article that Adelson "seeks to dominate politics and public policy through the raw power of money."

Adelson successfully sued the Daily Mail of London for libel in 2008. The newspaper had accused him of pursuing "despicable business practices" and having "habitually and corruptly bought political favour." Adelson won the libel case, which was described as "a grave slur on Mr Adelson's personal integrity and business reputation," and he won a judgment of approximately £4 million. Adelson said he would donate the damages to the Royal Marsden cancer hospital in London.[22]

In 2011, the Israeli press said that Adelson was unhappy with coverage of him on Israeli Channel Ten, alleging that Adelson had acquired a casino license in Las Vegas inappropriately through political connections.[23] He reportedly forced the channel to apologize. This in turn led to the resignation of the news chief, Reudor Benziman, the news editor, Ruti Yuval and the news anchor, Guy Zohar who objected to the apology.[24] After two months of deliberations, the Israeli Second Authority for Television and Radio has ruled that although there were some flaws in the manner in which the apology had been conducted, the decision to apologize had been correct and appropriate.[23]

[edit] Wealth

At one point, Adelson's estimated wealth was US$26.5 billion, making him the third richest person in the United States according to Forbes for both 2007 and 2008.[25] In 2008, the share prices of the Las Vegas Sands Corp. plunged. And in November, 2008, Las Vegas Sands Corp. announced that it might default on bonds that it had outstanding, signaling the potential bankruptcy of the concern.[26] Adelson lost $24 billion in 2008, more than any other American billionaire.[27][28] In Forbes 2009 world billionaires list, his ranking dropped to #178 with a net worth of $3.4 billion,[29] but in 2011 he was ranked as the world's 16th richest man with a fortune amounting to $23.3 billion.[30]

[edit] Awards and honors

Along with his wife, Dr. Miriam Adelson, Sheldon Adelson was presented with the Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship by the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars of the Smithsonian Institution on March 25, 2008.[31]

Sheldon Adelson received the Chairman's Award from the Nevada Policy Research Institute, a think tank in Las Vegas, for his efforts to advance free market principles in Nevada.[32]

Additionally, President George W. Bush appointed the Adelsons to serve on the Honorary Delegation to accompany him to Jerusalem for the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel in May 2008.[33]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Adelson