Nevada High Rollers Bet on McCain

BY Sarah Laskow | January 09, 2008


In February 1999, McCain took a testing-the-waters trip for a presidential bid. But he didn’t trek through the snowy fields of Iowa or the meeting houses of New Hampshire. Instead he headed straight for Las Vegas.

Within days of his visit, Terrence Lanni, the chairman of MGM Grand, Inc., and Steve Wynn, the chairman of Mirage Resorts, Inc., each wrote out $1,000 checks, as did their wives, to McCain’s presidential campaign.

It wasn’t the first time the gambling industry has put money on McCain. McCain has collected more than $100,000 in contributions from gambling interests since 1993, and he’s returned the financial favors in ways big and small. In June 1998, McCain voted for legislation to overhaul the Internal Revenue Service that included a tax exemption for the casino industry for free meals it gives to workers. The exemption is projected to cost the U.S. Treasury $316 million from 1998 to 2007. In 1995, McCain supported legislation that paved the way for gambling “cruises to nowhere.â€