Sheldon Adelson Reportedly Gave $10 Million To Romney: Expect More Cash To Come

6/13/2012 @ 12:09PM |3,357 views

Sheldon Adelson Rumored To Give $10 Million To Romney: Expect More Cash To Come

Sheldon Adelson has reportedly given $10 million to Republican Mitt Romney’s Super PAC. This should come as no surprise and expect the $10 million to be just be the beginning of a total gift that Adelson, the billionaire owner of the Las Vegas Sands casino empire, will likely rain on the Romney campaign.

The Wall Street Journal–citing unnamed sources–reported that Adelson gave $10 million to the pro-Romney Super PAC Restore Our Future. Neither Adelson or Restore Our Future commented for the story.

But Adelson had plenty to say about the Presidential elections when I interviewed him in Las Vegas this February for my FORBES cover story on the casino maven. Even while backing Newt Gingrich with $21 million in donations, Adelson said he’d help the final Republican nominee (with the exception of Ron Paul) defeat Barack Obama. “The likelihood is that I’m going to be supportive of whoever the candidate is. I just haven’t decided that yet and will wait to see what happens,” Adelson told me. Now that Romney is all but guaranteed to be the the Republican nominee, Adelson will likely place a tall stack of chips behind the former Massachusetts Governor (Adelson himself is a Boston native).

Just how much cash will he give? That depends on Romney’s stance. Adelson is a conservative, self-made billionaire and a hawkish supporter of Israel. His two main interests are defending Israel’s sovereignty and reversing what he sees as socialist policies enacted by the Obama administration

As he told me this winter:
“What scares me is the continuation of the socialist-style economy we’ve been experiencing for almost four years. That scares me because the redistribution of wealth is the path to more socialism, and to more of the government controlling people’s lives. What scares me is the lack of accountability that people would prefer to experience, just let the government take care of everything and I’ll go fish or I won’t work, etc. U.S. domestic politics is very important to me because I see that the things that made this country great are now being relegated into duplicating that which is making other countries less great. … I’m afraid of the trend where more and more people have the tendency to want to be given instead of wanting to give. People are less willing to share. There are fewer philanthropists being grown and there are greater expectations of the government. I believe that people will come to their senses and not extend the current Administration’s quest to socialize this country. It won’t be a socialist democracy because it won’t be a democracy.”

Romney could hit the fundraising jackpot if he continues to campaign for a small government and free markets and starts talking tough about supporting Israel. Adelson–who is currently worth $19.8 billion–has money to spend. This winter he told me: “I might give $10 million or $100 million to Gingrich.” Today the stakes are even higher for Adelson–the world economy on shaky ground and the conflict in Syria is escalating each day. If things get worse, the $100 million Adelson said he might have given to Gingrich could end up just being just an appetizer for Romney before this election is through.

Sheldon Adelson Rumored To Give $10 Million To Romney: Expect More Cash To Come - Forbes