Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson dies

Adelson, who had been largely apolitical for decades, became a donor of colossal sums late in life. His influence spread widely, while he and his wife, Miriam, donated to various campaigns and causes. In 2012, Adelson became the largest individual donor in U.S. election history, injecting more than $ 90 million into the presidential race in a failed attempt to prevent President Barack Obama from winning a second term.

In her own statement, Miriam Adelson describes her late husband as’ the love of my life ‘and’ my partner in romance, philanthropy, political activism and enterprise. He was my soulmate. ‘

In addition to improving the lives of individuals, Miriam said, ‘Sheldon’ has made the way of nations. Some of the historical changes he helps bring about – in the United States, Israel and elsewhere – is publicly known. Others are not. “But ‘the recognition of his own indispensable role was unimportant,’ she said, and his’ ideal end was in the company of family and friends, not statesmen or celebrities. ‘

Before the 2016 election, the so-called ‘Adelson primary’ Republican candidates flocked to Las Vegas to seek his blessing. “While Adelson whispered during a retreat on a motorized scooter in his Venetian kingdom,” POLITICO reported at a Republican Jewish gathering in 2014, “he was often harassed by GOP agents, politicians and fellow donors who were eager to judge his state of mind, to advise him on what to do, or to just magnify him with praise and gratitude. “

After the election, he gave $ 5 million to Donald Trump’s first committee, another record amount. In May 2018, he cut a $ 30 million check to the GOP-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund, and the donations continue during the election season. He spent the election night in November 2018 watching the return in the White House, although the two fell out during the 2020 campaign.

He has also donated millions to pro-Israel organizations over the years. Yet Adelson mostly remained out of the public eye.

“Despite his rising influence as party king and his huge financial footprint,” Mike Allen wrote in September 2012, “Adelson is rarely seen or heard, and he has remained mysterious even to many top Republicans.”

In that POLITICO interview, Adelson mentions a legendary football coach about his determination to rule: ‘I suppose you can say that I live by Vince Lombardi’s conviction:’ Winning is not everything, it’s the only thing. “So, I do everything necessary, as long as it is moral, ethical, principled, legal,” he said.

Sheldon Gary Adelson was born on August 4, 1933 in Boston as the son of a Lithuanian taxi driver and a seamstress in Wales. “I did not know we were poor, but we were very poor,” he would later say.

At the age of 12, he started his own business as a newspaper hawker and bought the exclusive rights to newspapers outside Filene’s Basement, a Boston department store. Four years later, he started a vending machine business. “Adelson has pushed his way to a better life,” Mother Jones magazine wrote in 2016, “through frugality, opportunism and hard work, which emerged as a prickly, combative scraper.”

In 1979, Adelson was one of the founders of Comdex, a lucrative computer expo in Las Vegas. “Sheldon wanted to be richer than Bill Gates,” a former Comdex CEO told the New York Times in 2008. ‘He always wanted no. 1 be. ‘

Adelson, who was a colleague, relied on his moxie and gut instinct as he moved from business to business. Given how often he has rolled the dice in his career, it may come as no surprise that he is associated with casinos, starting with The Sands Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

The Sands had a romantic and infamous history, associated with Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack, Howard Hughes, and gangs like Meyer Lansky. By 1988, when Adelson bought it, it was running out of steam.

He leveled it. The Venetian rose in its place.

The new casino, built at $ 1.5 billion, opened on May 3, 1999. Italian film star Sophia Loren provided a glamorous aid that day, saying she was ‘absolutely seductive’ by the ‘absolutely miraculous’ resort. local locations would follow, including Singapore and Macau. As of October 2019, Forbes estimated Adelson’s net worth at $ 34.4 billion.

With great wealth came legal issues: Adelson and his company became the subject of a series of different government investigations. In 2017, his casino company paid a $ 6.96 million fine to solve an investigation by the Department of Justice and a $ 9 million fine in a bribery case by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The sharp-tempered tycoon was also the target of multimillion-dollar lawsuits, as well as fights with contractors and local officials. And there was harrumphing in 2015 when it became clear that he was the secret buyer of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, the most influential newspaper in Nevada.

In 1991, Adelson married Miriam Ochshorn, 12 years younger and a native of his beloved Israel, whom he met at a blind date three years after divorcing his first wife, Sandra. The two would work with many businesses, including the Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Medical Research Foundation. “She is a competent medical doctor, as well as her husband’s partner in a range of business and philanthropic activities,” Fortune wrote in 2012.

“Sheldon is everything to me,” Miriam told Fortune for the article. She added: “We are on a wonderful flight together.”

Israel would be a focal point of their philanthropy, and the two donate more than $ 100 million to Birthright Israel, an organization that funds trips for Israel for Jewish Americans.

In the list of the world’s most influential Jews in 2015, the Jewish newspaper Algemeiner said that Adelson “continues to give extraordinary gifts to a variety of Jewish and non-Jewish groups.” (These efforts are cited when Trump awarded Miriam Adelson the presidential medal of freedom in 2018.)

Sheldon Adelson was a relative latecomer in the political world. A Democrat in his formative years, he would always claim, ‘I did not leave the Democrats, they left me. “He said it was the 1988 Democratic National Convention that inspired him – in that case to become a Republican supporter.

“Adelson said,” Allen wrote, “he was pretty apolitical until a friend invited him to his first national political rally – the 1988 Democratic convention in Atlanta.” Everyone was talking about what kind of job they were going to get when Michael Dukakis becomes president, he recalls. It disgusted me. “

No political figure would attract his contempt more than Obama, whose policies in the Middle East he considered dangerous. This concern dragged him strongly into the 2012 campaign, in which he initially supported former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. “Adelson, who allegedly donated as much as $ 20 million to the pro-Gingrich Winning Our Future super-PAC, first and foremost cares about defending Israel,” POLITICO wrote in 2012.

After it became clear that Gingrich would not win, he caught up with Mitt Romney and donated at least $ 70 million to the GOP nominee – and probably more, in the form of donations to groups that did not have to disclose their donors.

Romney lost, but Adelson’s abundant spending caused a nutritional frenzy for the 2016 election.

Early on, he and his wife largely stayed on the sidelines, disappointing those who hoped they would bolster Senator Marco Rubio or another anti-Trump GOP candidate. “No one knows exactly why he’s still on the sidelines or when he can come down,” one Republican operator said in February 2016.

In May, Adelson supported Trump. “If Republicans do not stand together to support Trump, Obama will essentially get something the Constitution does not allow – a third term in the name of Hillary Clinton,” he wrote. Adelson and Trump then met to talk. Money flowed in.

After Trump was elected, Adelson donated to his inaugural committee. However, there were moments they did not see eye-to-eye, especially not when Jewish activists spoke out close to Adelson about Trump’s muted response to an increase in anti-Semitic incidents. In November 2017, the Adelsons also made it clear that they were not on board with Steve Bannon’s rebellious efforts against established Republicans. “They support Mitch McConnell 100 percent,” a spokesman said.

The Adelsons supported candidates in secondary racing, with mixed success, and also opposed the legalization of marijuana and online gambling.

As a veteran of the gambling industry, Adelson claimed he was not upset about the ups and downs of election politics.

“I happen to be in a unique business where winning and losing is the basis of the whole business,” Adelson said at one point. ‘So I do not cry when I lose. There is always a new hand coming. ‘

Quint Forgey contributed to this report.