Sheldon Adelson, whose family has so far donated roughly $11 million to the Super PAC funding Newt Gingrich, says he’s against rich people influencing elections. However, that won’t stop him from potentially influencing this one by injecting millions of his own money into Super PACs. As the billionaire casino mogul recently told Forbes, “I might give $10 million or $100 million to Gingrich.”
It’s not just the former House Speaker who stands to rake it in. In an interview with the magazine, Adelson — who is worth $25 billion — painted himself as someone who could play the anti-George Soros in the 2012 election.
Soros, a Hungarian-American billionaire known for being broadly supportive of Democratic presidential candidates, is regarded by certain conservatives as something of a boogeyman. They charge that he gives millions to progressive groups, funneled through various “corporations.” Adelson said he sees a need to counter that by donating to Super PACs which support Republicans. “I’m against very wealthy people attempting to or influencing elections,” Adelson says, “but as long as it’s doable I’m going to do it. Because I know that guys like Soros have been doing it for years, if not decades. And they stay below the radar by creating a network of corporations to funnel their money. I have my own philosophy and I’m not ashamed of it. I gave the money because there is no other legal way to do it.”
Will Adelson actually give $100 million to Gingrich or one of the other nominees? It would represent only .4% of his wealth. “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.” The exception is Ron Paul, whom Adelson says he “certainly wouldn’t” fund. Newt Gingrich once described Adelson’s “passion in life” as being the security of Israel, so Paul’s isolationist-tinged foreign policy is something of a deal-breaker.
However, Adelson’s money doesn’t come without any strings attached. Adelson says he is against negative campaigning and refuses to see his money used in negative ads. “I don’t believe in negative campaigning. I believe in saying that my opponents are very good people and I’m confident a lot of them would do a good job, but I would do a better job, and here’s why,” Adelson said. “Money is fungible, but you can’t take my money out of the total money you have and use it for negative campaigning.” So far in this cycle, one of the main functions of Super PACs has been to keep a campaign’s hands clean by producing the kind of negative advertisements the candidate would be reluctant to put his name on.
Pema Levy
Pema Levy is a News Writer at TPM covering the 2012 election. Before coming to TPM, Pema was an assistant editor at The American Prospect where she wrote about politics and the economy.
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