After days of widespread speculation from the likes of Jeb Bush and Nevada’s senior U.S. Senator Harry Reid to its own editorial staff, the new owner of the Las Vegas Review-Journal was reported on Wednesday to be Sheldon Adelson. Even after it became clear that the billionaire casino mogul and GOP mega donor’s family company secretly purchased Nevada’s largest newspaper, Adelson continued to hide the move, telling CNN Money’s that he has “no personal interest” in the publication.
On Thursday, the Adelson family finally confirmed the purchase, claiming in a statement to their newly-purchased paper that they only hid the news because they “did not want an announcement to distract” from the 2016 elections and Tuesday’s GOP debate at one of their casino resorts.
Why does this matter? For starters, the owner of a media outlet can exert enormous control over its coverage — not just on the editorial page but in story selection. Wealthy conservative activists already own Fox News and the Wall Street Journal (Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation), the San Francisco and Washington Examiner (Phil Anschutz’s Clarity Media Group), and 164 television stations (Sinclair Broadcast Group). The conservative publisher of the Union Leader in New Hampshire is famous for his front page editorials endorsing Republican candidates.
Adelson has never been shy about getting involved in politics. By some estimates, he is the GOP’s single largest donor. He and his wife reportedly spent about $150 million to elect Republican candidates in the 2012 elections and wrote a check for $5 million to a super PAC that helped elect the GOP congressional majority in 2014. He figures to be a similarly major player in 2016.
Nevada will be a key swing state in the 2016 elections: Barack Obama won it with 52.36 percent of the vote in 2012; George W. Bush carried the state with just 50.47 percent in 2004. Reid’s open senate seat is rated a toss-up by both the Cook Political Report and the University of Virginia Center for Politics. And the February 2016 presidential nomination caucuses will be among the first in the nation.
Influencing Nevada voters could thus have a disproportionately large impact on the nation. And in their own statement on Thursday, the Adelsons explicitly noted the “important role Nevada continues to play in the 2016 election.”
Adelson owns the proudly non-union Las Vegas Sands corporation. Its properties include The Venetian and The Palazzo casino hotels. Perhaps seeking to avoid competition, he also helps bankroll the Coalition to Stop Internet Gambling, an organization that argues that online gaming should be banned because it is not subject to the same “rigorous licensing and regulatory regimes” as land-based casinos and because “unregulated Internet environment will attract national and international crime syndicates seeking to increase cash flows and hide capital.” In 2013, Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands paid a $47 million fine for its failure to report deposits from an alleged drug trafficker. This May, the Guardian reported that Adelson “spent four combative days in a Las Vegas court this week defending his gambling empire from accusations of bribery and ties to organised crime.”
Though Adelson has often claimed that he is “very socially liberal — too liberal,” he spent $2.5 million to stop a 2014 medical marijuana initiative in Florida. A staunch supporter of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his hawkish Likud Party, Adelson owns multiple Israeli newspapers that have parroted his views. In 2013, he suggested that the United States should preemptively drop a nuclear bomb on the desert in Iran to discourage that country from continuing its nuclear program in the Obama administration’s approach of negotiation. And in opposing Obama’s 2012 re-election, Adelson denounced “the socialist-style economy we’ve been experiencing for almost four years.”
Why would Adelson want to hide his company’s newest investment? In April 2012, after significant media coverage of the tens of millions he contributed to a pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC, he announced that he wanted to keep his future political activity secret. “I’m going to give one more small donation — you might not think it’s that small — to a SuperPAC,” he told the Las Vegas Sun’s Brian Ralston, “and then if I give it will be to a [501] (c)(4)]” which does not disclose donors. His reasoning: Ralston wrote that Adelson believed “the media’s inevitable use of the phrase ‘casino mogul’ whenever his donations became public ‘is not helpful to the person.’”