Doubling down: Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson backs another losing campaign

Adelson spent millions in 2012 on failed conservative candidates. Now he's taking on internet gambling, another fight he won't likely win.

Sheldon Adelson
(Image credit: (AP Photo/Kin Cheung))

In 2012, billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his wife spent at least $100 million backing conservative candidates. Via super PACs, he poured at least $20 million into Newt Gingrich's failed presidential campaign and contributed another $30 million to the Republicans' eventual nominee, Mitt Romney. (He also gave $23 million to Karl Rove's conservative PAC American Crossroads and $1.5 million to a PAC supporting George Allen's unsuccessful Senate run in Virginia.) If you factor in all the candidates, causes, and PACs he funded that election, Adelson easily set a record for the most money donated in a single cycle.

That dismal track record isn't stopping Adelson from wading into another political battle that sits squarely at the intersection of government regulation and his business interests. The Washington Post reported this morning that he is getting ready to roll out a public campaign of his own to stop the spread of online gambling. His chief concern? That betting online could be detrimental to children and the poor. Already he's hired three high-profile spokespeople — Wellington Webb, a former mayor of Denver, Blanche Lincoln, a former Arkansas senator, and George Pataki, a former New York governor — and is dispatching teams of public relations experts to state capitals to lobby against it.

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Laura Colarusso is a freelance journalist based in Boston. She has previously written for Newsweek, The Boston Globe, the Washington Monthly and The Daily Beast.