Simply awed by the ascendant power of Adelson

By Jon Ralston

Friday, Feb. 1, 2008 | 2 a.m.

On the surface, the day in Las Vegas belonged to President Bush a speech on terrorism and a fundraiser for the state Republican Party. But look more closely and you will see that Thursday was all about Gondolier Numero Uno Sheldon Adelson.

The Las Vegas Sands chairman had his fingerprints on every aspect of the day’s events, from the think tank that hosted the speech to his home, where the money event was held. There he was in the front row of the Nevada Policy Research Institute-sponsored presidential address with the most powerful man in the world, George W. Bush, a few feet from him and the most powerful man in the state, Gov. Jim Gibbons, by his side.

Now that’s influence.

Bush is fading away, trying to promote the “transformative power of liberty” even as the country, the world, even his own party turn to the race to succeed him. But Adelson is ascendant, showing the transformative power of money that has made him the third-richest man in the country and, as Thursday cemented, the most powerful unelected person in the state and a national political player.

Look how far Adelson has come in 10 years from a clumsy rich guy spending $2 million to try (without success) to knock off three Democratic County Commission candidates to a determined, effective businessman who raises hundreds of thousands of dollars for the president and is a key player in a national organization, Freedom’s Watch, that could have a substantial effect in Campaign ’08. Adelson also not only played a key role in electing the governor but also helps keep Jim Gibbons’ legal defense fund afloat and infiltrates the governor’s agenda, too.

Now that’s influence.

A decade ago, Adelson’s effort to gut the Culinary Union by proposing a referendum that would have made the organization less politically potent was stuffed by the many friends of Local 226. Now, as an ironic exclamation point to his 10-year resurgent odyssey out of the political wilderness, Adelson has contributed tens of thousands of dollars to Democratic county commissioners, who have happily accepted his money and stuck a thumb in the Culinary Union’s eye.

And if you find that ironic, it hardly compares with the jubilant victory exclamation in 1998 by one of the county commissioners Adelson unsuccessfully tried to excise: “Clark County residents have shown their votes are not for sale at any price,” Erin Kenny, who also mocked Adelson’s political ineptitude, brazenly declared to the Review-Journal.

Today, Adelson has as much political clout as any gaming chieftain has had in this state and country; Kenny and another commissioner Adelson tried to erase in 1998, Dario Herrera, are in prison.

I wonder who got the last laugh. (To be fair, Adelson-funded Commissioner Lance Malone, elected in 1996, also is behind bars.)

After that embarrassing 1998 election for Adelson, his right-hand man, Bill Weidner, spun the results as “a beginning, not an ending” and insisted that campaign was “the start of the communication of an alternative view of political life in the valley.”

That was laughable then; it looks prescient today.

This must all be so infuriating to so many people who scoffed at Adelson 10 years ago but are wary or scared of him now. Now that’s influence.

For his part, Gibbons has adopted Adelson’s long-held crusade to take money from the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority. Gibbons, who also appointed Weidner to head his gaming issues transition team, has parroted the Las Vegas Sands talking points on the LVCVA and room taxes. Now that’s influence.

Weidner also is on the board of Nevada Policy Research Institute, which late last year published a screed by the Las Vegas Sands president that decried any talk of a gaming tax increase or new business tax and proposed here it comes a diversion of room taxes from the LVCVA.

Adelson and Weidner have been trying to sell the idea of using room taxes to pay for transportation and education infrastructure improvements and probably will fund an initiative to do so. That would catalyze a debate splitting the power structure or, perhaps, pitting Adelson against the power structure and it is a fight he now relishes and has better people and more money to execute than he did 10 years ago.

And just guessing here Adelson just might have the support of the governor.

It’s the natural culmination for Adelson, and his newfound clout was on display Thursday when Jim Gibbons was at his elbow and George W. Bush was in his home.

Now that’s influence.