Las Vegas Sun
Robert Bigelow, right, shown in 2015 during the introduction Bigelow Aerospace’s BEAM (Bigelow Expandable Activity Module), has put more than $7 million into backing Republican Joe Lombardo’s run for Nevada governor. Bigelow, who made billions with his extended-stay Budget Suites of America chain, is the company founder. At right is William Gerstenmaier of NASA.
Monday, Oct. 24, 2022 | 6:10 p.m.
More on the Nov. 8 election
Las Vegas billionaire Robert Bigelow of Budget Suites of America and Bigelow Aerospace has donated at least $47 million during the midterm elections campaign cycle to mostly Republican causes, including closely watched contests for Nevada governor and several of the state’s federal races, according to campaign finance records.
Bigelow’s largest contribution has been $12.3 million to the Republican Governors Association, according to financial disclosures filed by the conservative political action committee with the IRS. The IRS filing indicates he gave $9.3 million spanning from Jan. 5 to Sept. 28, and gave an additional $3 million on behalf of Sedona Magnet LLC, a company registered to Bigelow, according to Nevada secretary of state records.
The Republican Governors Association had spent $12.7 million in Nevada as of Oct. 15, when the most recent campaign finance reports were due with the Secretary of State’s Office. That spending has been poured into advertising in support of Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo’s gubernatorial campaign against Democratic incumbent Steve Sisolak. Bigelow also personally donated $195,000 to Lombardo’s campaign.
Bigelow donated $5 million and $3 million, respectively, to the All For Our Country PAC and the conservative Morning In America and Club For Growth PACs. He’s spent hundreds of thousands of dollars supporting the National Republican Senate Committee, and conservative politicians like South Dakota Gov. Kristin Noem and Rep. Michelle Steel (R-Calif.).
Polling shows Lombardo and Sisolak virtually tied with two weeks until the Nov. 8 midterm elections. Early voting started Saturday in Nevada.
In a phone interview Monday, Sisolak told the Sun that when candidates receive large donations from affluent donors, it opens up the possibility they become “beholden” to special interests.
“You can’t tell me that you’re doing that and he’s not expecting something in return,” said Sisolak, who also acknowledged he had received contributions from high-profile donors like MGM Resorts International and Wynn Resorts. “Who knows what he was promised.”
Sisolak said the majority of his campaign had been financed by grassroots contributors. Campaign spokeswoman Reeves Oyster said Sisolak’s average campaign donation was $70.
Lombardo’s campaign has raised $3.9 million to date, compared with Sisolak’s $6.5 million, according to their campaign finance disclosures. Sisolak’s camp has also outspent Lombardo’s by about $8.6 million.
Lombardo’s campaign did not return a request for comment. His team does not usually respond to inquiries from the Sun. A spokesperson for Bigelow did not return comment in time for publication.
Bigelow in September told The Associated Press that “liberalism, that’s a cancer. And we have U.S. senators and representatives that need to go. And the second would be a philosophy of freedom — a philosophy of free enterprise and freedom for everybody.”
Bigelow in the AP story also labeled Sisolak a “puppet” to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a fellow Democrat.
Lombardo’s “got all that outside money coming in there, that is making a big, big difference in the race,” Sisolak said. “One person, because they are ultrarich, should not be able to try and buy an election. And that’s clearly what he’s trying to do.”
The 78-year-old Bigelow also gave $10 million to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ PAC on July 7, making him the largest individual donor to DeSantis’ reelection bid. Bigelow likened DeSantis to a young Ronald Reagan, according to the AP.
Bigelow also donated about $13.7 million to three Nevada PACs, two of which — Better Nevada and Stronger Nevada — have contributed to Lombardo’s legal defense fund, and bought a slew of ads.
Bigelow additionally gave $330,000 to Morning in Nevada, which has contributed $33,402 to Republican state controller candidate Andy Matthews, and GOP Assembly candidates Sam Kumar and Jacob Deaville, according to state records.
While Bigelow’s donations have been eye-popping, they pale in comparison to what donors around Las Vegas have given to support past campaigns, said David Damore, chairman of the political science department at UNLV.
During the highly contentious 2020 campaign cycle, Miriam Adelson, her husband, the late Sheldon Adelson, and their Las Vegas Sands Corp. subsidiaries spent more than $127 million for Republican-aligned candidates and causes, according to the campaign finance tracker opensecrets.org. Sheldon Adelson died in 2021, and Miriam Adelson continues to hold a majority stake in Sands.
Bigelow’s spending is “chump change,” compared with what the Adelsons have contributed in the past, Damore said. But in an emailed statement, Damore said Bigelow’s bankrolling has offset Lombardo’s fundraising disparity with Sisolak.
“It certainly indicates that as long as the Supreme Court equates money as speech that the well-heeled will continue to play an outsized role in electoral politics,” Damore said, alluding to the 2010 high court ruling in Citizens United v. FEC, which likened political donations from PACs, businesses and other entities as free speech protected under the First Amendment.
About Bigelow
Bigelow built his fortune through Budget Suites of America, which he started in 1987, as one of the nation’s first extended-stay rentals, according to The New York Times. Of its 19 properties across Texas, Arizona and Nevada, there are five locations in Las Vegas.
The AP reported last month that Bigelow was a critic of the federal eviction moratorium enacted in September 2020 during the coronavirus pandemic, saying it amounted to “legalized theft.” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention didn’t lift the moratorium until August 2021.
Despite the moratorium, Budget Suites of America filed 144 evictions through September 2021, according to the Private Equity Stakeholder Project, a nonprofit whose mission is to engage investors and work with tenants affected by private equity investments. In total, the nonprofit reported corporate landlords filed around 1,200 evictions in Las Vegas during the moratorium.
In 1999, Bigelow started Bigelow Aerospace, a self-described general contracting, research and development company that focuses on designing and developing “habitable space structures,” and has about 150 employees, according to its website.
According to the Bigelow Aerospace website, he’s personally spent more than $450 million on the space company, which has contracted with NASA and SpaceX on a number of projects. Most recently in 2016, Bigelow’s company sent an expandable module that can carry more than 1,000 pounds of cargo to the International Space Station. Its contract was renewed the following year.
Bigelow was also friends with longtime Nevada U.S. Sen. Harry Reid, who was Senate majority leader during the Obama administration. Despite political differences between the two, Reid — a Democrat — helped earmark $22 million for a Department of Defense program to study unidentified flying objects that contracted with Bigelow Aerospace.
A 2017 story by The New York Times revealed Reid was instrumental in linking Bigelow with the Defense Department, and from 2007 to 2012, the program produced “documents that describe sightings of aircraft that seemed to move at a very high velocities with no visible signs of propulsion, or that hovered with no apparent means of life.”
Bigelow’s fascination in the paranormal reaches beyond space and potential alien life. Last year, he announced he had provided grant funding up to $1 million to research “contact and communication with post-mortem or discarnate consciousness.” The Bigelow Institute is accepting applications for the program through Jan. 1, 2023, according to his website.
In 2016, Bigelow sold a 480-acre plot of land in northeast Utah dubbed “Skinwalker Ranch” he had owned since 1996. Skinwalker Ranch, a site where numerous alleged paranormal events have occurred, has been the subject of various media projects, notably a 2005 book by Las Vegas journalist George Knapp, as well as a television series that began airing on the History Channel in 2020.
