Casino magnate and Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson dies aged 87
- He was the son of Jewish immigrants, raised with two siblings in a Boston tenement, who over the second half of his life became one of the world’s richest men
- He also became the nation’s most influential Republican donor over the final years of his life, at times setting records for individual contributions
Sheldon Adelson, the billionaire mogul and power broker who built a casino empire spanning from Las Vegas to China and became a singular force in domestic and international politics has died after a long illness, his wife said on Tuesday.
Miriam Adelson and the Las Vegas Sands Corporation both released statements confirming Adelson’s death. He was 87 years old.
He was the son of Jewish immigrants, raised with two siblings in a Boston tenement, who over the second half of his life became one of the world’s richest men.
Adelson reportedly cautioned Trump that trade war with China could hurt re-election prospects
The chairman and CEO of the Las Vegas Sands Corporation brought singing gondoliers to the Las Vegas Strip and foresaw correctly that Asia would be an even bigger market.
In 2018, Forbes ranked him No. 15 in the US, worth an estimated US$35.5 billion.
“If you do things differently, success will follow you like a shadow,” he said during a 2014 talk to the gambling industry in Las Vegas.
Blunt yet secretive, Adelson resembled an old-fashioned political boss and stood apart from most American Jews, who for decades have supported Democrats by wide margins. Adelson was considered the nation’s most influential Republican donor over the final years of his life, at times setting records for individual contributions during a given election cycle.
“Despite his soaring influence as a party kingmaker and his mammoth financial footprint,” Politico wrote in September 2012, “Adelson is rarely seen or heard, and he has remained mysterious even to many top Republicans.”
The inflammatory move had been adamantly opposed by Palestinians and was long a priority for Adelson, who had even offered to help pay for it, and for the Republican Jewish Coalition, of which he was the primary benefactor. Adelson and his wife, Miriam, were front and centre at the ceremony in Jerusalem.
When asked at a gambling conference what he hoped his legacy would be, Adelson said it wasn’t his glitzy casinos or hotels, it was his impact in Israel. He donated US$25 million, a record sum for a private citizen, to Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial. He established a think tank in Jerusalem. He was closely aligned with the conservative Likud party and intensely supportive of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Adelson came around slowly to US President Trump, who during the campaign had said he would be “neutral” in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
Adelson eventually endorsed Trump, but remained hesitant through much of 2016. He gave more than US$20 million in the final weeks of the campaign after reports that he would contribute US$100 million, and was more generous with congressional races.
But after Trump’s surprise victory, the new president spoke often with Adelson and embraced his hardline views on the Middle East. He cut funding for Palestinian refugees and withdrew from the Obama administration’s nuclear non-proliferation deal with Iran. He moved the US embassy to Jerusalem even though earlier administrations – Democratic and Republican – avoided doing so because it directly challenged the Palestinian view that the ancient city should be part of any peace agreement.
In what was widely seen as a mark of the Adelsons’ influence with Trump, Miriam Adelson was given a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2018.
