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ASSOCIATED PRESS
Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich speaks during his caucus night rally as his wife, Callista, looks on in Des Moines, Iowa, on Jan. 3.
By Karoun Demirjian (contact) 
Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2012 | 12:05 p.m.
Owner and operator of the Venetian on the Las Vegas Strip, Sheldon Adelson, next to his wife Miriam, left, in front of Las Vegas show girls during the opening of the Las Vegas Sands casino in Macau Tuesday, May 18, 2004.
Sun coverage
Sun archives
- From Howard Hughes to the Adelsons: Presidential races draw big money from Las Vegas (2-1-2012)
- Spokesman: Adelson not involved in scheduling caucus at Adelson school (1-30-2012)
- Sheldon Adelson: How will his support help or hinder Newt Gingrich in Nevada? (1-29-2012)
- Source: Adelson family donating $5 million more to pro-Gingrich PAC (1-23-2012)
- Sources: Adelson contributed to campaign but had no say in video’s strategy (1-13-2012)
- Sheldon Adelson distancing himself from documentary attacking Mitt Romney (1-12-2012)
Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam aren’t the only Nevadans dumping big bucks into the effort to reelect Newt Gingrich. So are Miriam’s two daughters, and one of their husbands.
Yasmin and Oren Lukatz together donated $500,000 to Winning our Future PAC, while Sivan Ochshorn put another $500,000 into the political action committee that’s been paying for ads to trash Mitt Romney and promote Newt Gingrich.
Both Yasmin Lukatz (nee Ochshorn) and Sivan Ochshorn are or have in the past been employed by Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corp.
The Adelson family would lead the state's soft money donations even without the whopping $10 million total Adelson and his wife donated to Winning our Future in January. Silver State residents haven’t been coughing up nearly as much for any of the other candidates.
The premiere pro-Romney political action committee, Restore our Future, counts a pair of Nevadans among its supporters. But banking executive Jerry Grundhofer’s $10,000 and Jon Byron of Reno’s $25 pale in comparison to the pro-Gingrich PAC’s take, and especially in comparison to the greater PAC picture: Restore our Future took in $30.2 million through the end of 2011.
Rick Santorum did respectably among Nevadans, securing $20,000 each from FSH Capital LLC and Frank Hanna, an executive with the company from Henderson, as well as $25,000 from Steven Mihaylo of Reno.
The pro-Herman Cain forces pulled far less cash from four Nevada supporters for the 9-9-9 PAC before Cain dropped out of the race.
Meanwhile, no Nevada names show up on the donor rolls for PACs supporting Rick Perry, Jon Huntsman, or Ron Paul -- despite the success some of those candidates have had with direct fundraising in the state.
Documents released Tuesday provided the first clear view into campaign finance in the post-Citizens United era. The Supreme Court decided in early 2010 to strike limits on the size of financial donations that corporations and wealthy individuals could make to political action committees not directly controlled by a campaign. The 2012 presidential race is the first where those unregulated sums of dollars are in play, whether it’s buying up airtime to promote a candidate or making it possible to spare no expense in taking down another.
It’s not just the Republicans pulling in extra money: The pro-Obama Priorities USA PAC raked in $4.4 million through the end of 2011, though none from Nevada residents.
By law, candidate and pro-candidate PACs are supposed to remain complete mutual exclusivity and have no communication or coordination. In reality, the dividing lines are blurry.
Not all PACs are directly in the service of one presidential candidate, however.
American Crossroads and American Bridge are the biggest pro-Republican and pro-Democrat PACs, respectively; they support cross-party candidates and causes on various ballots and tickets. Right now, Republican Crossroads is wildly ouraising Democratic Brdge. Neither is getting much cash support from Nevadans.
But Nevadans were not completely oblivious to the non-presidential PACs in 2011 -- they just picked the ones where they could at least get a laugh. Steven Colbert’s Americans for a Better Tomorrow, which the comedian founded to lampoon the loosening of campaign laws, posted the largest number of individual Nevada donors -- even more than Gingrich’s disclosure report, since the Adelsons dollars have not yet been counted.
Four Nevadans donated to Colbert’s campy Super PAC campaign: Miles Arnold of Las Vegas, $1,000; Eugene Balmain of Las Vegas, $250; Mullaney Hardesty of Elko, $250; and Stephen Weckel of Las Vegas, $500.
Gotta luv that helmet hair on the lady in red. Still won't vote for her adulterous hubbie, though.
we MUST raise taxes on the top 1%...
A LOT!!!
If this fool and his wife are so intent on pissing away their money....give it to the homeless....at least they have legitimate uses for it.
What's up with Callista's hair? I think it's killing Newt's chances to win the nomination. It looks a little too republican. Fanatical republican.
Wasting all that big foreign money on a candidate who's campaign looks like rotting meat being fed on by Dessert vultures.
He may as well toss his money into a sewer.
This points to the need for regulation.
Adelson would have been better to spend the money on a worthy cause here locally something truely helpful for locals like the homeless as mentioned in another of todays articles, and then come forward and supported Gingrich. He would have diffenatly have gained some interest and support for his choices when he made some good choices for the use of his wealth here locally. As it stands now, its a certainty who ever he supports with his use of his vast wealth is gonna be put on the do not consider list, just because of how he spends his money.
Creates jobs in communist china and supports the slime of Washington morality...whatta great family.
How do these people sleep at night?
Oh yeah, in the lap of luxury...unlike most Americans.
It makes you wonder what EXACTLY they are REALLY buying from Fig-leaf Newton. There's something going on behind the scenes and under the table that isn't being talked about...YET.
dirty rotten sneaky and most likely either immoral or illegal
Nevada billionaire casino's owner Sheldon Adelson, contributed $5,000,000 to the Super Pac for Gingrich because Gingrich promised him in 1995 that he would move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem which was what Adelson was then trying to lobby for. How easily our politicians can be bought, except for Ron Paul of course! Stop destroying America, vote for Ron Paul