LA Times
LAS VEGAS — Sen. John McCain stopped by Tabu Ultra Lounge, next to the craps and roulette tables on the MGM Grand casino floor, and left with roughly $400,000 for his presidential campaign.
Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani walked away from the Red Rock Casino with $100,000, courtesy of the owners of Station Casinos Inc., whose interests include Nevada and California gambling halls.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York gathered $320,000 in March at the Four Seasons Hotel on the Strip, the same place former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney celebrated his 60th birthday and collected $400,000, mostly from noncasino interests.
With Nevada holding early caucuses in January, such presidential hopefuls are paying unprecedented attention to the Strip. Whereas most tourists leave money here, most candidates leave here with money.
"We've had more presidential candidates here in 30 days than we had in 30 years," said Sig Rogich, a veteran Republican consultant and ad man who helped organize last month's fundraiser for McCain (R-Ariz.), held to coincide with the Oscar De La Hoya-Floyd Mayweather Jr. championship fight.
Las Vegas being what it is, the hunt for campaign money has forged unlikely alliances and made for inconvenient bedfellows. It has put casino bosses in highly visible roles. And with casino ownership divided between traditional commercial interests and Native American tribes, some candidates are walking a fine line.
The casino industry has always played politics. But gambling's campaign role has grown since the 2000 election, as Indian casinos boomed, Wall Street became a big financier for the major casinos, gambling spread to 48 states, and gross U.S. wagering revenue soared to $85 billion annually.
In the 1990s, the industry accounted for $19 million in federal campaign donations. Since the beginning of 2000, the tally is $50 million, says the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks donations.
That includes funds from Indian casinos and the hotel-resort-casino mega-complexes here and elsewhere. It doesn't count other donors with a stake in gambling: Wall Street, labor unions, developers, strip club owners, restaurateurs, hoteliers and others feeding off the 39 million tourists and conventioneers lured here each year.
For political candidates, that's good fishing.
"You know these folks — they hate to miss an opportunity to raise money," said Brian Greenspun, who oversees his family's publishing, real estate and casino holdings and helped organize Clinton's bash. He's a college friend of her husband. "Nevada and Las Vegas are in the fundraising bull's-eye."
The chairman of gambling giant MGM Mirage, Terrence Lanni, is a co-chairman of McCain's national fundraising team. Though McCain doesn't accept campaign money from tribal casinos — because of his role on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee — two top campaign aides work as consultants to Indian casinos. And Lanni's company is a partner in a big Indian hotel-casino project in Connecticut.
Republican Romney is Mormon, and his church opposes gambling, though Mormon money helped build modern Las Vegas. Most of Romney's $400,000 in Nevada came from developers, business owners and church members. Only one check came from a donor who identified himself as a casino company employee.
Romney noted that as governor, he blocked an Indian tribe from opening Massachusetts' first casino, in part "because of the concern about the additional social costs." But he counts casino magnate Steve Wynn among his supporters. "I would expect that I'm going to get support from industry members … although I don't really have a position on gaming that affects a presidential run," Romney said in a recent interview.
Nevada's biggest player to date is Giuliani, also a Republican. In the first 90 days of the year, he raised $526,000 in the state, more than any other candidate. Casino interests accounted for at least $205,000 of the total, including $100,000 from owners, executives and family members of Station Casinos.
Clinton's $319,000 Nevada haul was the most among Democrats, and included $118,000 from gambling sources. Her main Democratic rivals, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, each raised less than $65,000 in Nevada in the first quarter.
By California or New York standards, Nevada remains a modest source of money. Donors with Nevada addresses gave just $1.5 million of the $112 million raised by major candidates in the first three months of the year. Nevada's donations in the initial months of the campaign placed it 22nd among the states; Nevada's population ranks 35th.
For the commercial casinos, the tribal gambling houses and key labor unions, their interests in who becomes president are clear, if often conflicting.
In Washington, the casino industry's goal is to be left alone, said Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., head of the American Gaming Assn., the nontribal gambling industry's main Washington lobby arm. The industry created the trade association in 1994, after President Clinton proposed a national gambling tax and then dropped the idea. "We believe gaming should be regulated by state governments," said Fahrenkopf, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Although states regulate traditional casinos, the federal government has the authority over Indian casinos. It can authorize or reject new Indian casinos, and has some regulatory authority over existing ones.
Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani walked away from the Red Rock Casino with $100,000, courtesy of the owners of Station Casinos Inc., whose interests include Nevada and California gambling halls.
Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York gathered $320,000 in March at the Four Seasons Hotel on the Strip, the same place former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney celebrated his 60th birthday and collected $400,000, mostly from noncasino interests.
With Nevada holding early caucuses in January, such presidential hopefuls are paying unprecedented attention to the Strip. Whereas most tourists leave money here, most candidates leave here with money.
"We've had more presidential candidates here in 30 days than we had in 30 years," said Sig Rogich, a veteran Republican consultant and ad man who helped organize last month's fundraiser for McCain (R-Ariz.), held to coincide with the Oscar De La Hoya-Floyd Mayweather Jr. championship fight.
Las Vegas being what it is, the hunt for campaign money has forged unlikely alliances and made for inconvenient bedfellows. It has put casino bosses in highly visible roles. And with casino ownership divided between traditional commercial interests and Native American tribes, some candidates are walking a fine line.
The casino industry has always played politics. But gambling's campaign role has grown since the 2000 election, as Indian casinos boomed, Wall Street became a big financier for the major casinos, gambling spread to 48 states, and gross U.S. wagering revenue soared to $85 billion annually.
In the 1990s, the industry accounted for $19 million in federal campaign donations. Since the beginning of 2000, the tally is $50 million, says the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks donations.
That includes funds from Indian casinos and the hotel-resort-casino mega-complexes here and elsewhere. It doesn't count other donors with a stake in gambling: Wall Street, labor unions, developers, strip club owners, restaurateurs, hoteliers and others feeding off the 39 million tourists and conventioneers lured here each year.
For political candidates, that's good fishing.
"You know these folks — they hate to miss an opportunity to raise money," said Brian Greenspun, who oversees his family's publishing, real estate and casino holdings and helped organize Clinton's bash. He's a college friend of her husband. "Nevada and Las Vegas are in the fundraising bull's-eye."
The chairman of gambling giant MGM Mirage, Terrence Lanni, is a co-chairman of McCain's national fundraising team. Though McCain doesn't accept campaign money from tribal casinos — because of his role on the Senate Indian Affairs Committee — two top campaign aides work as consultants to Indian casinos. And Lanni's company is a partner in a big Indian hotel-casino project in Connecticut.
Republican Romney is Mormon, and his church opposes gambling, though Mormon money helped build modern Las Vegas. Most of Romney's $400,000 in Nevada came from developers, business owners and church members. Only one check came from a donor who identified himself as a casino company employee.
Romney noted that as governor, he blocked an Indian tribe from opening Massachusetts' first casino, in part "because of the concern about the additional social costs." But he counts casino magnate Steve Wynn among his supporters. "I would expect that I'm going to get support from industry members … although I don't really have a position on gaming that affects a presidential run," Romney said in a recent interview.
Nevada's biggest player to date is Giuliani, also a Republican. In the first 90 days of the year, he raised $526,000 in the state, more than any other candidate. Casino interests accounted for at least $205,000 of the total, including $100,000 from owners, executives and family members of Station Casinos.
Clinton's $319,000 Nevada haul was the most among Democrats, and included $118,000 from gambling sources. Her main Democratic rivals, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina, each raised less than $65,000 in Nevada in the first quarter.
By California or New York standards, Nevada remains a modest source of money. Donors with Nevada addresses gave just $1.5 million of the $112 million raised by major candidates in the first three months of the year. Nevada's donations in the initial months of the campaign placed it 22nd among the states; Nevada's population ranks 35th.
For the commercial casinos, the tribal gambling houses and key labor unions, their interests in who becomes president are clear, if often conflicting.
In Washington, the casino industry's goal is to be left alone, said Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., head of the American Gaming Assn., the nontribal gambling industry's main Washington lobby arm. The industry created the trade association in 1994, after President Clinton proposed a national gambling tax and then dropped the idea. "We believe gaming should be regulated by state governments," said Fahrenkopf, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee.
Although states regulate traditional casinos, the federal government has the authority over Indian casinos. It can authorize or reject new Indian casinos, and has some regulatory authority over existing ones.