A congressional candidate from Nevada has launched his campaign with this Red Scare-style (and somewhat jingoistic) blast at the nation upon whom some of the state’s largest employers — Las Vegas Sands, Wynn Resorts and MGM Resorts International — depend for their survival. (And where Caesars Entertainment owns a golf course would desperately like to do business.) Not to mention that Sands China, Wynn Macau and MGM Grand Paradise are all trading on the Hong Kong bourse. So the fortunes of the Silver State and China are somewhat more intimately intertwined than Mark Amodei seems to realize.
In case we didn’t get the point, Amodei titles another video jeremiad simply “China.” (In yet another, he likens illegal immigration to Hurricane Katrina.) So far, Amodei’s only supporter in the casino industry is South Point owner Michael Gaughan (in for $2,500), who probably holds no great love for the Las Vegas-based companies that are deeply entrenched in China. It will be interesting to see how Amodei’s “better dead than Red” pitch plays with the rest of Big Gaming.
Meanwhile, Steve Friess is having great fun with the rhetorical pretzels Steve Wynn has tied himself into with regard to both his voting record and, more importantly, the supposed affordability of annual 8% increases in health-care costs for his company and employees.
And why do I sense the fine hand of Sheldon Adelson behind this otherwise loopy-sounding prediction? Adelson and William Kristol have institutional ties and Mrs. Adelson made a point of recently snubbing a previous Adelson favorite son. Could Kristol’s “two reliable sources” be named Sheldon and Miriam Adelson?
