Adelson’s perfidy and big karmic payback

Last Saturday, Sheldon Adelson personally presided over the Special Supplemental Sheldon Adelson Presidential Caucuses (an event hijacked from the state GOP) at the Dr. Miriam & Sheldon G. Adelson Educational Campus … and stepped in it again. Adelson’s footpads, according to Richard A. Oppel Jr. of the New York Times, told caucus goers “they had to sign a legal declaration under penalty of perjury that they could not attend their daytime caucus because of ‘my religious beliefs’ … Mike Dicicco, a [Ron] Paul supporter who drove more than half an hour from Henderson, Nev., said he was asked whether he was Jewish by a poll worker.” (NB: The evening caucus was ostensibly also scheduled for the benefit of Seventh Day Adventists.)

Adelson’s religious test had its ironic side: “Sharon Saska, who said she arrived too late to her regular caucus on Saturday to vote before it adjourned, left after she was refused entry because she wouldn’t sign the declaration. She said she would have been committing perjury to sign because it wasn’t religious beliefs that kept her from voting earlier. She said she had planned to support [Newt] Gingrich.” You’ll remember that Mr. G. is Sheldon’s candidate of choice. Oh, the karmic payback!

Adelson lickspittle — and sometime Clark County GOP chairman — Dave Gibbs fully prostrated himself before the Doge of Venelazzo. “This was designed for those who could not participate today due to religious observances,” he told the NYT, in defense of the religious litmus test. “That’s all this is.” The ultimate chagrin for Adelson came when Rep. Paul crushed all other candidates with 58% of votes cast. That must have been as much an indignity for Sheldon as having to rub elbows with lesser mortals.

Even before the first ballot had been counted, Adelson was being wooed by emissaries of Mitt Romney and standss ready to abandon the H.M.S. Gingrich, according to a Feb. 4 New York Times story by Jeff Zeleny and Paul Rutenberg. Seems Sheldon has been playing footsie with the Romney camp for the past fortnight and “he will provide even more generous support [than given to Gingrich] to his candidacy if he becomes the Republican nominee … They [Romney surrogates] also avoided angering Mr. Adelson in a way that might lead him to give more money to Mr. Gingrich out of pique.” (That’s our Sheldon!) One Adelson sidekick, too frightened of the mogul’s wrath to give his name (I suspect Las Vegas Sands COO Michael Leven) said of Sheldon, “I don’t think it’s likely that he’s going to fund Newt’s death march to Tampa.”

When asked, during a campaign stop at the Venetian, if he could keep running without Adelson’s money, the normally voluble Gingrich clammed up and fled into Postrio. (No candidate who dines at a Wolfgang Puck restaurant gets my vote!) If it’s any comfort, Newt, you’re not the first Adelson associate to get shanked by El Bombastico and you won’t be the last.

While Adelson was busy subverting democracy at home, his Cotai Strip dominance was being (slightly) threatened in Macao. Lands & Public Works Bureau Director Jaime Carlon announced, with characteristic Macanese ambiguity, that MGM Resorts International and/or Wynn Resorts and/or Stanley Ho “could be approved within this year” for their long-awaited Cotai land grants. Note the use of the conditional tense, the prolonged timeline and the fact that one of the three applicants is going to be left out in the cold.

It would be particularly chagrining to Wynn if it drew the short straw, having done some very public palm-greasing — to the tune of $194,000, to obtain 51 acres hard by the Macau University of Science & Technology. However, Steve Wynn need not worry much: According to J.P. Morgan analyst Joseph Greff, “advanced design plans with a relatively large non-gaming component” move Wynn’s project to the head of the queue, with Sociedade de Jogos de Macau bringing up the rear. Mind you, we could still be waiting for those approvals 364 days hence, so excitement must be tempered with the knowledge that, governmentally, Macao likes to take it slow.