Billionaire casino owner Sheldon Adelson has pledged to give $35 million more two three GOP nonprofits in addition to the $36 million he has already spent this election cycle, reports the Huffington Post. The three nonprofits getting this latest round of donations are the Karl Rove-affiliated Crossroads GPS, an unspecified one with ties to the billionaire Koch brothers and a third linked to House Majority Leader Eric Cantor. The donations will bring his total spending for the cycle to $71 million.
Adelson recently gave $10 million to Restore Our Future, the super PAC backing Mitt Romney. The nonprofit groups, unlike the super PACs, are not required to disclose their donors.
From HuffPo:
Crossroads GPS — founded by GOP consultants Rove and Ed Gillespie in 2010 alongside the super PAC American Crossroads — could wind up as the major recipient of the casino titan’s largess, due to Adelson’s longstanding and close ties to Rove. Crossroads GPS has already received one $10 million cash infusion this cycle from Adelson, who, according to the two GOP fundraisers, recently committed to another donation of the same amount.
The fundraisers said that Adelson also recently committed to sending $10 million to a nonprofit with links to the billionaires Charles and David Koch. In January, Adelson for the first time attended one of the semi-annual conferences that the billionaire brothers host for wealthy conservatives to tout their favorite political projects. It’s not known which of several Koch-affiliated nonprofits Adelson is expected to support, but the two biggest this year are expected to be the Koch-founded group Americans for Prosperity and the Arizona-based Center to Protect Patient Rights, which in 2010 was used as a conduit to send tens of millions to other conservative bastions, according to tax records filed with the IRS.
Additionally, Adelson has committed $5 million to the Young Guns Network, a nonprofit group set up by former aides to Cantor, with whom Adelson is close and who, like the casino magnate, is a high-profile player in conservative Jewish circles.
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GOP fundraisers say that pilgrimages and conference calls to Las Vegas by prominent politicos and groups seeking large donations from Adelson have been frequent this year. Recently the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has been talking with Adelson about a sizable cash infusion as part of an effort to raise at least $50 million for ads in support of GOP congressional candidates.
