Sheldon Adelson, super villain

“Where’s the white cat,” asked an S&G reader when photos from the grand opening of Sands Cotai Central showed Sheldon Adelson doing a superb impersonation of Ernst Stavro Blofeld, “crumpets” in attendance. You can just imagine him sitting there, brainstorming a plan to steal nuclear warheads from NATO and blackmail sovereign nations into doing his bidding, can’t you? Adelson’s notorious goon squad and habit of using Las Vegas Sands as his personal piggy bank also help burnish his master-villain credentials. Characterizing probable “mystery donor” Big Shel as a “man trying to buy himself a president is under three investigations for violating the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act,” Rolling Stone dug long and hard into Adelson’s fractious history since coming to Las Vegas and bringing his confrontational style with him. It revisits such golden oldies as the deadbeat business practices that got the Venetian built and the time Adelson allegedly reduced a local rabbi to tears in front of the man’s own son. That’s not to mention Chinese Communist fanboy Adelson’s well-documented hostility toward manifestations of free speech and Ugly American tendency to brandish his billfold to get his way.

How’s that “buy the White House” thing coming, by the way? Not so good. Adelson’s legacy of kiss-of-death political endorsements now counts the increasingly shambolic presidential campaign of Newt Gingrich among its victims. After romancing Rick Santorum on the issue of Internet gambling, Adelson reversed field. Perhaps he found Santorum’s rhetoric (“If the Supreme Court says you have the right to consensual sex within your own home, you have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society … yes, it does.”) a bit too Taliban-y for his taste. More likely, Sheldon realized that Santorum’s 15 minutes of fame were at the 14:59 mark. That’s the problem with being a cynic like Adelson: People are disinclined to believe that you’re loyal to anything except your wallet.

“I like you, which is why I’m totally badmouthing and misrepresenting you.”

To cover his butt, Adelson gave a nonsensical pseudo-explanation of his flip-floppery. Say what you like about Slick Rick, to contend that “there’s no background of his voting records” begs credulity and to say, “This man has no history of creating anything or taking risks” is bullshit in its purest form. And sidling up to Mitt Romney while excoriating others by bloviating that, “You’ve got have the courage of your own convictions” … well, given Romney’s #1 image problem, some would find that ironic.

(By the way, major kudos to Romney for blowing off Pasha Sheldon when the latter — in full kingmaker mode — tried to get him to promise to be Gingrich’s running mate. Confronted with a similar demand, Gingrich tried to explain realpolitik to Adelson, with questionable success. Unfortunately, presidential candidates don’t have the luxury of telling eight-figure donors to mind their own damn business.)

Not content to commandeer the electoral process in the U.S., Adelson has been energetically meddling in Spain‘s internal affairs. Now, Europe is not an under-served casino market, unlike Singapore or Japan. So the notion of Las Vegas Sands sinking $35 billion — or $2.9 billion per hotel* — into an Iberian insta-Vegas normally would be laughed off … and were there enough market demand to support such a thing, somebody else would have beaten Adelson to the punch. (Caesars Entertainment‘s once-vaunted European strategy has collapsed.) Let Sheldon tilt at this particular windwill and get unhorsed, you’d say.

* — Note the 64% escalation of the original, $21 billion proposal. Adelson hasn’t sunk one piling and is already over budget. Plus ça change …

Unfortunately, the quixotic aspects of Sheldon’s Spanish misadventure — including its reliance upon Arab gamblers — are overshadowed by the Faustian pact he’s trying to impose on the country’s citizenry: Lower your standard of living and I will deign to sprinkle my billions upon the peasantry. His demands “reportedly include tax breaks; social security exceptions; and reforms to anti-smoking, labor, and immigration laws; on top of land concessions and significant public spending in surrounding areas. Some of them violate existing Spanish laws — such as bans on smoking in casinos, gambling by minors and gambling addicts, and money laundering,” perhaps to get around the sort of legal difficulties Adelson’s Macanese machinations have spawned.

In a nation where unemployment is running at 23% and headed upward, Spanish politicians may feel like they have little choice but to bend over and grab their ankles. However, a project that is contingent upon increasing the country’s quota of guest workers (shades of Macao!) doesn’t exactly remediate the problem. Also, the company’s projection of 190,000 long-term jobs is being met with skepticism The national government would have to carve an Adelson-only exemption in the nation’s anti-smoking and zoning laws. Although the ruling Popular Party has kept its cards close to its vest, both Madrid and Barcelona officials have been tripping over each other in their willingness to sell out their constituents to obtain the daffiest concept since Euro Disney. For a self-characterized entrepreneurial risk-taker, Sheldon seems to need an awful lot of public-sector protectionism to make this even remotely viable.

Here’s how you do it. By contrast, Steve Wynn is turning on the charm in his attempt to persuade the good burghers of Foxborough that a Wynn Resorts casino would be A Good Thing. In a newspaper ad, he laid out a multi-point set of promises that included vowing to underwrite the costs of a referendum and an impact study. Wynn has clearly learned from the donnybrook that was his abortive attempt to crack the Philadelphia market and adopted a more market-friendly approach. Good on him.