Adelsons Deny Pushing Las Vegas Poll Switch
Casino mogul Sheldon Adelson has denied involvement in the decision to hold a special Republican caucus in a Nevada county to accommodate Sabbath-observant Jewish voters.
Clark County last week moved its Feb. 4 caucus to 7 p.m., six hours after the state’s totals are scheduled to be reported. Among the county’s voters is Adelson, who with his wife recently donated $10 million to a super PAC formed to help GOP presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich.
“In short, they had no involvement,” Adelson spokesman Ron Reese said of Sheldon and Miriam Adelson in a note to reporters Monday evening.
“For the record, Mr. and Dr. Adelson are not Orthodox, thus they could participate in the caucus regardless of time or location,” the spokesman added.
The special caucus was added after a member of the Orthodox community complained that he would not be able to participate in the caucus since it conflicted with Shabbat, CNN reported.
The caucus will be held at the Dr. Miriam and Sheldon G. Adelson Educational Campus, an Adelson-funded private school in Las Vegas.
More than half the state’s Republican voters live in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas.
Some 500 Republican voters are expected to attend the additional caucus. An absentee balloting system is in place for Nevada caucuses, according to Politico.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
