Sheldon Adelson Scores Touchdown as Nevada Approves $750M Football Stadium Deal
Image by getty images
Sheldon Adelson, the Jewish casino billionaire and political donor extraordinaire, has an unlikely benefactor – the citizens of Nevada. As part of a consortium of investors relocating the Oakland Raiders to the nation’s gambling capital, Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands company helped push through the state legislature $750 million in public funding to build a football stadium in the city.
On Friday, the legislature narrowly approved the deal, and Adelson’s representatives exulted.
“It’s exciting,” gushed Andy Abboud, head lobbyist for Las Vegas Sands, in an interview with the Associated Press. “But this is really about jobs, and I think at the end of the day people saw this as a fantastic economic stimulus package.”
Abboud and supporters of the stadium claimed that the project would create 14,000 permanent jobs, and 25,000 construction jobs in the short term.
Critics have disputed those numbers, and slammed the public funding as a special interest subsidy. “Score another one for crony capitalist boondoogles,” fumed Anthony L. Fisher in the libertarian Reason Magazine. He disputed the idea that Nevada would experience growth in employment and tax receipts in exchange for its largesse.
Aside from the state backing, Las Vegas Sands and the Raiders will shoulder the construction expenses, chipping in $650 million and $500 million, respectively.
Adelson wields considerable influence in Las Vegas and Nevada. Financial kingmaker to Republican politicians in the United States and the rightwing in Israel, he also has thrown his money around in his hometown.
Last year, in a shadowy move that raised concerns about journalistic ethics, the casino owner bought the city’s newspaper record, the Las Vegas Review-Journal and fired numerous staffers viewed as hostile to him.
Nonetheless, the move was cheered by representatives of the construction trade, who said their workers have been ailing since the Great Recession. “It means the world for our families,” union organizer Kevin McLin told the AP. “The stadium is going to be the hero for everybody.”
Contact Daniel J. Solomon at [email protected] or on Twitter [@DanielJSolomon](www.twitter.com/DanielJSolomon
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.
