A few weeks earlier, this March at the Four Seasons Hotel on the Strip, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) picked up $320,000 for her presidential race.
Republican Rudolph W. Giuliani went to the Red Rock Casino empty-handed -- but left with $100,000, courtesy of the owners of Station Casinos Inc.
Presidential hopefuls are paying unprecedented attention to the Las Vegas, a good sign for the industry's growing clout, and a likely sign that the bizarre ban on processing online gambling payments for Internet casinos will likely be lifted during the next presidential administration.
"We've had more presidential candidates here in 30 days than we had in 30 years," said Sig Rogich, a veteran Republican consultant and ad man who helped organize a fundraiser, which was held during the Oscar De La Hoya-Floyd Mayweather Jr. championship boxing match.
Growing Role
The casino industry has always been involved in politics -- but its campaign role has grown, as competing Indian casinos boom, and as Wall Street became a big financier for the major casinos. Gambling is now legal in 48 states, and overall U.S. wagering revenue has grown to $85 billion annually.
During the entire decade of the 1990s, Las Vegas accounted for $19 million in federal campaign donations. Since the beginning of 2000, the tally is $50 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, based in Washington D.C.
"You know these folks — they hate to miss an opportunity to raise money," said Brian Greenspun, who oversees his family's casino holdings and helped organize Clinton's funraiser. He's a college friend of her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
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The chairman of gambling company MGM Mirage, Terrence Lanni, is a chairman of McCain's national fundraising group
Republican Romney is Mormon, and his church opposes gambling, though Mormon money helped build modern Las Vegas. Most of Romney's $400,000 in Nevada came from developers, business owners and church goers.
Nevada's biggest winner thus far is Giuliani, the Republican former mayor of New York City and former U.S. prosecutor. In the first three months of this year, he garnered more than $526,000 in Nevada, more than any other candidate.
Clinton's $319,000 Nevada take was the most among Democrats, and included $118,000 from gambling sources.
A Simple Goal
The casino industry's objective is to be left alone, said Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr., head of the American Gaming Association., the industry's Washington lobby arm. The industry created the trade association in 1994, after President Clinton proposed a national gambling tax and then dropped the idea. "We believe gaming should be regulated by state governments," said Fahrenkopf, a former chairman of the Republican National Committee.© Copyright 2007 Online Casino Crawler This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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