The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at for further information. Peter Overby, NPR News, Washington.Ĭopyright © 2015 NPR. SHELDON ADELSON: Well, if you'd looked at Las Vegas, and you had a couple of big helicopters with big slings, and you put it under the strip, and you picked up the entire strip with all of the properties abutting it and bring it over to Asia - could you succeed? He described his original vision this fall at a convention of the American Gaming Association. It brought the city new waves of midweek convention visitors, making Adelson a billionaire. One business led to another and eventually, he wound up buying a casino and building a convention center in Las Vegas. OVERBY: Sheldon Adelson has been a businessman for nearly seven decades, since he was a poor kid who sold newspapers in Dorchester, Mass. Not, Trump said, like Marco Rubio.ĭONALD TRUMP: If Sheldon gives to him, he'll have total control over Rubio, and that's the problem with the way the system works. Several weeks ago, Donald Trump told Fox News that he knows Sheldon Adelson, and they like each other, but he doesn't need Adelson's money. But so far this year, they're just rumors. Lindsey Graham (S.C.) changed his tune about a Catawba tribal casino in the Carolinas after Wallace Cheves, the casino tycoon financing the project, wooed him with campaign. They gave to a super PAC that kept Newt Gingrich alive in the Republican primaries, and they gave millions more to the super PAC for Republican nominee Mitt Romney, not to mention the outside groups that got Adelson cash, such as American Crossroads and the Republican Jewish Coalition. As a couple, they were number one among donors of hard money - that is, disclosed contributions - according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics. PETER OVERBY, BYLINE: Sheldon Adelson and his wife and business partner, Miriam, gave an estimated $100 million in the 2012 elections. NPR's Peter Overby reports on the most influential billionaires in the Republican Party. That debate, of course, was held at Adelson's Venetian resort casino hotel in Las Vegas. The family said it delayed the announcement to avoid distracting from the Republican presidential debate, and that led to the mystery of who had bought the paper. Bush (Republican), the UK Prime Minister was Tony Blair (Labour), Pope St John Paul II was leading the Catholic Church. The family of casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson ended that mystery, confirming that they bought one of the city's two daily newspapers, the Review-Journal. Weve performed the most in-depth research possibile on March 12, 2001, heres what our experts found out: it was Monday, under the sign of Pisces (see zodiac on March 12, 2001).The US president was George W. And let's go now to the mystery of Las Vegas solved.