Kiss the ring that feeds...

GOP presidential hopefuls line up to kiss the ring in Vegas

By Carla Marinucci

Looks like the smoke-filled room has returned to national politics. At least at a party starting Friday in Las Vegas hosted by a billionaire casino mogul that is attracting a parade of name-brand GOP politicians.

The Republican Jewish Coalition at the Venetian Hotel & Casino will draw a VIP crowd that includes GOP presidential hopefuls Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry, along with former President George W. Bush, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, House Speaker John Boehner of Ohio and GOP House leader Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield. They’ll all be there at the invitation — and to seek the blessing — of conservative billionaire mega-donor Sheldon Adelson, who dispensed $100 million to campaigns during the 2012 election cycle.

What’s known as the “Sheldon Adelson Primary” is expected to draw hundreds over three days and will feature poker and golf tournaments and plenty of speeches. But most of the action — talks by Bush and Romney, for example — will be behind closed doors, with media coverage limited to a three-hour window on Saturday morning.

Outside the media’s view, politicians will be rubbing elbows with Adelson, who has a fortune pegged at upward of $36 billion and was ranked last year as the eighth richest person on the globe by Forbes. His holdings include the Las Vegas Sands Corp., the Venetian Resort Hotel Casinos in Nevada and Macao, and the Israeli daily newspaper Israel HaYom.

In the 2012 election cycle alone, Adelson became the largest single donor to political causes in American history, dumping upward of $100 million into campaigns, according to a MapLight analysis of OpenSecrets.org data.

Adelson’s weekend convention underscores how “candidates are now being chosen by a few billionaire kingmakers,” says Daniel G. Newman, president and co-founder of MapLight, a nonprofit that tracks money in politics. “Voters no longer have a choice to elect a candidate whose interests reflect their own. A candidate’s stated interests, instead, reflect that of their kingmaker.”

The gathering also dramatizes the growing clout of California’s neighbor, Nevada, in the presidential election process. It holds the nation’s third primary — after New Hampshire and South Carolina — and voters there will see far more of the presidential candidates up close than voters in the nation’s most populous state right next door. But California won’t be forgotten — candidates use it mostly as a stopover for lucrative fundraising trips to the Bay Area and Los Angeles.

Earlier this year, conservative billionaire mega-donors Charles and David Koch held a similar kiss-the-ring tribal gathering in Palm Springs, where they appeared to have anointed Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker as their top choice to win the 2016 GOP nomination, the New York Times reported this week.

Neither Adelson nor the Koch brothers are reluctant to spend money. The Koch brothers are reported to be willing to spend up to $900 million on the 2016 cycle, on par with the two major political parties.

Candidates’ increasing willingness to “bend the knee” to such mega-donors has emerged, critics say, after the controversial Citizens United decision by the U.S. Supreme Court. By a 5-4 vote, the 2010 ruling cleared the way for corporations and labor unions to spend unlimited amounts on ads for or against political candidates. Within months, the rise of the super PACs — political action committees that can accept unlimited contributions from individuals, corporations, unions and associations — were collecting millions of dollars as ammunition to advocate for, or attack, political candidates.

The result, Newman said, has been that “a very small number of extraordinarily wealthy citizens are purchasing a greater level of influence over the policy agenda in this country.”

Bill Whalen, a fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, said Adelson’s gathering confirms the more aggressive, offensive role of mega-donors.

He notes that in 2012, Adelson was “life support” for the campaign of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich — and MapLight figures confirm Adelson put more than $15 million into his Winning Our Future super PAC.

Foster Friess, a wealthy businessman who supports conservative Christian causes who donated $2 million to Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum’s 2012 campaign, was another mega-donor who proved in 2012 that “super PACs in the GOP were used to keep candidates alive,” Whalen said.

But in 2016, Whalen said, “Super PACs will not be a defense mechanism — but an assault mechanism” that wealthy donors will use to attack and eliminate candidates. Should an opponent “go to Sheldon and say, 'Rand Paul is really bad on Israel,’” Whalen predicts, “the next thing you know, $10 million will be dumped” into attack ads that could damage his candidacy.

Newman of MapLight says that kind of power is a disturbing development.

“The debate should really be about protecting ordinary citizens’ rights to elect the candidates they support,” he said.

Kathay Feng, president of California Common Cause, said, “The Supreme Court has clearly unleashed the flood of big money from special interests that are willing to spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions — not only to secure the outcome of the election but also to signal, whoever wins, that they’re a force to be reckoned with.”

The impacts are rippling all the way to California, where big money is already being raised in the presidential contest. While big Democratic donors like Tom Steyer have weighed in with their checkbooks — he donated upward of $76 million in the last cycle — the San Francisco billionaire has not sponsored anything approaching the “Adelson Primary” or the Kochs’ Palm Springs cattle call to test candidates’ mettle.

No wonder “Republican bundlers” — the party insiders with connections to tap multiple donors for big checks — are unhappy with an event held in a Las Vegas casino, where the smoke-filled room still reigns, says Wade Randlett, a Democrat who is also one of President Obama’s most active bundlers in the Bay Area.

The message of the “Adelson Primary” appears to be that in the GOP, “unless you’re writing an opening check for millions, you don’t matter anymore,” he said.

Carla Marinucci is The San Francisco Chronicle’s senior political writer. E-mail: cmarinucci@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @cmarinucci

Adelson’s largesse

Top recipients of Sheldon Adelson donations in 2012:

1. Restore Our Future (Mitt Romney super PAC): $30 million

2. American Crossroads (Karl Rove super PAC): $23 million

3. Winning Our Future (Newt Gingrich super PAC): $15 million

4. Congressional Leadership Fund (Republican House candidates): $10 million

5. Young Guns Action Fund (led by U.S. Reps. Kevin McCarthy, Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan): $5 million