Rolling Stone’s Rick Perlstein does not like Sheldon Adelson (he calls him "crazy and unscrupulous") and thinks Adelson’s taste for union busting is more germane to understanding his relationship with Newt Gingrich than Israel. But his piece this week replays some of the highlights of how Adelson takes his fight to Jewish arenas.
Then there was the time, late in 1999, when Las Vegas’s Temple Beth Shalom honored the city’s new Jewish mayor with a dinner. It was originally to be held at Adelson’s new Venetian, but the Democratic mayor refused to cross the picket line. So they held it at the Four Seasons instead. Adelson withdrew the $250,000 he had pledged for the temple’s building fund and tossed it to another Jewish organization instead – but not before verbally dressing down Beth Shalom’s rabbi with such virulence that the shaken rabbi recalled, "Nobody had ever talked to me like he talked to me." He went similarly berserk after the National Jewish Research and Medical Center announced that their annual gala would recognize John Wilhelm, then the head of the Culinary Workers. One reason they were honoring Wilhelm was because his union had donated $700,000 to the hospital over the previous 23 years. Allegedly, Adelson offered the hospital $70,000 – a payoff – if they would just honor someone else.
Also on the gambling magnate/SuperPAC beat, Irving Moskowitz, backer of settlements, has donated $1 million to Karl Rove‘s American Crossroads, Huffington Post reports.
