Betting the House

With a gold mine to prtect, Wynn has led Vegas in a swing to the right–away from Clinton’s proposed gambing tax

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Steve Wynn: 54, Las Vegas, Nev. $54,000. Party: R

Steve Wynn was just another ambitious young casino executive, running the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas, when he hooked up with junk-bond king Michael Milken in the late 1970s. The financial community had avoided Vegas for decades because of its mafia ties, but Milken drove his firm, Drexel Burnham Lambert, right into the middle of it. Wynn and Milken shared a strong belief in family values: It was Wynn’s Mirage Resorts (financing: Milken) that pioneered the casino-as-family-vacation theme.

Other events in Wynn’s life are reminiscent of Martin Scorsese’s Casino. First, one of his vice presidents was discovered meeting with organized crime leaders in New York. (This didn’t keep Wynn from returning to the East Coast with a failed bid to build a huge casino in Bridgeport, Conn.) In the interval, Wynn’s daughter was kidnapped. After Wynn paid the $1.45 million ransom, she was returned.

President Clinton has promoted a 4 percent federal gambling tax and floated the idea for a federal commission to study the effects of gambling on society. For these reasons, the gambling community–traditionally supportive of Democrats–has swung to the right. Wynn led the charge, raising $500,000 last summer at a Dole fundraiser. And he has an entire state rolling the dice behind him: A study by New Hampshire Citizen Action shows that Nevada residents have donated $398,615 to the Dole campaign–roughly eight times more than New Hampshire, a state with about the same population and site of the first presidential primary.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate