With the United States presidential election a mere day away from being decided, the casino industry has weighed in on which candidate would be the best choice. In an overwhelming show of support, the trophy goes to John McCain who received thumbs up from three of the largest Las Vegas casino operators. Not only have they pledged support for their chosen candidate with proclamations, they have also backed up their words with substantial sums of money.

Sheldon Adelson of Las Vegas Sands Corp.  and Steve Wynn of Wynn Resorts have conducted impressively successful fundraisers for the Arizona senator. One of these endorsements has been a bit surprising since Wynn is widely known as a longtime Democrat. The rest of his family has been quite dismayed by his decision to support McCain. Meanwhile, his wife has donated money to Senator Barack Obama’s campaign. She reportedly donated somewhere between $50,000 and $100,000 over the course of his length campaign.

Many folks within the gambling industry have been reasonably perplexed by the outpouring of adoration for the Republican candidate since he has been an opponent of sports gambling, going so far as to push for a ban on it. McCain used to hold nothing but contempt for the industry but more recently, he has welcomed them and their campaign contributions with open arms. While the polls are now showing Obama with a substantial lead over McCain, even in many of the swing states, the big wigs in the gambling industry are holding their breath and crossing their fingers, hoping for a last minute comeback.

Tags: election, las vegas, online casino industry

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 at 4:15 am and is filed under Las Vegas Casinos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.