Adelsons double down on Gingrich, kick in another $5 million to super PAC

Introduction

The Israeli-born wife of casino mogul Sheldon Adelson is matching her husband and placing her own $5 million bet on a super PAC supporting Newt Gingrich in the upcoming Florida primary.

The gift came from Miriam Adelson, according to sources familiar with husband Sheldon’s previous $5 million donation to the super PAC “Winning Our Future.” The funds, in the form of a wire transfer, are expected to be received by the PAC on Tuesday.

The second $5 million infusion the pro-Gingrich PAC from the physician-wife of the 78-year-old Adelson could be crucial to Gingrich’s chances of winning the Jan. 31 primary, where Mitt Romney’s campaign and supporting super PAC have an early and sizable head start in advertising spending.

In South Carolina, Sheldon Adelson’s $5 million donation to the PAC basically bankrolled its hard-hitting negative ad blitz, which totaled almost $3 million, according to Federal Election Commission records.

The ads heavily targeted former Massachusetts Gov. Romney’s long career running the buyout firm Bain Capital. In some cases, Bain made tens of millions of dollars in its buyout deals but the companies it acquired witnessed large job losses, the ads claimed.

Adelson and Gingrich have been close personal and political friends since the mid 1990s and have forged strong bonds, especially on pro-Israel issues.

Adelson, and more recently Gingrich, have championed the hard-line stances of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and rejected a two-state solution with the Palestinians to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

When Gingrich said in an interview last month that the Palestinians were an “invented people,” he drew harsh criticism from many historians, but Adelson who owns the largest daily in Israel, a free paper called Israel Hayom, came to the former House Speaker’s defense.

Adelson was the largest backer of a political committee — American Solutions for Winning the Future — run by Gingrich for five years prior to his presidential campaign. Adelson donated $7.7 million to the organization.

The wealthy casino owner — whose net worth is estimated at $21.5 billion — is also known for his fiercely anti-union stances, views that Gingrich has often shared.