Casino king provides 84 percent of funds for pro-Gingrich super PAC

Introduction

Casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson and his family have pumped $11 million into the pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC “Winning Our Future,” about 84 percent of the $13.1 million the group has raised so far.

And that doesn’t include the additional $10 million sources say the multibillionaire is expected to kick in to help his political ally and friend Gingrich become competitive again. Gingrich has fallen behind the two frontrunners, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and ex-Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum, in national polls.

The PAC’s new filing with the Federal Election Commission shows two separate $5 million donations were made last month by Adelson and wife Miriam, an Israeli-born physician with dual citizenship. Another $1 million was donated in December to the super PAC by three relatives of the Adelsons, bringing the total family contribution to $11 million.

Without the Adelsons’ largesse, the PAC has raised $2.1 million.

The PAC’s latest filing shows the next largest donation in January came from Texas mega-GOP donor Harold Simmons, who gave $500,000, bringing his total contributions to the super PAC to $1 million.

Together, the Adelson family donations have been the largest publicly reported to a presidential super PAC thus far this election cycle. They have been used to pay for a mix of negative television advertisements against Romney and positive ads to promote Gingrich.

Those donations, respectively, helped to fund hard-hitting and expensive advertising drives before the South Carolina primary — which Gingrich won — and the Florida primary, which he lost, and where he was badly outspent by the Romney campaign and the “Restore Our Future” super PAC supporting him.

Trailing in the polls and without enough money for an advertising blitz before super Tuesday on March 6, the PAC last week announced that it was spending close to $1 million on radio ads nationwide with a focus on conservative talk shows hosted by conservative hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

Adelson, who has known Gingrich since the mid 1990’s, has close personal and political ties to the Georgian that rest heavily on their shared concerns about Israeli security and their hard-line stances on Middle East issues.