They say it pays to advertise. That’s especially true in a presidential election year, when the marketing never ends.
These days, the casino industry’s titans are advertising their politics by weighing in with their support for the candidates. MGM Resorts Chairman and CEO Jim Murren recently announced his endorsement of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but backing for a Democrat seems a rarity in the highest executive offices of Gaming Inc.
Las Vegas Sands Chairman and CEO Sheldon Adelson, meanwhile, has made front-page news as a Trump backer. And everyone knows he brings a big checkbook to the table. To date he’s been remarkably reluctant to start cutting checks.
Phil Ruffin has business interests on the Strip with Trump — and apparently undying loyalty to the man. Steve Wynn has previously shown support the Republican nominee, but has yet to make a public endorsement.
Maybe a keen understanding of oddsmaking has given them an appreciation for what Trump is up against. It’s possible some are having second thoughts.
There may be good reasons for that.
With all the fallout from Trump’s controversial run in Atlantic City, which ended in an unmitigated disaster, it seems unwise for gaming executives to throw their support behind him. Trump’s lack of nuanced knowledge of the casino industry appeared well known as he expanded his empire in the 1980s before collapsing into bankruptcy and leaving numerous vendors and construction subcontractors unpaid.
But perhaps such things don’t matter like they used to. Journalists and operatives of the Clinton campaign, meanwhile, have had little trouble finding small business owners who were shattered by Trump’s hubris. It’s a style which only further fed his image as one of the casino industry’s grand hucksters. Wynn, in fact, used to laugh out loud at Trump’s lack of attention to detail and unabashed braggadocio, but no more.
It’s hard to imagine anyone in the gaming industry wanting to stand in a photo-op with the man who scored big in Atlantic City, then left it in a crumbling heap, then bragged about it.
By endorsing him, what message are they sending about his style of business?
Then there are the often-repeated tales of Trump’s association with businesses run by mobsters and their associates. Village Voice reporter Wayne Barrett chronicled many of the connections years ago in “Trump: The Deals and the Downfall,” and major newspapers also weighed in. More recently, ABC News investigative reporter Brian Ross has pressed further with Trump’s connections to violent mob associate and convicted stock fraudster Felix Sater.
More recently in an article in Politico, Pulitzer Prize-winner David Cay Johnston outlined Trump’s history of mob connections, including his now-infamous concrete deals with companies influenced by Anthony Salerno and Paul Castellano.
Trump and his acolytes write off such reports as overblown, a rehash of old news, or the “reality” of doing business on the East Cost in that era. I wonder if the Nevada Gaming Control Board would buy the same line of rhetoric from a Silver State casino licensee.
Perhaps, as I am often told, times have changed. Trump is a businessman, and America needs a businessman. Maybe high-profile corporate gaming leaders simply see Trump as a viable alternative to a Clinton presidency they believe will mean a continuation of the policies of the Obama administration.
Who knows, maybe they get a kick out of Trump’s ability to play the role of a modern-day P.T. Barnum. Millions of Americans appear to thoroughly impressed and have already bought into Trump’s never-ending advertisement for himself.
But in a casino culture supposedly hyper-sensitive about its image, it still surprises me that gaming licensees really want to be closely associated with a guy who busted out on the Boardwalk and had business connections to the East Coast hoodlum element.
John L. Smith is a longtime Las Vegas columnist and the author of more than a dozen books.
