Rove hits big: Birth of a mega-donor

The Billion-Dollar Buy: About this series

Like never before, big dollars are having a big impact on politics and governance. This series examines how the new wide-open fundraising landscape will affect the 2012 campaigns.

See also: Inside Koch world | GOP groups plan record $1 billion blitz | Myth of the small donor | Sheldon Adelson: Inside the mind of the mega-donor | The IRS's 'feeble' grip on big political cash | The new normal: $9 million for a rural House seat | Secret money funds GOP door-knockers | The billion-dollar bust?



In the new Wild West of giving and getting campaign money, the marriage of casino mogul Steve Wynn and political guru Karl Rove was an exceptionally powerful — and secretive — one.


Wynn, the flamboyant Las Vegas billionaire who claims to have voted for President Barack Obama in 2008, was the perfect get for Rove. Wynn was loaded, had soured on Obama and was just the kind of wealthy businessman who could help underwrite a plan hatched by Rove and other influential conservatives to spend close to $1 billion total to win the White House, Senate and House in 2012. Wynn , a registered Democrat until recently, was reluctant to attach his name to any high-dollar gambles on the GOP, worried that Obama’s allies would make him a bogeyman. So Rove — who helped develop Crossroads GPS in 2010, one of a growing roster of non-profit groups that can now accept unlimited contributions for hard-hitting political ads — was a perfect get for Wynn, too. Rove knows all the players — and the groups he works with are skilled at minimizing media attention to their financial whales.

The courting, which took place in direct conversations and th rough friends and allies of both men, produced big results. Wynn has kicked in millions to Crossroads GPS, according to multiple sources.

And Rove, who attended Wynn’s gala wedding last year in Vegas, recently got something of a personal bonus out of the relationship. After Wynn attended the veteran operative’s wedding last month in Austin — an intimate and until-now unreported affair also attended by former President George W. Bush — Rove and his new wife Karen Johnson flew to Naples, Italy, aboard Wynn’s Boeing 737 — a nearly 11-hour, 6,000-mile trip that could cost tens of thousands of dollars from a charter jet carrier. Wynn joined Rove in Italy.

This story, stitched together by talking to numerous people familiar with the Rove-Wynn courtship, as well as a review of federal records, illustrates how one of the biggest changes to politics in a generation — the explosion of unlimited secret money — really works.

( PHOTOS: Republican money men)

Simply put: any person, corporation or union can spend as much as they want to directly influence elections through hard-hitting television ads without anyone else knowing. Republicans and their allies have had exceptional success exploiting this dynamic, which really took off after the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision.

Think of the conservatives as matchmakers of sorts: Avenues for secret political spending would be meaningless if it weren’t for rich folks like Wynn with the means and desire to write huge checks to influence politics and governance. But they also need operatives like Rove and his interwoven group of allies to guide the mega-donors through the clubby and byzantine world of big-money politics.

The political team Wynn assembled in the last few years to facilitate his political escalation is a case in point. His lobbyist Charlie Spies co-founded the Restore Our Future super PAC to boost Mitt Romney’s GOP presidential campaign. Another co-founder was Carl Forti, the political director of Crossroads GPS.

Spies and Forti worked together on Romney’s 2008 campaign — along with Wynn’s corporate government affairs director Mike Britt, who worked in George W. Bush’s political shop under Rove.

While Restore Our Future, Crossroads GPS and an affiliated super PAC called American Crossroads have already spent tens of millions of dollars boosting Romney’s presidential bid and assailing Obama’s, they’re legally prohibited from coordinating with Romney’s campaign. Still, Spies and Britt – who joined Wynn’s team in 2009 and 2010, respectively – were photographed together with Restore Our Future adviser Don Stirling at a retreat Romney hosted for his top donors last month in Park City, Utah, though when the photo was posted to Twitter, Britt was mistakenly identified as Romney campaign finance director Spencer Zwick.

Spies and Britt wouldn’t comment on what they discussed or their roles in Wynn’s operation. But lobbying filings show Spies’s firms — first McKenna Long & Aldridge and then Clark Hill — have been paid $375,000 by the publicly traded casino-developing and management company Wynn runs, Wynn Resorts, to lobby Congress on a range of internet gambling issues and international taxation, while Britt has been involved in state government lobbying for Wynn.

Rove provides political advice in private to a number of donors, and several of them have written big checks to American Crossroads or Crossroads GPS. But a source familiar with GPS said Wynn was its biggest donor, at least through the end of last year. At that point, the largest check the group had reported on its tax filings was $10.1 million given between the beginning of June 2010 and the end of May 2011.

Crossroads spokesman Jonathan Collegio told POLITICO “Crossroads does not comment on anonymous speculation concerning who might or might not give to the group,” and would not comment on Rove’s relationship with Wynn.

Unlike super PACs, Crossroads GPS is registered under a section of the tax code for so-called “social welfare” groups — 501(c)4 — that does not require groups to reveal their donors’ names, only donation amounts. The promise of anonymity is one of the main reasons GPS was established – it allows Wynn and like-minded contributors to avoid the controversy that has dogged top political donors like competing casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, as well as the libertarian industrialist Koch brothers or the liberal financier George Soros.

Sources tell POLITICO that Wynn’s giving to Crossroads GPS dwarfs all the publicly reported federal donations he’s ever made combined. Wynn, his company, his ex-wife and his current wife have given a total of more than $1.6 million over the years to a mix of Republicans and Democrats, according to FEC and Internal Revenue Service records. They show $654,000 in disclosed donations since 2008 going almost entirely to GOP candidates and groups — with $406,000 donated from his company to the Republican Governors Association — a change from his pre-2010 giving, which included plenty of cash to Democrats like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and their party committees.

Wynn considers Reid a friend , and his family gave $9,000 to Joe Biden’s 2008 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

In a statement, Wynn Resorts said, “We do not comment on specific donations; however, historically we have supported Democratic and Republican candidates for office based upon our consideration of the welfare of our employees, their families and our shareholders.”

Though Wynn has yet to donate to Restore Our Future, and bucked entreaties to publicly endorse Romney, he did attend a $50,000-a-head Romney fundraiser held in May in the Las Vegas penthouse apartment of Tim Poster, a top executive at Wynn Las Vegas. And sources tell POLITICO that Wynn and wife Andrea Wynn each donated to Romney’s campaign last month, which likely will be disclosed in FEC reports due next week.

Wynn isn’t the type to hide his political opinions, said Irwin Molasky, a Las Vegas developer who also attended the May fundraiser. Wynn “speaks his mind, he tells the truth — the way he feels.”

In fact, Wynn’s anti-Obama rants on television and his company’s earnings calls have made him something of a GOP rock star, starting with an October 2009 appearance on Fox News Sunday in which he declared “Government has never increased the standard of living of one single human being in civilization’s history.”

Predicting that the middle- and working-classes would be hurt by the stimulus package and the proposed Democratic healthcare overhaul, Wynn jabbed Obama, asserting “soaring rhetoric and great speeches, with or without a Teleprompter, aren’t going to change the truth.”

Video of the appearance went viral and, a couple days later, Fox’s Neil Cavuto, hosting Wynn on the right-leaning network’s airwaves again, gushed to him “man, oh man, the reaction was over the top.” Wynn doubled down, telling Cavuto the Obama administration “is doing more damage than is easy to assess at the moment. But I tell you that I am sure that we’re moving in the wrong direction and I say that as half-a-Democrat and half-a-Republican. What we’re seeing now just doesn’t make sense. The priorities have all been inverted.”

He raised eyebrows when he admitted in a Fox News appearance last year that he voted for Obama — an especially surprising revelation given that he and Adelson co-chaired the Republican National Committee’s effort to boost the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

But Molasky rejected the suggestion that Wynn had become more politically active or more Republican over the years, telling POLITICO “you’re reading much too much into this Republican thing. He votes for the person.” And he sighed when asked if Wynn was concerned that his political involvement could bring controversy that might hurt business.

“I’m sure he feels that, for business purposes, he would like to see a change and that’s not any different than a lot of business people in this country who are not afraid to give their opinion,” Molasky said. “I don’t think Steve is any different than anybody else. He is just more vocal, probably, about it — more of a public personae.”

A source with knowledge of Wynn’s political dealing had a different read. “There’s a difference between criticizing the president — lots of people do that — and becoming one of a small group of big donors whose face gets plastered on cable news like Sheldon or the Kochs,” said the source, who did not want to be identified discussing Wynn’s motivations for keeping his biggest donations private.

“It’s a whole different level of attention,” said the source. “It’s not what Wynn wants to be known for, but he does want to make sure Obama goes down.”

In a particularly memorable conference call last year to discuss his company’s earnings with Wall Street analysts, Wynn compared Obama’s rhetoric to that of “pure socialists,” and asserted “the business community in this country is frightened to death of the weird political philosophy of the president of the United States.” Calling himself a “Democratic businessman,” though he had switched his registration to Republican more than a year earlier, Wynn called the Obama administration “the greatest wet blanket to business, and progress and job creation in my lifetime.”

The line echoed a Republican talking point in Washington. And the Senate Republican conference began including clips of Wynn’s criticisms of Obama in some of its weekly video montages highlighting effective conservative messaging for senators, a senior GOP Senate aide said.

But one top Wall Street gambling industry analyst suggested Wynn’s politicking is wearing on some in the finance sector. “At some point, it’s like, ‘Give it a rest, Steve,’” said the analyst, who did not want to be named. “Earnings calls are meant to give status about the company and discuss data. But for the past year or so, it’s one anti-Obama diatribe after another. And yet look at his stock under Obama. It’s tripled since the worst of the recession.”

Wynn’s outspokenness also has caused tension in his relationship with Reid, whose political committees have reported receiving $64,000 over the years from Wynn and his ex-wife Elaine Wynn.

Wynn called Reid to express frustrations with the Democratic health care overhaul before Reid’s 2010 reelection. Afterwards, the casino mogul teamed with his once-bitter rival Adelson to oppose an effort by Reid to slip language into a tax bill to legalize online gambling. “Sheldon Adelson and Steve Wynn called members personally to tell them that the bill wasn’t sufficient,” said a senior congressional aide.

Reid ultimately decided not to move ahead with the plan. And Wynn’s aggressiveness on the Hill, as well as his de facto alliance with Adelson, were noted by GOP insiders, who interpreted the moves as signaling a bigger footprint in Republican politics.

Both Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands corporation and Wynn Resorts have gambling operations in Macao. And the pair lately have collaborated more on political efforts, such as a 2012 fundraiser at Adelson’s Venetian hotel for a joint fundraising committee linked to House Speaker John Boehner, and a 2011 fundraiser for Rep. Dave Camp (R-Mich.) at the Wynn.

That’s a far cry from their very first meeting, which involved a disagreement over a ballroom rental. It ended with Wynn chasing Adelson out of his office, according to a 2005 Forbes story in which Wynn said Adelson “has an inferiority complex” and “animosity toward a lot of people.” Adelson is also quoted calling Wynn “a liar” and “an egomaniac.”