Sin City isn't too risqué for Hillary Clinton or John Boehner. Jackpot!

LAS VEGAS — Sin City may have been too risqué for the Republican National Convention, but it’s just fine for Hillary Clinton, Nathan Deal, Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner.

Home to billionaire Republican megadonor Sheldon Adelson, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and an early presidential caucus, Las Vegas’ status as a political hub is on the rise, despite its withdrawing from consideration to host the 2016 GOP convention under pressure from social conservatives.


A parade of candidates and political groups are making their way through the city, drawn by the combination of campaign cash, industry gatherings and R&R. Politicians, political committees and parties have spent more than $330,000 this cycle at top hotels and restaurants on and near The Strip, according to a POLITICO analysis of Federal Election Commission data.

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Top out-of-state spenders included Reps. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi ($34,000 at the Aria and MGM hotel casinos), Aaron Schock of Illinois ($21,000 at the Bellagio, MGM and Wynn) and former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor ($10,000 at the Venetian, Palazzo and Wynn).

The availability of campaign cash, speaking fees and elite audiences often make it worth risking the taboo that opponents invariably try to attach to jaunts to the U.S. capital of debauchery, but sometimes politicians still prefer to sneak in and out with minimal attention.

Georgia Gov. Deal, a Republican in a tough reelection fight against Jimmy Carter’s grandson, slipped into town this week for a 48-hour visit including a closed-door speech to a group of GOP lawyers and a secret meeting with Adelson.

Sources say Deal met with the casino mogul on Sunday afternoon in Adelson’s office suite in his Venetian Resort Hotel Casino. But, only hours earlier — amid home-state speculation of the possible confab — Deal suggested he didn’t plan to meet with the billionaire.

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“I don’t think I’m gonna,” he said Sunday in a brief interview after a closed-press luncheon speech to a meeting of the Republican National Lawyers Association in a Venetian banquet room. “I would certainly welcome that opportunity,” he added, praising Adelson for his big-money spending on behalf of Republicans, which tallied as much as $150 million in 2012.

“Politics requires a large sum of money nowadays to be successful, and it’s nice to have people like Sheldon who are willing to support causes they believe in,” Deal added.

Neither Deal’s campaign nor Adelson’s spokesman would comment on whether two men met, while representatives for Thompson, Schock and Cantor did not immediately respond to questions about their committees’ Vegas spending.

Similarly, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi avoided media scrutiny Monday during a closed-door high-dollar fundraiser for Nevada Rep. Steve Horsford and congressional candidate Erin Bilbray at the Wolfgang Puck restaurant Spago in the Caesars Palace complex — a half mile south of the Venetian on The Strip.

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Horsford’s long-shot GOP opponent Cresent Hardy noted that while Pelosi and Horsford were schmoozing at Spago, he was holding a fundraiser at a Sparks, Nevada, watering hole called the Coney Island Bar with Rep. Mark Amodei (R-Nev.).

“If you want to see a contrast, that’s a down-home workers’ hangout that’s been there along the freeway for years and years, and it’s where the blue-collar guys hang out,” said Hardy, whose primary opponent was supported by Adelson.

To be sure, before the fundraiser Pelosi also gave a speech at the United Steelworkers convention in which she accused Republicans of using unlimited “dark money” to try to buy the election and “ stall the middle class.” Reid and Democratic Rep. Mike Michaud, who’s running for governor in Maine, spoke Wednesday to the 2,500 steelworkers who gathered for the convention at the MGM Grand.

In three weeks, Reid is hosting his seventh annual Clean Energy Summit, where former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will deliver the keynote. Jon Huntsman, John Podesta and Tom Vilsack also are set to speak.

Reid has used his political clout to make the event — and his home state more generally — into a major draw for Democrats. Former President Bill Clinton, who has delivered speeches to a number of Vegas gatherings in recent years, keynoted Reid’s summit in 2012. This year’s edition is being held at the Mandalay Bay, where Hillary Clinton’s last appearance — an April speech to the Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries — was interrupted by a shoe thrown from the audience.

And in October, Clinton has committed to speak at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, and there’s talk of her headlining a fundraiser for the state party sometime in the fall.

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It’s a natural destination for prospective 2016 presidential candidates like Clinton, or their supporters, owing to preliminary calendars under which both parties would make the state’s caucuses among the earliest nominating events of the primary season.

A super PAC working to pave the way for a Clinton candidacy, Ready for Hillary, is hosting a dinner and training session for women later this month in Vegas featuring Rep. Dina Titus (D-Nev.). The group has had an unusually robust presence in the state, paying $400 to rent space for an event at the Luxor hotel last year, establishing a students chapter at UNLV and donating $10,000 to the state Democratic Party.

And Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, who’s openly exploring his own 2016 White House run, this summer keynoted a Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner for the Democratic Party in Las Vegas’ Clark County.

On the GOP side, the leadership PAC affiliated with prospective presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky spent $2,000 on travel expenses at Caesars Palace last July, when he traveled to Vegas to raise money for the Nevada GOP. But the party’s more hawkish politicians tend to gravitate toward the Venetian, where the ardent Zionist Adelson maintains an office. He and his casino rival Steve Wynn make Vegas an even more critical destination for Republicans.

The potential of an audience with Adelson is part of the reason his hotels — the Venetian and the Palazzo — attract all manner of Republican gatherings, though they’re also the only completely non-unionized hotels on the strip. And GOP sources say they offer deals to GOP groups.

A trio of governors oft-mentioned as prospective 2016 GOP presidential candidates — Chris Christie of New Jersey, John Kasich of Ohio and Scott Walker of Wisconsin — as well as Jeb Bush traveled to the Venetian in March for a meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition, where Adelson sits on the board.

All four got one-on-ones with Adelson.

The Venetian also routinely hosts the Nevada Republican Party’s election night party. And sources say that in 2010, Adelson bristled when there was some talk about holding it next door at the hotel run by Wynn. A former Democrat who voted for Barack Obama in 2008 and had split his donations between the parties, Wynn has tacked increasingly rightward and has emerged as a GOP megadonor in his own right who now hosts GOP events at the Wynn Las Vegas, including a fundraiser for House Speaker Boehner’s political operation this spring, which Boehner attended.

The event had not been previously reported — a surprisingly common occurrence in a city with a robust political press corps.

That discretion was reflected in a question and answer session with the Republican lawyers before Deal’s meeting with Adelson. Emcee Randy Evans, asking about the electoral landscape facing GOP governors in 2014, told Deal “and we’re all family here; there are no media in the room, so feel comfortable.” Deal responded by stressing the importance of the Republican Governors Association, which this cycle has received $3.5 million from Adelson, to him and other GOP incumbents.

“Many of us are in a posture, because of the nature of the campaigns and the candidates that are running against us that we’re going to have to depend on RGA support for additional funds that they can come in and do things that we can’t do with our own resources and our campaign,” said Deal, who was outraised in the most recent quarter by Democrat Jason Carter. “That story is pretty well repeated by many of the Republican governors who are in this reelection cycle.”

To Shaun McCutcheon, Vegas is the perfect nexus of two of his passions — big-money campaign spending and partying. The Alabama donor whose lawsuit resulted in this year’s Supreme Court decision toppling aggregate contribution limits has made several trips to town in recent months, including speaking to this week’s Republican lawyers conference, and wishes the GOP convention would be held in Vegas.

“The reasons are endless why it’s the best spot to do it. And the only reason it isn’t is because it’s called Sin City, and there is some sin that goes on here,” said McCutcheon, as he munched on a Cobb salad Tuesday afternoon at Morel’s French Steakhouse in Adelson’s Palazzo hotel and excitedly recounted his adventures of the past few days with the GOP lawyers and some friends in town from Alabama.

“I partied like a rock star,” McCutcheon said. “We went to Rock of Ages [at the Venetian theater] and to XS, the No. 1 nightclub in the country [at the Wynn]. They were playing hip hop music and people were climbing the walls. It was crazy. I had to get out of there at 1:30 a.m.”

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