Photograph by David Goldman/AP Photo

Karl Rove, former Senior Advisor and Deputy Chief of Staff to former President George W. Bush, left, talks to Sen. Orrin Hatch, on the floor of the Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., on Aug. 27, 2012.

For more than a decade, Republicans have looked to Karl Rove for the solution.

Now, a growing number see him as the problem.

Rove, 62, has put his imprimatur and donor money behind the Conservative Victory Project, formed to choose more electable Republican candidates and avoid such defeats as those of Todd Akin in Missouri and Richard Mourdock in Indiana, two races the party was banking on winning as part of expanding its U.S. Senate caucus.

“I am unalterably opposed to a bunch of billionaires financing a boss to pick candidates in 50 states,” Gingrich wrote in a Human Events article published yesterday. “No one person is smart enough nor do they have the moral right to buy nominations across the country,” added Gingrich, whose 2012 bid for the Republican presidential nomination was aided by $21.5 million in donations from casino mogul Sheldon Adelson and his family to a friendly super-political action committee.

The fight between Rove and other Republican officials and activists is a proxy for the larger issues the party faces as its traditional apparatus wanes in campaigns dominated by independent groups and big-dollar donors.

See the full report on Rove at Bloomberg.com.

Original post is Rove as Kingmaker Rejected by Republicans Seeking Better Returns by Political Capital.

The casino executive and his physician wife together gave $2 million to the RGA in October, according to a filing it made with the Internal Revenue Service on Dec. 6.

The Adelsons gave tens of millions of dollars to Republican groups in the 2012 election, including $33 million in the last three weeks of the election to two super-political action committees aiding Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

The RGA raised $10 million between Oct. 1 and Nov. 26 from donors including the Adelsons and billionaire hedge fund manager Paul Singer, who gave $1 million in October and $1.25 million this year.

John Paulson, a New York hedge fund manager, and Seth Klarman, founder of Boston-based Baupost Group LLC, each donated $250,000 to the RGA. Microsoft Corp. donated $250,000, bringing its year-to-date contributions to $275,000.

The RGA spent $19 million in October and early November on governor’s races including one in North Carolina, where Pat McCrory’s win on Nov. 6 gave Republicans a 30th governorship, compared with 19 for Democrats and one for an independent. Republicans are the defending party in 22 of the 36 governors’ races in 2014.

Original post is Adelsons Gave $2 Million to Republican Governors Group by Political Capital.

In the weeks before the Nov. 6 election, the Adelsons contributed another $10 million between them to the super-political action committee backing Romney — Restore Our Future — according to new Federal Election Commission reports.

That brought their total contributions to the super-PAC to $30 million.

The Adelsons earlier gave $15 million to the super-PAC supporting one of Romney’s Republican primary opponent, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, and overall contributed more than $65 million to outside groups for the 2012 election.

Original post is Adelsons Made Another Losing Bet Before Election by Political Capital.

Photograph by Patrick McDermott/Getty Images

U.S. Senator-elect Tim Kaine speaks to his supporters after winning the Virginia U.S. Senate seat, on Nov. 6, 2012 in Richmond, Virginia.

Casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson gave $2.5 million in the waning days of the Nov. 6 election to a Republican super-political action committee that was on the losing side of a key U.S. Senate race in Virginia.

The super-PAC, Independence Virginia, worked to elect Republican George Allen, who lost to Democrat Tim Kaine. The PAC disclosed the donation in a filing today to the Federal Election Commission.

Adelson accounted for more than 98 percent of the $2.55 million that the super-PAC raised between Oct. 18 and Nov. 26, the filing said. Adelson previously donated $1.5 million on Oct. 12 to the super-PAC, which took in $5.17 million for the campaign.

Adelson donated tens of millions of dollars to Republican super-PACs in the past two years. An exact accounting of his political donations is problematic because non-profit groups active in politics don’t have to disclose donors.

Kaine defeated Allen by 53 percent to 47 percent, according to unofficial vote returns. Kaine will succeed Democrat Jim Webb, who didn’t seek re-election.

Original post is Adelson’s Late $2.5 Million Couldn’t Stop Kaine’s Virginia Win by Political Capital.

Beating Fiscal Cliff Skews Dividend Yields

Beating Fiscal Cliff Skews Dividend Yields

Many companies are keeping shareholders away from the fiscal cliff by declaring special dividends, payable before year-end. Costco Wholesale announced a $3 billion dividend today. Billionaire Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands has a $2.3 billion payout coming up.

The rush to beat a federal tax-rate increase may make dividend yields less useful as a gauge of whether stocks are cheap, expensive or fairly valued. The Chart of the Day, above, shows an extreme case, the Dillard’s department-store chain.

Dillard’s dividends for the past four quarters are only about 0.2 percent of the company’s share price. The yield will surge to about 6 percent next month because of a $5-a-share special dividend, declared on Monday. Anyone buying the stock after the payout will have to wait 25 years to get that much income from regular dividends, based on the current rate.

Original post is Beating the Fiscal Cliff Skews Dividend Yields by Political Capital.

Photograph by Philippe Lopez/AFP via Getty Images

Sheldon Adelson, left, and his wife Miriam look at a model of the Cotai Sheraton hotel after a press conference in Macau.

Sheldon Adelson, chairman of Las Vegas Sands Corp., and his wife Miriam spent $53.4 million on the 2012 elections, only to see most of their favored candidates go down to defeat.

Among their biggest losses: $20 million to the super-political action committee backing Republican Mitt Romney, who lost to President Barack Obama, and $15 million to the super-PAC supporting Newt Gingrich, who lost the Republican presidential nomination to Romney.

Adelson is recovering any losses — and more — this week.

The company he leads voted to pay a special dividend next month worth $1.2 billion to Adelson and his wife. And they’ll collect $611 million annually as a result of the company’s decision to boost its regular dividend.

That should help his standing in the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, which lists Adelson as the world’s 25th richest person, with an estimated worth of $20.7 billion.

See the full story at Bloomberg.com.

Original post is Why Adelson Could Blow $53 Million by Political Capital.

Las Vegas Sands Corporation Chairman Sheldon Adelson in May 2012. Photograh by John Locher/Las Vegas Review-Journal/AP Photo

Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam bet $53.4 million on the 2012 elections.

They lost.

With Democrat Patrick Murphy’s victory over Republican Rep. Allen West in a House race in Florida only recently counted, the Adelsons didn’t pick a winner in any race in which they made a sizeable donation.

Their major contributions and the outcomes:

– $500,000 to the Treasure Coast Jobs Coalition, a super-PAC supporting West.

– $15 million to Winning Our Future, the super-political action committee backing former House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia for president. Gingrich lost the race for the Republican nomination.

– $20 million to Restore Our Future, the super-PAC supporting Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney. He lost to President Barack Obama, who won eight of the nine swing states in which they fought the hardest — including Florida, which took four days to count.

– $1.5 million to Independence Virginia, a super-PAC that backed former Senator George Allen of Virginia in his unsuccessful Senate contest with Democrat Tim Kaine.

– $500,000 to the Patriot Prosperity PAC, the super-PAC that supported Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, who received 25 percent of the vote against incumbent Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. in New Jersey.

– $2.5 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, the super-PAC associated with House Speaker John Boehner. House Republicans will return in January with a smaller majority.

Still, Adelson,  chief executive officer of the Las Vegas Sands Corp., hasn’t lost everything. He remains the 25th richest person in the world, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

He’s worth $20.5 billion.

Original post is Adelson’s Losing Bets on Congress — Allen West’s Loss Makes Six by Political Capital.

Courtesy Michael Bonfigli/Christian Science Monitor

Senator Charles Schumer, vice chair of the Democratic Conference and chair of the Senate Democratic Policy and Communications Center, speaks at the Monitor Breakfast, on Nov. 8, 2012.

Democrats are having some fun at the expense of Karl Rove this week.

First it was Ohio’s Sen. Sherrod Brown, re-elected this week, taking stock of how little impact the super-PAC engineered by the former Republican White House political strategist  had on races around the country. By the numbers, it was a bad day for Rove.

Now it’s New York’s Sen. Charles Schumer.

Republican political mastermind Rove’s reputation took “a significant hit” with Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s election loss,  Schumer told reporters today at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast.

Schumer, the chamber’s third-ranking Democrat, predicted that Crossroads GPS, the nonprofit group that Rove helped create, would be less influential in future elections.

“If Cossroads were a business, and Rove was the CEO, he’d be fired for getting a poor return for his investment,” he said.

Schumer said he saw Rove on television about 2 a.m. yesterday talking about how his efforts helped to decrease Obama’s margin of victory in swing states. The billionaire donors backing the super-PACs had something else in mind with their investments, he suggested.

“I’m sure he went to Sheldon Adelson and to Harold Simmons and said, `Put up these millions of dollars, and he’ll win, but we’ll decrease his margin,’” Schumer said. “I don’t think Crossroads is going to end up being as much of a player two years from now as it was right now, and I think his reputation has obviously taken a hit.”

Democrats yesterday also were delighting in watching a video of Rove on Fox News on election night in which Rove insisted that the news channel had prematurely called Ohio for President Barack Obama.

Original post is Whack-a-Karl Rove: The Piling-On by Political Capital.

This has to do with the fact that Jews, who have overwhelmingly favored Democratic candidates in presidential elections, are disproportionately concentrated in swing states such as Florida and Ohio, where the RJC is running ads.

“If all Jews lived in Massachusetts, I don’t think they would have invested that kind of money.” said Jonathan D. Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.

Outside experts question how successful the effort will be.

“Convincing long-time Democratic Jews to switch in appreciable numbers would be very hard, regardless of how many millions are spent in the effort,” said Herb Weisberg, a political science professor at Ohio State University in Columbus.

Adelson and his wife personally have contributed more than $50 million to committees backing the election of Republican candidates.

See the full report at Bloomberg.com. 

Original post is Campaign for Swing-State Jewish Vote Seeks Inroads Against Obama by Political Capital.

Photograph by Jerome Favre/Bloomberg

Sheldon Adelson, chairman and chief executive officer of Las Vegas Sands Corp., center left, and wife Miriam Adelson in Macau.

Casino executive Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam have given $53.4 million to candidates, parties and political action committees for the 2012 elections, according to the latest figures from the Center for Responsive Politics.

The two gave $20 million to Restore Our Future, the super political action committee supporting Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, and almost doublehandedly kept former House Speaker Newt Gingrich in the Republican presidential race by giving $15 million to Winning Our Future, a super-PAC backing his candidacy.

Adelson, the chief executive officer of the Las Vegas Sands Corp., also gave the following:

• $2.5 million to the Congressional Ladership Fund, the super-PAC associated with House Speaker John Boehner.

• $500,000 to the Treasure Coast Jobs Coalition, which is backing Tea Party favorite Allen West’s House re-election campaign.

• $1.5 million to Independence Virginia, which is supporting Republican George Allen’s bid to reclaim the U.S. Senate seat in Virginia he lost six years ago.

• $500,000 to Patriot Prosperity PAC, the super-PAC backing Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, the Republican nominee against incumbent Democratic Rep. Bill Pascrell Jr. in New Jersey.

Original post is Adelsons’ Campaign Total: $53.4 Million by Political Capital.