March/April 1996 Issue

Betting the House

With a gold mine to prtect, Wynn has led Vegas in a swing to the right–away from Clinton’s proposed gambing tax

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Steve Wynn: 54, Las Vegas, Nev. $54,000. Party: R

Steve Wynn was just another ambitious young casino executive, running the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas, when he hooked up with junk-bond king Michael Milken in the late 1970s. The financial community had avoided Vegas for decades because of its mafia ties, but Milken drove his firm, Drexel Burnham Lambert, right into the middle of it. Wynn and Milken shared a strong belief in family values: It was Wynn’s Mirage Resorts (financing: Milken) that pioneered the casino-as-family-vacation theme.

Other events in Wynn’s life are reminiscent of Martin Scorsese’s Casino. First, one of his vice presidents was discovered meeting with organized crime leaders in New York. (This didn’t keep Wynn from returning to the East Coast with a failed bid to build a huge casino in Bridgeport, Conn.) In the interval, Wynn’s daughter was kidnapped. After Wynn paid the $1.45 million ransom, she was returned.

President Clinton has promoted a 4 percent federal gambling tax and floated the idea for a federal commission to study the effects of gambling on society. For these reasons, the gambling community–traditionally supportive of Democrats–has swung to the right. Wynn led the charge, raising $500,000 last summer at a Dole fundraiser. And he has an entire state rolling the dice behind him: A study by New Hampshire Citizen Action shows that Nevada residents have donated $398,615 to the Dole campaign–roughly eight times more than New Hampshire, a state with about the same population and site of the first presidential primary.

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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