Steve Wynn Makes Biggest Political Donation Yet
The donation was to a pro-Trump super PAC that is supporting Trump-endorsed Mehmet Oz and attacking Senate Democratic candidates this election cycle.
Casino and hotel industry billionaire Steve Wynn made his largest ever political donation in August. According to records filed this morning with the Federal Election Commission, Wynn donated $10 million on August 24 to a pro-Trump super PAC called Our American Century. The donation is in addition to $350,000 that Wynn donated to the PAC in March.
During the 2022 midterm election cycle, the PAC has spent $6.7 million on buying ads that back Republican Senate candidates and oppose Democratic candidates. So far in September, it has disclosed spending $5 million on ads attacking 10 Democratic Senate candidates. The group’s largest expenditures so far this cycle have been toward ads that support Trump-endorsed Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz. It has spent $910,000 on pro-Oz ads, according to FEC records.
Our American Century’s latest round of YouTube ads attack Democrats including Senate candidate Rep. Tim Ryan (Ohio), Sen. Raphael Warnock (Ga.) and others over voting to fund new IRS agents. Another ad published by the group this morning attacks Oz’s opponent John Fetterman as a reliable, party-line vote for President Biden’s agenda. The PAC’s YouTube ads have been viewed up to 3.2 million times in the past 5 days, according to Google’s ad transparency portal.
According to FEC records, Wynn’s previous largest donation was $5 million that he donated to the Mitch McConnell-tied Senate Leadership Fund in November 2020.
Very little is known about Our American Century. Its website offers no information about who runs it, and its filfings with the FEC provide a Virginia P.O. box for an address and list longtime compliance consultant Cabell Hobbs as its treasurer. The PAC spent $5.5 million in the 2020 cycle on ads that either backed Trump or attacked Biden.
In 2020, Our American Century was the subject of a complaint by the Campaign Legal Center for making an illegal donation to the Trump campaign by republishing and paying to promote a Trump campaign advertisement on YouTube. The ad run by Our American Century even included the original “paid for” disclosure of the Trump campaign, according to the complaint.
Wynn was the finance chair of the Republican National Committee from January 2017 through January 2018, before resigning amid allegations that in 2005 he had raped an employee of his Wynn Las Vegas casino. Wynn settled with the alleged victim for $7.5 million.
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