Despite his vast wealth, Sheldon Adelson was not exactly a household name when the Republican presidential primary campaign got under way. But the casino magnate’s multimillion-dollar contributions to a pro-Newt Gingrich super PAC ended that.

Adelson’s support was linked to a shared stance with Gingrich as staunch supporters of Israel. Not quite so well publicized was Adelson’s financial stake in who wins the presidency.

A second Obama term, thanks to the incumbent’s proposed tax policies — could cost Adelson billions if he brought home profits earned at his overseas casinos, according to tax experts.

Since Gingrich flamed out in the primaries, Adelson and his wife Miriam have shifted their allegiance to GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, giving the pro-Romney super PAC Restore Our Future $20 million.

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With Romney as president, Adelson, the billionaire chairman and CEO of the Las Vegas Sands Corp., could bring his profits home tax-free.

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The Las Vegas Sands’ overseas operations account for 86 percent of its revenue from casinos, hotels and shopping, according to its 2011 annual report to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Sands’ most lucrative holdings are in Macau, a special administrative region in China.

Super PACs like Restore Our Future can accept unlimited contributions from billionaires, corporations and unions and spend the money on ads helping their favorite candidates, thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision.

Adelson and family’s nearly $54 million in contributions through Oct. 17 to conservative super PACs  puts the gambling industry at second place among super PAC donors’ corporate interests, according to the Center for Public Integrity’s analysis of data from the Center for Responsive Politics and the Federal Election Commission.

With no limits on giving, economic analysis of donations to super PACs are more about a few wealthy individuals’ interests than fulfilling an industry’s legislative goals.

Adelson and family are responsible for more than 98 percent of all casino industry contributions to super PACs — or $53.7 million out of $54.6 million — but his legislative agenda does not necessarily reflect that of the American Gaming Association, which lists as major issues online gambling and visa reform to allow more high rollers to come to American casinos.

Finance industry tops list
The top industry-donor to super PACs in the 2012 election cycle by far has been securities and investments at roughly $94 million, according to records.

The list of donors is dominated by a relatively small number of extremely wealthy hedge fund and private equity millionaires and billionaires. The top 10 individual donors to this industry are responsible for almost half of its super PAC contributions. Twenty-one people and two corporations have given $1 million or more.

The average itemized individual contribution to all super PACs is a little more than $23,000, according to the Center’s analysis. The average contribution to a super PAC from the investment industry is more than $96,000.

The third-leading industry-donor, chemicals and related manufacturing, accounts for $31 million of all super PAC contributions, and almost $27 million comes from Harold Simmons, his wife Annette and his company. Contran Corp. controls several subsidiaries involved in chemical manufacturing, waste disposal and other businesses.

Topping Simmons’ agenda is minimizing the regulatory reach of government, according to an interview he gave to The Wall Street Journal in March. Many of Contran’s subsidiaries are subject to environmental regulations that cut into profits.

The fourth-leading donor by industry is real estate at about $23 million thanks to seven-figure donations from the National Association of Realtors and Harlan Crow and Crow Holdings. The NAR favors access to credit and tax breaks so more people can afford to buy homes.

Election's enigmatic biggest corporate donor has contributed $5.3 million

Fifth is the homebuilding industry with about $22 million, again a category dominated by a single wealthy individual — Texan Bob Perry. He has given $21.5 million to conservative super PACs to date.

Perry is perhaps best known for financing the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ads during the 2004 election that helped sink John Kerry’s presidential campaign, but he has been a major donor to Texas political campaigns since the 1980s. He favors limiting damages a jury can award plaintiffs in civil suits.

Romney is ‘one of them’
The largest donors from the investment industry are not investment banks but an exclusive sub-group known as “alternative investing” — hedge funds and private equity firms.

Among the 26 donors to Restore Our Future who have given $1 million or more, 11 are in the hedge fund or private equity business.

Among the alternative investment industry’s top donors are Robert Mercer, a co-CEO of the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, who gave $1 million to Restore Our Future and $600,000 to Club for Growth Action, which favors eliminating the capital gains tax.

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Other top donors include TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts, PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, who now runs an investment firm, Paul Singer of Elliott Management, Wyoming investor Foster Friess and John Childs, chairman and CEO of a private equity firm.

Eighty percent of super PAC contributions from the investment community have gone to conservative super PACs, according to the Center's analysis.

James Simons, the founder of Renaissance Technologies, and George Soros*, the chairman of the hedge fund Soros Fund Management, have given a combined $10.1 million to pro-Obama and pro-Democratic super PACs.

Romney himself was a private equity man in his days at Bain Capital, which he co-founded.

“They view (Romney) as one of them,” said David Kautter, the director of the Kogod Tax Center at American University. “They tend to view him as someone who accumulated substantial wealth doing what they do, someone who understands what they do and someone who believes that what they do provides substantial value to the economy.”

Romney has said he would maintain, lower or eliminate the capital gains rate at various points during the race. Low rates benefit hedge fund and private equity managers, whose compensation comes primarily from investment returns.

Obama supports treating this type of compensation as regular income and subject to income tax rates up to 39.6 percent. In addition, Obama advocates raising the capital gains rate to 20 percent.

Adelson’s gamble on Romney
Romney was not Adelson’s top choice. Adelson invested $16.5 million in former House Speaker Gingrich via Winning Our Future, the primary pro-Gingrich super PAC, before the candidate dropped out May 2.

Now the top supporter of Restore Our Future, Adelson has said he is willing to spend $100 million electing Romney and a Republican Congress. The spending has made him newsworthy.

Adelson’s steadfast and occasionally controversial positions on Israel’s national security have also increased his profile in the national media and provided fodder for the opposition.

He opposes a two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinian Authority, once calling it a “stepping stone for the destruction of Israel and the Jewish people.”

He was also once one of the biggest backers of AIPAC — the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. But Adelson broke off relations with the group in 2007, when it supported increasing U.S. economic aid to Palestinians.

Adelson shifted his financial support to the Republican Jewish Coalition, where he sits on the board. The politically active nonprofit has reported spending $4.6 million on ads attacking Obama.

In an op-ed for the JNS News Service, Adelson wrote that American Jews should not trust Obama when it comes to Israel.

“For Obama, the issue is only political; for Israel, it’s existential — a matter of survival,” he wrote.

On paper, both Obama and Romney have similar positions on Israel — they both are committed to having a “special relationship” with the nation.

“Where they differ is in the way the current president perceives Israel,” said Aaron David Miller, an Israel expert at the Woodrow Wilson Center. “Israel is more of a matter of national security interest than it is a values argument.”

While Romney has a more “spontaneous, emotional instinct” to identify with Israel, Miller said, Obama seems less emotionally connected.

“In part it’s a generational thing,” Miller said — Obama came of age after the Israeli occupation. “And in part it’s a matter of temperament.”

Idealism or self-interest?
It is impossible to say for certain whether Adelson’s support of Romney is based on idealism or self-interest or both. Adelson’s spokesman refused to comment for this report.

Romney’s tax policies and Adelson’s financial interests are aligned, especially when it comes to tax treatment of overseas profits.

The Romney-backed “territorial tax system” would allow the Sands to bring its future foreign profits back to the U.S. free from U.S. income tax. Romney’s plan also calls for a “tax holiday” that would allow American companies with profits stashed abroad to repatriate them tax-free.

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A 2004 tax holiday resulted in the repatriation of one-third of all offshore earnings, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service.

Experts predict a territorial system would have a similar effect.

“I think it is very likely that more foreign earnings will end up back in the U.S. than we would have under the current worldwide system,” said Kautter.

Obama opposes the territorial tax system and has proposed a minimum tax for multinational corporations’ overseas earnings.

Under the current system, American companies that have operations abroad pay income tax to the country in which they earn the money then pay U.S. income tax when they bring profits home. Income taxes paid to the foreign government are deducted from the U.S. income tax when the money is repatriated; earnings left abroad are not subject to U.S. taxes.

Will McBride, the chief economist at the conservative Tax Foundation, calls the U.S. income tax on foreign profits a “repatriation tax.”

“Naturally that discourages business from bringing that money back home,” he said.

Obama and others argue that a territorial tax system would encourage American businesses to move overseas.

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The Sands holds $5.6 billion in in overseas profits, according to its 2011 annual report. Under Romney’s policy, Adelson and his company could repatriate it all for free.

The tax holiday combined with a switch to a territorial tax system would potentially provide a $1.8 billion tax break to the Sands the first year, according to a study from a liberal think tank, the Center for American Progress.

Adelson himself, as majority owner, stands to benefit.

“By a reasonable but conservative estimate, the tax cut he stands to get from Romney’s tax policies over a four-year term would be well over $2 billion,” said Seth Hanlon, the author of the study. “When you consider he’s going to spend $100 million on the presidential race, the return on investment is more than 2000 percent.”

*George Soros is the chairman of the Open Society Foundation, which provides funding for the Center for Public Integrity. For a list of Center donors, visit the website.

The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit, independent investigative news outlet.  For more of its stories go to publicintegrity.org.

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A doctor in a white lab coat stands at the pearly gates. The voice of God booms, “And your good deeds?” The man responds, “Well, as a dermatologist, I’ve been warning people that sunlight will kill them and that it is as deadly as smoking.”

His smug smile fades as God snaps, “You’re saying that sunlight, which I created to keep you alive, give you vitamin D and make you feel good, is deadly? And the millions of dollars you received from chemical sunscreen companies had nothing do with your blasphemy?”

A bottle of SPF 1000 sunscreen materializes in the dermatologist’s hand. “You’ll need that where you’re going,” God says.

The scene is part of a training video for tanning salon employees made by the International Smart Tan Network, an industry group. FairWarning purchased the video from Smart Tan's website for $75. 

The tone is tongue-in-cheek but it’s part of a defiant campaign to defend the $4.9 billion industry against mounting evidence of its questionable business practices and the harm caused by tanning. And, in an extraordinary touch, it is portraying doctors and other health authorities as the true villains – trying to counter a broad consensus among medical authorities that sunbed use increases the risk of skin cancer including melanoma, the most lethal form.

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To sway public opinion, the industry is drawing on its vast network of outlets; there are more tanning salons in the U.S. than there are McDonald’s restaurants. Some salon operators are putting trainees through a “D-Angel Empowerment Training” program that uses the video. It is intended to give employees talking points to use outside the salon to argue that tanning is a good source of vitamin D, and thus a bulwark against all manner of illness, including breast cancer, heart disease and autism.

The industry has also gone on the offensive with tactics that appear cribbed from Big Tobacco’s playbook to undermine scientific research and fund advocacy groups serving the industry’s interests.

Central to the industry’s message is the idea that tanning’s critics -- such as dermatologists, sunscreen manufacturers and even charities like the American Cancer Society -- are part of a profit-driven conspiracy. These critics are described as a “Sun Scare industry” that aims to frighten the public into avoiding all exposure to ultraviolet light. The tanning industry blames this group for causing what it calls a deadly epidemic of vitamin D deficiency, and tries to position itself as a more trustworthy source of information on tanning’s health effects.

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What tanning’s proponents rarely point out is that the notion of a vitamin D epidemic is disputed, and that even if you need more of the vitamin, you can safely and easily get it from dietary supplements and certain foods.

Even as they themselves use techniques cigarette companies pioneered, some in the tanning industry compare the Sun Scare group to the tobacco industry. “The Sun Scare people are just like Big Tobacco, lying for money and killing people,” Joseph Levy, executive director of Smart Tan, said in the D-Angel video.

Feeling the heat
The indoor tanning industry’s image has taken a beating since 2009, when the International Agency for Research on Cancer designated UV-emitting tanning devices as carcinogenic. The American Academy of Pediatrics and American Academy of Dermatology urge minors not to use sunbeds.

California and Vermont prohibit youths under 18 from tanning indoors, and New York this month imposed a ban for those under 17. Thirty-three states regulate teen tanning to a lesser extent, according to the research firm IBISWorld.

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The Federal Trade Commission and Texas Attorney General have tried to rein in marketing messages that misrepresent tanning’s risks. The Texas lawsuit is pending, but the FTC reached a settlement with the industry’s largest trade group, the Indoor Tanning Association, in 2010.

Still, misleading messages continue to be the norm, Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee reported in February. Undercover investigators phoned 300 salons and found 90 percent of the employees they spoke with said tanning did not pose a health risk. What’s more, 51 percent denied sunbeds increase cancer risk. Industry groups say the questions were posed in a leading way and that investigators would have been more fully informed of risks had they visited salons in person.

Despite the bad press, the indoor tanning industry is holding steady. It showed slow but continued growth over the last three years, and revenues are expected to edge up to $5 billion by 2017, according to IBISWorld. White women ages 18-21 are the leading customers: 32 percent of them tanned indoors in 2010, including 44 percent in the Midwest, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An estimated 28 million Americans tan indoors each year.

The changing demographics of melanoma
At an age when most feel invincible, 25-year-old Chelsea Price of Roanoke, Va., lives life in three-month increments. In January 2011, she was diagnosed with Stage III malignant melanoma.

Price’s first reaction was giggles. Her doctor, a kidder, had seemed unconcerned about the mole he’d removed, even reassuring her that he did it just to be safe. “I wish I was joking,” he said when he delivered the news.

After two invasive surgeries, Price shows no sign of melanoma today. But Stage III melanoma has a high rate of recurrence, so Price has a skin exam, CT scan and blood tests every three months to make sure she’s still cancer-free. “It dictates my life.”

Like many melanoma patients, Price is young, female and a former indoor tanner though it’s impossible to say with certainty whether the time she spent in sunbeds caused her illness. Price tanned indoors for just a couple of months each year and she never sunburned, “I am the person who did it safely and in moderation, but yet I’m here,” Price said.

Price is hardly alone. Skin cancer is the most common cancer in the U.S. and diagnoses of melanoma, though still rare, have increased steeply over the last 40 years. Melanoma among white women ages 15-39 has shown a particularly striking rise, up 50 percent from 1980 to 2004, according to the National Cancer Institute.

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The typical melanoma patient has changed in a generation, says Dr. Bruce Brod, associate professor of dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania. Twenty years ago, Brod’s melanoma patients were mainly middle-aged men. Today, he treats mostly young women for the cancer. “I think that’s thanks to the tanning salons,” Brod said.

Misleading messages
To neutralize its critics, the Indoor Tanning Association mounted an ad campaign in 2008 that claimed there were no compelling links between tanning and melanoma. It also praised UV light as a good source of disease-fighting vitamin D. The campaign’s architect was Richard Berman, the public relations executive whose work to defend the alcohol industry, and discredit unions and Mothers Against Drunk Driving, earned him the nickname “Dr. Evil” among his critics.

The FTC accused the tanning association of making false claims. The result was a 2010 settlement barring the group from making misleading statements or unfounded health claims. Advertisements suggesting that tanning improves health by providing vitamin D also sparked the Texas case against Darque Tan, a chain with more than 100 salons.

Yet the threat of sanctions has had a limited impact. Some even say the FTC agreement gave the Indoor Tanning Association carte blanche to make any vitamin D health claims it wants, as long as it displays a disclaimer. “The FTC suit was a triumph,” Robbie Segler, president of Darque Tan, wrote on the online industry forum TanToday in 2011.

The focus on vitamin D shifts the debate from tanning’s risks to its potential health benefits in a manner reminiscent of early tobacco marketing, said David Jones, a dermatologist in Newton, Mass. He co-authored a 2010 paper comparing tobacco and tanning advertising that found that cigarette makers once portrayed their products as healthy. “The tanning industry is doing the same thing,” he said.

Vitamin D plays a widely acknowledged role in bone health and immune function, but evidence that vitamin D prevents cancer is inconclusive. The National Cancer Institute says there is evidence that the vitamin may reduce risk of one cancer, colorectal cancer, but even those results are inconsistent.

Sowing doubt
Taking another page from the tobacco playbook, the tanning industry attacks research linking sunbeds to cancer. Industry leaders insist the relationship between melanoma and UV exposure is not well-understood. But DeAnn Lazovich, a cancer epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, says the latest research “provides even stronger evidence” that UV light from sunbeds is carcinogenic.

The industry also takes aim at its critics’ integrity. The D-Angel video, using vintage cigarette ads that featured doctors, tries to portray the medical profession in general as having shilled for the tobacco industry. While the American Medical Association pocketed industry money, and some tobacco companies claimed that doctors endorsed their brands, Levy makes the dubious assertion that the medical profession broadly endorsed smoking as healthful. He contends that physicians continue to endanger public health in the interest of profit. “It’s no longer tobacco that they're selling,” Levy says in the video. “Today, it's chemical sunscreen and (an) anti-UV message designed to tell you that any UV exposure is bad for you. It’s the same thing as doctors being arm-in-arm with Big Tobacco.”

Levy is a pivotal figure in defending the tanning industry. While a vice president of Smart Tan, he also served as an officer of two non-profit vitamin D advocacy groups – The Vitamin D Foundation and the Vitamin D Alliance – and was the executive director of a the Vitamin D Society, a Canadian group.

Yet the close ties between the tanning industry and the web of nonprofit groups that promote the health benefits of Vitamin D often are not readily apparent. The website for the Vitamin D Foundation, for example, discloses no industry affiliation, though tax documents reveal that their top personnel were all people in the business. In addition to Levy, they include the CEO of Beach Bum Tanning, a chain with 53 salons, and the president of the Joint Canadian Tanning Association, who also owns a large chain of salons.

These groups funnel money to vitamin D researchers and organizations that reinforce the industry’s claims about the vitamin’s health benefits. One such organization is the Breast Cancer Natural Prevention Foundation, which promotes vitamin D for breast cancer prevention. The founders include Dr. Sandra K. Russell, an obstetrician-gynecologist who appeared in advertisements for Smart Tan wearing her lab coat and a stethoscope.

Superman v. Clark Kent
In promoting the health benefits of UV-induced vitamin D, the tanning industry must tread carefully – after all, health claims were central to the FTC complaint, the Texas Attorney General’s case and the congressional report that blasted the industry. But the FTC cannot police what salon employees say when they are off the clock, and the D-Angel training program takes advantage of that.

In the training video, Levy is explicit about what employees can say at work and what they should say only on their own time. He encourages the D-Angels to follow what he calls the “Clark Kent/Superman” model. At the salon, employees should be Clark Kents who refrain from making health claims about vitamin D. Beyond salon walls, however, he urges employees to be superheroes who expose the lies about tanning and vitamin D. “Outside the salon, you can be a D-Angel,” Levy says. “You can promote a message to your friends and neighbors that the Sun Scare people are just like Big Tobacco, lying for money and killing people.”

But the reality for salon employees is more complex, says Lisa Graubard, a 15-year industry veteran who managed three salons on the New Jersey shore. Graubard, who lives in Lakewood, N.J., is not anti-tanning but says salon employees need better training. “There are definitely salons in the industry that are like, ‘We’re not going to use the c-word,’” she said, referring to the cancer risk.

Graubard acknowledged that some of her own customers kept tanning even after developing skin cancer. One man, she recalled, came to tan still bandaged from melanoma surgery. Graubard left the business after years of tanning left her face discolored.

The clientele at Graubard’s salon grew increasingly younger; eventually girls as young as 14 were begging to tan without the legally required permission slips. She said she would say no, but a chain salon down the street was known to turn a blind eye to the rules. “Consent? It was like a joke,” she said.

Meghan Rothschild, a self-described “splotchy white girl” from Northampton, Mass., says tanning gave her a confidence boost that she still misses today, eight years after being diagnosed with melanoma at age 20. She was angry with herself when she got the news, “The only thing I could think of is, ‘You did this to yourself, you idiot.’”

Today, Rothschild blames an industry she says downplays tanning’s risks, along with inadequate regulations that leave the decision of whether to tan up to youth who don’t always understand the consequences.

Schools teach kids to avoid alcohol and tobacco, Rothschild said. “But the kids aren’t smoking anymore. They are using tanning beds. The tanning booth is going to be the cigarette of our generation.”

FairWarning is a nonprofit, online investigative news organization focused on safety and health issues.