Nevada – Sheldon Adelson – $29.7 Billion

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In February 2015, he signed on to support the candidacy of Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina. Going against his image as a right-wing ideologue, Adelson penned an op-ed in The New York Times with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett in July 2014 advocating for compromise on immigration reform. “We believe it borders on insanity to train intelligent and motivated people in our universities – often subsidizing their education – and then deport them when they graduate,” the billionaires wrote. Adelson’s day job is running Las Vegas Sands, the largest gaming company in the world. Its biggest market is Macau, on the edge of China, which boomed for years but struggled in 2014.
The first month of 2015, Adelson named himself CEO of Las Vegas Sands China, which has casinos in Macau. He grew up sleeping on the floor of a Boston tenement house and bought his first newspaper corner with a $200 loan from his uncle when he was 12. Over the succeeding decades, he built a fortune running vending machines, selling newspaper ads, helping small businesses go public, developing condos and hosting trade shows. In 1995, Adelson sold his tech conference Comdex for $862 million and then spent $1.5 billion building the Venetian hotel and casino in Las Vegas. His fortune fell more than 85% to $3.4 billion in the 2009 recession from 2008; soon after he reaped billions from his big bet on Macau.