Steve Wynn Bashes Obama In The Name Of His Employees, Who Are Pro-Obama

Another super-rich CEO is wading into the presidential election -- but his employees aren't on board.

Steve Wynn wants you to know why he’s voting for Mitt Romney: his employees. “I’ve become so concerned about what’s happening in Washington because it’s affecting the living standards of my employees,” the billionaire owner of Wynn Resorts in Las Vegas told CNBC Friday. “Their paychecks are shrinking in real time because of government irresponsibility and management of this deficit.”

Yet as Wynn claims that the president’s policies have left his workers “filled with anxiety,” many of his casino’s unionized cooks, bellhops and chambermaids are rallying behind Barack Obama, reports The Guardian.

And while there’s nothing new in unions backing a Democrat and big business backing a Republican, the newspaper notes, Super Pacs have “pitted Nevada’s casino owners and their workers in an unprecedented duel.”

For gaming tycoons like Wynn, Sheldon Adelson and Donald Trump, that duel is playing out in the media, where each has repeatedly accused Obama of making life more difficult for business owners and, in turn, their employees.

“I’ll be damned if I want to have [Obama] lecture me about small business and jobs,” Wynn said in a television interview last week. “Guys like me are job creators and we don’t like having a bulls-eye painted on our back.”

Meanwhile, many of the people who keep Wynn’s empire running are mobilizing in support of Obama. “I don’t think it’s a fair fight but you have to do everything you can to level the field,” said one baker at the MGM casino who had taken leave to galvanize Obama supporters across the city, The Guardian reports.

Differences of opinion between business owners and their employees over who the next president should be aren’t confined to Vegas.

David Siegel, a Florida real estate tycoon, warned employees last week that voting for Obama would likely cause them to lose their jobs. And employees of the Murray Energy Company, the largest privately-owned coal company in the U.S., were forced to lose a day’s pay to attend a mandatory Romney rally in August.

Correction: A previous version of this report incorrectly said Wynn is the owner of MGM casino. The mistake has been corrected.