What is this "appearance of conflict of interest" you speak of

This weekend, Republican presidential hopefuls, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and former Texas Gov. Rick Perry (R), will travel to Las Vegas to audition for billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson’s backing at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s spring meeting. In their speeches, the candidates will make their pitch to Adelson that they mostly closely share his interests.
Mega donor Adelson and his wife Miriam spent nearly $150 million on the 2012 election — more than the Koch brothers — and are likely to match that amount this campaign cycle. With his $32 billion net worth, Adelson was the single largest campaign donor in American history.

Early in the last presidential election, Adelson made a decision to give a majority of his donations to conservative nonprofits which do not disclose donors. At the time, Adelson said he believed the media’s use of the phrase “casino mogul” when discussing his contributions is not helpful to the people he is trying to elect. By the time President Obama was reelected, Adelson had given close to $50 million of his contributions to dark money groups that were created after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stream of rulings against political spending limits.
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But even though his donations may not be disclosed, his intentions are still transparent.
Last year, the “Sheldon Adelson primary,” as it has been called, auditioned Gov. Chris Christie (R), former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) and Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R), among others. Those candidates and the ones speaking this year will all try to one-up each other by appealing to the policies Adelson most strongly supports.

Adelson owes hundreds of millions of dollars in taxes each year, a low amount considering his wealth that he achieves through loopholes like shifting his stock holdings in ways that exempt the transfers from federal taxes. The GOP candidates speaking at this weekend’s meeting have all proposed making his rate even lower.

Bush has called for eliminating the capital gains tax which would have given Adelson and his wife an estimated $139.7 million tax cut in 2013 on dividends from their shares in Adelson’s company alone, according to a Center for American Progress report. Meanwhile, Cruz co-sponsored a 2013 tax proposal that called for replacing all income, payroll and employment taxes with a 23 percent sales tax. If that were to pass, Adelson’s taxes would be almost completely eliminated. And Perry’s proposed 20 percent flat tax would give Adelson an almost $142 million tax cut.
One of the issues most important to Adelson is his staunch opposition to a Palestinian state and his unwavering support for Israel. Adelson owns a popular newspaper in Israel called the Israel Hayom, which is widely recognized as having the singular goal of promoting Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu. Although Israeli campaign finance rules prevent contributions from non-Israeli citizens, “the existence of a newspaper like Israel Hayom egregiously violates the law, because [Adelson is] actually is providing a candidate with nearly unlimited resources,” Hebrew University economist Momi Dahan told the American Prospect.