This post has been updated to clarify the relationship between the Las Vegas Review-Journal and Bristol (Conn.) Press.

If Sheldon Adelson wants to influence presidential election coverage in Nevada, a key swing state with one of the nation’s first votes, he now has his first big opportunity. Mike Hengel, editor of the Adelson family’s newest property, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, surprised his staff by resigning last week. He suggested that he might have clashed with the new owners and told the newsroom that “the management should have the right to pick their own editor," according to a Review-Journal reporter who tweeted quotes from Hengel’s parting address.

Thus Adelson, the billionaire casino mogul and Republican mega-donor, is free to install whomever he sees fit to lead the news operation of Nevada's largest paper, which has a daily circulation of 167,000 and 184,000 on Sundays. He had that power as soon as his family paid $140 million for the newspaper and several sister publications, of course, but now he can do so without the unseemly appearance of firing the incumbent.

In an editorial published the day after Hengel’s resignation, the Adelsons pledged “to publish a newspaper that is fair, unbiased and accurate,” adding that they plan to hire an ombudsman. That’s nice, but the real concern is that Adelson’s influence might be discreet enough to escape detection.

And he seems to like discretion. Adelson didn’t identify his family as the Review-Journal buyer until a week after the sale — and that was only after days of speculation culminated with a report in Fortune that outed him as the man behind the purchase. He went so far as to tell CNN during a Republican debate in Las Vegas that week that he had “no personal interest” in the paper.

The Adelsons claimed they always planned to go public with their purchase but preferred to remain anonymous during debate week so as not to become a distraction — an assertion I’d like to nominate for the Lame Excuse Hall of Fame.

Hengel, as he left, seemed to suspect that Adelson had already been trying to quietly influence news coverage from behind the scenes. The Review-Journal recently reported that before the sale closed, three reporters were mysteriously assigned to probe a trio of local judges, including one who was presiding over a case involving Adelson’s casino empire and with whom Adelson had butted heads on the witness stand.

At the time of the assignment, Review-Journal journalists were unaware of Adelson’s interest in the paper, so they had no way of knowing about the conflict of interest.

“When the request was handed down, it seemed like little more than a waste of time and resources,” Hengel said in a Dec. 18 article. “I still think it was a waste of time, but now I wonder what really was behind it.”

Hengel isn’t alone. Steve Collins, a longtime reporter at the Bristol (Conn.) Press, also resigned last week after his newspaper published a story that was critical of the judge in the Adelson case. Bristol Press editor and publisher Michael E. Schroeder also manages the News + Media Capital Group, the company Adelson used to buy the Review-Journal.

It’s possible that Adelson will name a terrific journalist to the top post at the Review-Journal — someone who won’t abide an owner’s meddling. It’s also possible, as I’ve written before, that the presidential race isn’t Adelson’s primary focus.

But even the best editor’s decisions are only as good as the information he or she possesses. And Adelson’s early track record on disclosure as the Review-Journal’s new owner isn’t very good.