In the new television ad from the Obama campaign, viewers learn, “Big Oil’s filling John McCain’s campaign with 2 million dollars in contributions…. After one president in the pocket of big oil, we can’t afford another.”
The timing of this, therefore, couldn’t be better.
Ten senior Hess Corporation executives and/or members of the Hess family each gave $28,500 to the joint RNC-McCain fundraising committee, just days after McCain reversed himself to favor offshore drilling, according to Federal Election Commission reports.
Nine of these contributions, seven from Hess executives and two from members of the Hess family, came on the same day, June 24th, the records show. The total collected in the wake of McCain’s reversal for the fund, called McCain Victory 2008, from Hess execs and family is $285,000.
We were alerted to the contributions by Campaign Money Watch, a non-partisan group that tracks campaign contributions. The contributions were given a quick mention deep in a report the group issued late last week, but with no names or other details provided. The Hess contributions are clearly newsworthy on their own.
They are, indeed. And when put in the larger context, they look even worse.
It turns out, once McCain started singing from the oil companies’ hymnal, and reversed his position on the benefits of coastal drilling, contributions from oil industry executives soared.
Campaign contributions from oil industry executives to Sen. John McCain rose dramatically in the last half of June, after the senator from Arizona made a high-profile split with environmentalists and reversed his opposition to the federal ban on offshore drilling.
Oil and gas industry executives and employees donated $1.1 million to McCain last month — three-quarters of which came after his June 16 speech calling for an end to the ban — compared with $116,000 in March, $283,000 in April and $208,000 in May.
The timing is especially significant. This isn’t an instance in which Big Oil was just supporting the Republican candidate because of partisan and/or ideological loyalties — this is Big Oil rewarding John McCain for reversing course and telling voters exactly what the industry wants the public to hear.
Take a look at the chart Ali at TP posted the other day, documenting McCain’s financial support from the oil industry over the years. It’s genuinely remarkable: “In Texas alone, June oil and gas-connected donations to McCain’s Victory ’08 Fund, his hybrid fundraising venture with the RNC and state committees, reached $1,214,100. Of that total, $881,450, or 73 percent, came after June 15. McCain announced his position in favor of offshore drilling on June 16.”
Now, I don’t know for sure how the typical voter might respond to a revelation like this. Maybe consumers don’t mind ExxonMobil generating bigger profits than any corporation in American history while gas prices soar. Maybe voters won’t think anything of a Republican candidate getting richly rewarded for doing exactly what Big Oil wants him to do.
But maybe Dems and the Obama campaign should keep telling voters about this anyway. My sense is the public won’t care for the idea that one candidate is in Big Oil’s back pocket. Call it a hunch.