That was the claim by a senior McCain advisor on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Friday, Aug. 8. I did not catch her name, but as a cite she claimed it was supported by figures supplied by “The Center for Responsive Politics”. I located their website at OpenSecrets.org, and looked up donations from the oil & gas industry to all the candidates. Lo & behold, they say John McCain has received $1,332,033 from the oil industry, while Barack Obama has received just $394,465. Not only has McCain received more than Obama, he has received more than three times as much from Big Oil.
McCain’s surrogates are now reduced to telling baldfaced lies on national television, even claiming those lies are supported by independent factcheckers. The Straighttalk Express has derailed and its smoking wreck has been left behind by the Disinformation Special.
But the intrepid reporter called her on it, right? I mean, you only had to look it up because you perhaps had to leave the room and therefore missed the tough follow-up question. Right? Right?
Anyway, does Opensecrets give any information on who they count as the “Oil & Gas Indutry”? I would imagine there could be some flexibility in that definition. Does it include everyone from ExxonMobil HQ to te guy who runs the local gas station? I not seeing anything that really says.
Yes, they describe the sector as including multinational and independent oil and gas producers and refiners, natural gas pipeline companies, gasoline service stations and fuel oil dealers. Though it includes gasoline service stations, I am under no illusion that the bulk of those contributions, totaling some $182 million since the 1990 election, came from Joe Oilchange down on the corner.
The idea that some corporation is giving money to these folks is wrong. When you give a contribution you must list your employer. Opensecrets and others then look at these employers and misleadingly report that “Big Oil” or “Big Tobacco” or whomever gave a certain amount of money to candidates. No, the people who work for companies in these industries gave this money. It could be the CEO or it could be the secretary. It’s really a misleading way of looking at contributions.
Along those lines I trolled OpenSecrets for 527’s and PACs relating to oil. For 527’s they barely exist for oil and can be safely ignored ($2,000 total expenditures so far…not even on the radar).
For PACs there is a lot more money from oil & gas. Looking at this page though you can see the oil & gas industry has favored republicans 72% to the dem’s 28%. If you sort on Democrats highest to lowest you can see there are barely any who have given more to the Dems than to the Repubs and even when that happens they have given to both and the Dems barely got more (few thousands of dollars.
The initial cite in the OP maintains it tracks contributions above $200 and even individuals giving are included if they know what industry they work for (some exception for “ideological” donations I do not understand).
Only way you can make the statement claimed true is if they count the zillion little donors for Obama (IIRC his average donation is something like $140) and figure what industry they work for. But nowhere am I seeing any kind of stats on that so even if true how did they get that number?
This is true enough but I really doubt that $1,300,000.00 was all made up of $50.00 and $100.00 contributions from the lowest tier of workers within those industries.
They do but so far there is a 70/30 disparity as to which side they are favoring. That combined with Obama making substantially more from individual contributions makes it somewhat likely Big Oil will find a cold shoulder when they come to the White House hat-in-hand (assuming Obama wins).
Wait till Oberman gets his hands on em. They’ll pay dam it.
Honestly though it’s the kind of lie that should be pointed out. They go on national TV and throw it out there knowing that many average citizens will say, “It must be true or they wouldn’t say it on national TV.” Both parties need to be called on that kind of crap until they get the message to stop doing it because it makes them look bad.
I think this may be what the McCain advisor was talking about in the OP. It’s a pretty petty nitpick, but it conveniently dovetails with the anti-McCain Big Oil parody website the DNC themselves built.
I think there is some value in knowing what industry individual donations come from as that is a metric worth knowing.
That said the secretary’s donation is not in the same ballpark as the overall corporate stance and which way they lean. All the employee’s in the company donating one way hardly equals what the corporate policy is when they go to lobby congress.
For that I would point to the corporate PACs since that seems to be where the corporations flex their money muscle. In this case Exxon Mobil favors Republicans to Democrats to the tune of 87% - 13% (although looking at the list none of that money has gone to a presidential candidate…not sure what the rules all are on that).
Still, it is telling inasmuch as we know Exxon as a corporate entity prefers conservatives pretty clearly.