The Change we still don’t believe

Jonn Lilyea | August 10, 2008

Ace of Spades‘ s Purple Avenger picked up a story buried in the Washington Post political blogs last week about Obama outpacing McCain in contributions from bundled donors in the oil industry;

Turns out, the biggest recipient of contributions from Exxon executives and employees during this campaign is not McCain. It’s Obama.

The non-partisan center writes: “Through June, Exxon employees have given Obama $42,100 to McCain’s $35,166. Chevron favors Obama $35,157 to $28,500, and Obama edges out McCain with BP $16,046 vs. $11,500.”

“McCain leads the money race with nearly every other top giver in the oil and gas industry, though — Koch Industries, Valero, Marathon Oil, Occidental Petroleum, ConocoPhillips,” the report says. “McCain also has a big edge with Hess Corp. — $91,000 to Obama’s $8,000 — which has gotten some attention. And, overall, McCain’s campaign has gotten three times more money from the industry than Obama’s has — $1.3 million compared to about $394,000.”

The report comes from OpenSecrets.com which also claims that McCain has begun pulling ahead of Obama since he came out for drilling.

But I went a step further and checked the largest donors of the two candidates;

First is Obama‘s and the second is McCain‘s. Aside from some universities and MoveOn.org in the Obama column, the lists are essentially the same – at least the same types of contributors…so where’s this change we’re hearing about all of the time? OpenSecrets offers the following disclaimer;

This table lists the top donors to this candidate in the 2008 election cycle. The organizations themselves did not donate, rather the money came from the organization’s PAC, its individual members or employees or owners, and those individuals’ immediate families. Organization totals include subsidiaries and affiliates.

Wait. I thought Obama wasn’t taking money from PACs and special interest groups. MoveOn.org is a special interest group…no different than the NRA. These chart shows contributions since 2004. What’s that $1.3 million from PACs in the last chart?

Well, they breakdown like this;

Most of that PAC money came in 2006, before the Presidential campaign started, but you can’t tell me he returned it and started with a zero balance. He’s not squeaky clean from PACs this year either;