Oil Donations to Prez Campaigns

August 8, 2008 3:30pm by

I just discovered a cool site that tracks all of the donations between Oil companies and candidates — Oil Change USA.

All of their data is in either list form, or as below, based on relationships. Different views show Relationships, Politicians, and Oil Companies .

Check out these two funky graphics as to who gave what to each Presidential Candidate: While McCain certainly has received more Oil firm donations ($971,418), Obama certainly is no stranger to Oil company largesse ($345,150).

John McCain Oil related Donations:
Oil_mccain

Barack Obama Oil related Donations:
Barack_oil_donors

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What's been said:

Discussions found on the web:
  1. Tyler Lang commented on Aug 8

    It’s too bad that there is something wrong with receiving money from oil companies. Yet by doing so, the candidate leaves himself open to all kinds of attacks.

  2. Brian commented on Aug 8

    did you notice that ExxonMobil gave more money to Obama ($37K) than to McCain ($31K)? and he’s the one trying to hit them with a windfall profits tax!

    Oh wait, this is money given by employees of the firm, not the firm themselves. Not quite as interesting, especially when one woman lists herself as Exxon Mobil Corp/ Physician

  5. JL commented on Aug 8

    “While McCain certainly has received more Oil firm donations ($971,418), Obama certainly is no stranger to Oil company largesse ($345,150)”

    But that’s what you hedging your bets. Quite clear who “big oil” really wants to have in the White House.

  6. BelowTheCrowd commented on Aug 8

    I shouldn’t have to take you to task for something so obvious, but I guess in this case I do.

    Those two charts are not comparable, and aren’t even trying to show the same information.

    Here is the Obama chart that compares to your McCain chart: http://prezoilmoney.oilchangeusa.org/index.php?type=search&can=P80003338&v=graphs&congress_num=total

    The other chart you showed is a “relationship” chart which displays key links between all oil companies and all candidates. It is also filtered to show only the largest companies and largest donations.

    To generate the comparable chart for any candidate, go to the “zip and name search” and type in the name.

    -btc

    ~~~
    BR: Good find — I thought they looked too different, burt could not find the Obama one. I’ll fix above.

    (code/cut/paste/upload/embed)

    Yeah, That’s much better — thanks!

  7. hr commented on Aug 8

    How come McCain, Giuliani, Hillary, (Romney?) and others are pictured on Barack’s chart?

    Are these two charts comparable?

  8. BelowTheCrowd commented on Aug 8

    hr,

    See my note above. The charts don’t compare. I provided a link to the comparable one.

    -btc

  9. Luciano commented on Aug 8

    Barry,
    While it is accurate that McCain got 3 times more donations than Obama, the second graph is NOT the correct graph for Obama! Please fix that.

  10. edhopper commented on Aug 9

    This is an old corporate trick that goes back to Enron. Give most of your money to one candidate, but give a little to the other. That way when the influence and corruption become apparent, you can just say it was spread over both parties and no one needs to be taken to task.

  12. Thomas Shawn commented on Aug 9

    I sorta just see this a protection money ala’ Jesse Jackson’s main source of income.

    How is it that a publicly traded corporation can do this, I don’t understand … I mean, is it on their balance sheet?

  13. falco commented on Aug 9

    Hi, it´s easy to put that kind of charts and the relation between republicans and petroleum lobbies.

    BUT I think it´s a little fool see only the half glass…

    What about a similar chart between WallStreet donations. Maybe you could notice about 71% of donations were related to democrats… and what about the wallstreet track record “choosing” presidents?(simply astonishing ;-).

    And thinking very bad when this air castle start to tumble, were when the republicans start to talk about regulation, hedge fund taxes, more controls, etc… I know there were enough fundamental arguments for this crisis, but the point it´s that started at that moment (by chance???).

    This is not really a political post as I´m a foreigner… I don´t believe in markets neither in goverments…

    http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/index.asp

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