I admit it. The Fossil Fools Day protests have me really excited. Just when it seemed that energetic progressive protests had faded into a discouraged, dissipated mist, the Fossil Fools organizers and participants showed that they really know how to shake things up, acting peacefully, but with disciplined civil disobedience, all around the world.
I’m inspired by the work of the Fossil Fools folks to draw some more attention to the role that fossil fuel funds play in the political process. Last night, I looked at the crude oil cash taken by the top presidential candidates. This morning, I’m looking at the U.S. Senate.
The good people at the Center for Responsive Politics, who run Open Secrets, used information available from the Federal Elections Commission to put together the following list of the 20 senate candidates who have taken the most campaign donations from big oil companies.
John Cornyn – Texas
Pete Domenici – New Mexico
James Inhofe – Oklahoma
Mitch McConnell – Kentucky
Mary Landrieu – Louisiana
Pat Roberts – Kansas
Steve Pearce – New Mexico (candidate)
Kay Bailey Hutchison – Texas
John Barrasso – Wyoming
Elizabeth Dole – North Carolina
Mark Pryor – Arkansas
Lamar Alexander – Tennessee
Max Baucus – Montana
Jeff Sessions – Alabama
Sam Brownback – Kansas
Thad Cochran – Mississippi
Norm Coleman – Minnesota
Robert Schaffer – Colorado (candidate for Senate)
Saxby Chambliss – Georgia
John Sununu – New Hampshire
Have you noticed any pattern in this list? If you follow the Senate closely, you’ll see that all but three of these twenty big oil senate candidates are Republicans.
The three Senate Democrats, Max Baucus, Mark Pryor and Mary Landrieu, are ideological extremists with proven right wing track records – politicians who are Democrats in name only because the Democratic name has been convenient for their careers. We’ve called these three Democrats out many times before, for breaking the filibuster against right wing judge Samuel Alito, and for doing the bidding of credit card companies on the Bankruptcy Bill, for example.
In these days when we are facing record-breaking gasoline prices at the same time that big oil corporations are making record profits, any politician on this list is unfit to serve in the United States Senate.
