07-08-07 by dugan
While looking at the Opensecrets.org list of the top 20 Congressional recipients of oil industry money in the last election cycle, we found that half of them, mostly incumbents, lost their races or their seats. They simply lost the power of incumbency.
Is this what oil money does to candidates? Or are the kinds of candidates who take Big Oil’s money just no longer to the taste of voters?
Here are the losers, their oil and gas totals for 2004-2006 and their positions on the contribution list:
Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, $242,000 (2)
Sen. Conrad Burns of Montana, $231,025 (3)
Sen. George Allen of Virginia, $209,900 (4)
Sen. Jim Talent of Missouri, $205,720 (5)
Rep. Richard Pombo, California, $192,248 (6)
Denise Bode, Oklahoma, $169,968 (House candidate, open seat) (10)
Sen. Mike DeWine, Ohio, $121,750 (15)
Rep. Henry Bonilla, Texas, $120, 926 (17)
Rick O’Donnell, Colorado, $117,700 (House candidate, open seat) (19)
Rep. Tom DeLay, Texas $117,640 (resigned after indictment) (20)
Even if we eliminate nonincumbents Bode and O’Donnell, and resignee DeLay, bringing the starting list down to 17, we still have a 41% loss rate for incumbents on the list.
A 2005 academic study of the power of incumbency in the Senate found that incumbents had won 80% of the time since 1914. House numbers would be a little lower, but in the same range.
Analysts have more detailed reasons for the losses above: mostly, in 2006, ties to (former oilman) President Bush and the incumbents’ support for the war in Iraq. Yet even those reasons are linked in the popular mind to oil.
Maybe these results won’t stop the next candidate from currying favor with Big Oil–it’s an ingrained habit. The oil and gas industry put $19.1 milllion into direct candidate contributions in the last Congressional election cycle.
But it’s a sign that cozying up to oil will stain even an incumbent.