Big Oil Lost Its Biggest Bet This Cycle
What can $1.8 million buy you in California these days?
Apparently not a state Senate seat.
But that didn’t stop the oil and gas industry from trying. A political action committee funded exclusively by Chevon, Valero, Phillips 66, and Marathon Petroleum spent big in an attempt to influence the race for the newly-drawn Senate District 38 seat.
Democrat Catherine Blakespear shot to the top of big oil’s naughty list after she ripped them for “taking advantage of working families and making inflation worse” and called on the California Attorney General to investigate any “price gouging” and “impose hefty fines if any evidence of illegal market manipulation is uncovered.”
So the oil and gas PAC, which calls itself “The Coalition to Restore California’s Middle Class, Including Energy Companies who Produce Gas, Oil, Jobs and Pay Taxes,” poured just under $1.8 million into defeating Blakespear. It’s the largest expenditure that the oil and gas industry PAC made this cycle. But Blakespear won the race handily, beating Republican Matt Gunderson by over four points.
It’s one thing to place big bets and lose. It’s a whole other thing to spend over a million dollars to support a candidate who responds by publicly denouncing your support.
🤷🤷🤷
But that’s exactly what happened in Senate District 8, where the Coalition to Restore California’s Middle Class spent over $1.5 million to support Angelique Ashby, who appears to hold an insurmountable lead with 82% of the votes counted.
After the PAC ran a television ad supporting her, a top Democratic operative told the Sacramento Bee that support from oil and gas is “definitely a double-edged sword” and “not helpful.’”
Ashby herself took to Twitter to “denounce support from Big Oil” and say that she “look[ed] forward to working with the Governor on his proposal to stop windfall profits by oil companies and out-of-control gas prices.”
You’d almost wager that big oil is playing three dimensional chess—wielding its toxic brand in support of a candidate hoping to sink her campaign. But nothing about the PAC, from the quality of its television ads to its clunky name, suggest placing your chips on cunning over incompetence.