Face The State Staff Report
As Democrat candidates and campaigns ramp up the green rhetoric, more and more are receiving at least part of their financial backing from the oil and gas industry.
The latest to accept money from the oil industry in Colorado: term-limited House Speaker Andrew Romanoff's Savings Account for Education, titled Amendment 59 for this November's ballot.
Thomas Congdon, a former oilman from Denver, has consistently donated to Democrats in the past but has seriously increased his giving in last eight years.
Earlier this year, heir to an oil exploration company, retired in 2002 as chairman of the board of directors of the St. Mary Land & Exploration Co. Since then, his political donations have steadily increased.
In the last year alone, Congdon has given nearly $75,000 to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the campaign committee chaired by ranking Democrats in U.S. Congress with the mission of electing more Democrats to that body. The DCCC has targeted Colorado seats for several election cycles and has already made major media buys in Colorado's 4th Congressional District, reserving $667,000 of airtime for Democrat challenger Betsy Markey who is attempting to unseat Republican Rep. Marilyn Musgrave.
Donations at that level would seem an open invitation to the "Gang of Four", the ultra-wealthy donors largely credited with a Democrat takeover of both houses of the Colorado legislature in 2004. Members already include software multimillionaires Rutt Bridges and Tim Gill, billionaire medical supplies heiress Pat Stryker, and greeting-card company heir Jared Polis.
Polis most recently set a state campaign record by pumping $5.3 million of his money into his own bid for Colorado's 2nd Congressional District, where he prevailed in a heated three-way Democrat primary and is expected to win this November. He became a target of primary opponents Joan Fitz-Gerald and Will Shafroth, after he disclosed that substantial portions of his investment portfolio were tied to energy stocks.
Political analyst Eric Sondermann said anyone who shrewdly invests in the stock market will have to hold at least some energy stock, especially in the current economy.
"Anyone who is a serious investor has a diversified portfolio where energy stocks inevitably play a part," Sondermann said.
Sondermann added that it was not particularly surprising to see several candidates unload their stock holdings in oil and gas companies prior to elections.
"Three months before elections, you ditch the BMW, you ditch the Mercedes, and you go out a buy a Chevy Trailblazer," Sondermann said.
In June, Polis released TV ads where he pledged to “stand up to big oil.”
On the national level, billionaire financier and Democratic activist George Soros, who sank an estimated $27 million into unseating President George W. Bush in 2004, recently purchased a stake of $881 million in Petrobas, the Brazilian state-run oil company. It is now his investment fund’s largest holding.
Despite the major investment in oil, Soros has previously advocated taxing the emission of carbon dioxide in an effort to affect climate change. He told the Houston Chronicle Editorial board in 2006 that a global carbon tax would “re-orient investments to carbon-free forms of energy.”
According to a recent financial disclosure form submitted to the U.S. House of Representatives, Markey conceded that she sold tens of thousands of dollars in sock held in various energy companies over the last two years. She has contributed at least $25,000 of her own money to her current challenge against Musgrave.