Oil Drilling Taking Center Stage in Presidential Campaign Ads

From Bloomberg:
While polls show the economy as the top concern of voters, a review of political attack ads suggests a different issue dominates: energy.
Americans for Prosperity, an organization backed by oil interests, last week began airing its third television commercial since November, a campaign worth $6.1 million, attacking Obama’s green energy policies.
“Energy is the issue unless the entire economy starts to unwind,” said Stephen Brown, a lobbyist for oil refiner Tesoro Corp. (TSO) of San Antonio, Texas.The latest round brings the group’s total ad buys to $12.5 million this year, compared with a combined $5.7 million total spent on ads of all sorts by Obama and Priorities USA Action, a Washington-based super political action committee supporting him. Priorities on April 24 teamed with the League of Conservation Voters to begin a $1 million commercial run that accuses presumed Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, of being a protector of the oil industry.
That’s not the conclusion of the White House, which includes energy policy in a broader discussion about the economy andjob creation. The ability of oil interest groups, though, to attempt to carve out and elevate their issue is the latest example of how the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision has changed politics by allowing corporations, unions and wealthy individuals to spend unlimited sums to drive the debate.
Read the rest of the article here.

Connect with us on Facebook and Twitter!

Popular posts from this blog

Fracktivist in Dimock Releases Carefully Edited Video, Refuses to Release the Rest

The Second Largest Oil and Gas Merger - Cabot and Cimarex

Is a Strong Oil Demand Expected This Year?