Big Money from Big Utilities

This is how serious Pacific Gas and Electric and the other Big Utilities in CA are about defeating Prop. 7: They contributed $24 million dollars to the No on Prop 7 campaign. Compare that to the total giving by electric utilities to candidates in the 2004 and 2005 election cycles: $30.3 million. That’s right, the Big Utilities in CA are spending almost as much as all the nation’s electric utilities did in two election cycles just to defeat prop. 7. And that’s not to mention the millions spent over the years “sponsoring” events and doling out grants to ‘environmental’ groups. I expect we’ll be seeing some gloom and doom television commercials to incite hysteria in the coming days.

On a related note, California’s Democrat and Republic Party committees were among the highest recipients of energy industry money in 2004 and 2006, taking $1,113,180 and $4,000,357 respectively.