What's Important 38

Thirty-eighth in a series.

This is from TPM's Election Central:

Ten senior Hess Corporation executives and/or members of the Hess family each gave $28,500 to the joint RNC-McCain fundraising committee, just days after McCain reversed himself to favor offshore drilling, according to Federal Election Commission reports.

Nine of these contributions, seven from Hess executives and two from members of the Hess family, came on the same day, June 24th, the records show. The total collected in the wake of McCain's reversal for the fund, called McCain Victory 2008, from Hess execs and family is $285,000.

We were alerted to the contributions by Campaign Money Watch, a non-partisan group that tracks campaign contributions. The contributions were given a quick mention deep in a report the group issued late last week, but with no names or other details provided. The Hess contributions are clearly newsworthy on their own.

The Washington Post reported last week that campaign contributions from oil industry execs rose in a big way in the last half of June, after McCain drew a huge amount of attention by reversing his opposition on June 16th to the federal ban on offshore drilling.

Late Late Update: A Hess office manager and her husband, an Amtrak worker, each chipped in $28,000 apiece, too.

Late Late Late Update: Turns out that the office manager and her Amtrak husband rent their home in Flushing, Queens.

Still Later Update: It's likely that the Amtrak worker makes considerably less than $100,000 a year.