Panetta’s Dirty Donors: Defense & Fossil Fuels
Image: An F-35 Lightning II, marked AA-1, lands Oct. 23 at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. source
Why is Panetta pro-war and pro-gas? Probably because some of his biggest donations are from the “defense” and energy industries. He has received at least $211,000 from defense contractors and $49,000 from the fossil fuel industry.
Defense
Let’s start with war and defense.
According to publicly available information at the Federal Election Commission, Panetta has received at least $211,000 from defense contractors. To come up with this number, we went through Panetta’s 2023-2024 donors and looked into each company that gave $1000 or more. The ones listed below are the ones that we identified as defense related. We then searched through all his campaign finance records, starting in 2016, for these corporations. You can download the data here.
Military PAC Donations to Panetta
Northrop Grumman: $29,000
Boeing: $28,500
Lockheed Martin: $28,000
Raytheon (aka RTX, formerly UTC PAC): $26,000
General Atomics: $21,000
General Dynamics: $16,000
Huntington Ingalls: $10,000
Honeywell International: $37,500
Bae Systems: $15,500
Total: $211,500
(Table updated Dec 17, 2023)
With large donors like this, it is no surprise that he has consistently voted to escalate war in Ukraine. For example, Panetta was one of a handful of congresspeople calling for F-16s in Ukraine, and Panetta approved the use of cluster munitions in Ukraine (summary).
Fossil Fuels
In the same time frame, Panetta has received at least $49,000 from fossil fuel. This primarily, though not exclusively, comes from the natural gas industry. To generate this list, we searched Panetta’s FEC records from 2016 to 2023 using the terms “gas”, “energy”, and “BASF.” You can also download the data here.
Fossil Fuel PAC Donations to Panetta
Sempra Energy: $10,000
National Propane Gas Association: $10,000
PG&E: $10,000
American Gas Association: $5,000
Duke Energy: $1000
Nextera Energy: $1000
National Fuel Gas Company: $1,000
Total: $49,000
All of these donations from the gas industry make it clear why Panetta has recently voted in favor of the Mountain Valley Pipeline and erroneously claimed that natural gas is part of a transition to clean energy. The gas industry has paid him to think this way.
His donations from chemical giant BASF are also disturbing. BASF, despite recently greenwashing its brand with claims of sustainability, was ranked as the second worst air polluting company in the US in 2020. And in 2022 it was ranked as the third most obstructive corporation on climate policy in the world. Sempra, another of Panetta’s dirty donors, was ranked 5th. These corporations are giving money to Panetta so that he will continue to be complicit in slow-walking climate action.
Our government should not be in the pocket of dangerous corporations. We need a congress person who will not be bought, which is why Sean Dougherty will not be accepting any corporate money or donations from individuals over $500. This will make winning much harder, but victory much sweeter.