RED ALERT: Did anti-Obama campaign contributions dictate which Chrysler dealers were shuttered?
A tipster alerted me to an interesting assertion. A cursory review by that person showed that many of the Chrysler dealers on the closing list were heavy Republican donors.
To quickly review the situation, I took all dealer owners whose names appeared more than once in the list. And, of those who contributed to political campaigns, every single one had donated almost exclusively to GOP candidates. While this isn’t an exhaustive review, it does have some ominous implications if it can be verified.
I don’t know – while there are mostly donations to Republican parties and candidates on that list, I see a lot of donations to Democrats too.
I don’t tend to buy into conspiracy theories, and I think a lot more would need to be explored in order to make the charge that this is political revenge on the part of the Obama administration.
For instance: What is the break-down of political contributions of the population of all Chrysler dealerships – and how does that compare to this list? How about the non-closing dealerships?
Also, this conjecture on my part, but I believe that small business owners/entrepreneurs would tend to be more on the conservative/Republican side of the aisle, so this list may indicate nothing but that.
Having said all that, I cannot believe that this list was developed in a political vacuum. This finding was a little disturbing: I have thus far found only a single Obama donor (and a minor one at that: $200 from Jeffrey Hunter of Waco, Texas) on the closing list.
You decide. Here is the list of Chrysler dealers slated to be closed, along with the owners’ recent political contributions.
