At a campaign stop in San Antonio this week, Mitt Romney took a moment to single out Harold Hamm for praise. At the surface, that’s wasn’t too surprising — Hamm is a billionaire oilman who’s been sharply critical of President Obama, and who’s donated to Romney’s campaign.
But as Michael Isikoff recently reported, there’s a little more to the connection between the two wealthy conservatives.
Just one month after he was named Mitt Romney’s top energy adviser, Oklahoma billionaire Harold Hamm contributed $985,000 to the top pro-Romney Super PAC — a donation that was the second largest the group collected in April, according to a new campaign disclosure filing today.
The cash infusion from Hamm, the chairman and CEO of Continental Resources — a firm that touts itself as “America’s Oil Champion” — is a new example of how big Super PAC donors can make their policy views heard by the campaigns they are supporting.
Just a few months ago, the Republican nominee announced that Hamm would serve as the chairman of the Romney campaign’s “Energy Policy Advisory Group,” putting Hamm in a position to shape a new “pro-jobs, pro-market, pro-American” energy agenda, which Romney would presumably pursue if elected.
And wouldn’t you know it, soon after Romney gave Hamm the influential post, the oilman contributed nearly $1 million to Romney’s super-PAC, on top of the money he’d already contributed to the Romney campaign itself.









