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GOP Senate Candidate in Wisconsin Owns $315,000 in BP Oil Stock

Ron-Johnson-Wisconsin-GOP-Senate-candidate.jpg
Ron Johnson, Wisconsin Senate Candidate
Talk about out-and-out raw nerve.  Ron Johnson has it in spades.

He is the Oshkosh, Wisconsin businessman challenging Democrat Russ Feingold for a Senate seat in November.

He is also the one who has been lashing President Barack Obama for being too tough on BP in the tragic Gulf of Mexico oil fiasco. Now Johnson has disclosed he owns up to $315,000 in BP stock.

He has defended the oil giant against its critics and called for continued offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico and even in the Great Lakes region.

"The bottom line is we are an oil-based economy," he told online WisPolitics in mid-June, when asked about drilling in the Great Lakes.

Russ-Feingold-Senator-D-Wisconsin.jpg"There's nothing we're gonna do to get off of that for many, many years. I think we have to be realistic and recognize that fact and, you know, I think we have to, get the oil where it is, but we have to do it where it is."

On Friday, July 9, Johnson filed financial disclosure reports showing he owns stock in BP worth between $116,000 and $315,000. In addition, he holds stock in Exxon Mobil with a value between $50,000 and $101,000 and stock in Occidental Petroleum worth between $15,000 and $50,000.

In Oshkosh, Johnson owns PACUR LLC, a plastics manufacturing company.

Feingold's disclosure report filed last month lists a mutual fund valued between $50,000 and $100,000.

The Johnson campaign insists his stocks are just a drop in his growing money bucket --- hardly the type of earnings that would persuade or affect his policy positions.

Try telling that to a factory or office worker who has been unemployed for the past two years.  They wouldn't think of $315,000 as chump change.

What do you think?



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