Top 10 federal campaign donors from Colorado in 2022
The top 10 Colorado donors to federal candidates and political spending committees during the 2022 election cycle gave a total of $16.5 million, with 60% of that going to Republican candidates and committees.
That’s based on a Colorado Sun analysis of campaign contributions from Coloradans via data from the Federal Election Commission.
The amount pales in comparison to national megadonors, who gave hundreds of millions to candidates and super PACs ahead of the 2022 election. Only the top two Colorado donors made OpenSecrets’ list of top 100 federal donors last year — Tatnall Hillman, an Aspen oil and gas heir and retired Navy captain, and Merle Chambers, a Denver philanthropist who led an oil and gas firm. Hillman gave $3.6 million to Republicans, while Chambers gave $2.6 million, most of it to Democrats.
National super PACs affiliated with the Republican or Democratic parties were the top recipients from Colorado’s top 10 donors, receiving more than $10 million of the $16.5 million the top donors donated to federal candidates and committees.
But plenty of candidates in Colorado and in other states, often in competitive contests, also benefited from the top Colorado donors’ campaign cash.
The top 10 donors may have given more money by routing their contributions through dark-money groups, political nonprofits that don’t have to disclose their donors. But that money is virtually impossible to track.
Here’s a detailed look at how each of the top 10 federal election donors from Colorado in 2022 spent their money:
1. Tatnall Hillman
Hillman inherited his wealth from his family’s oil, coal and steel businesses.
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Most of Hillman’s money went to Drain the DC Swamp, a Republican super PAC. That $2.7 million accounted for nearly all the PAC’s $2.8 million raised in 2022. Drain the DC Swamp spent nearly $2.9 million, much of it in Ohio, where the Republican congressional candidates it supported often lost in primary or general elections.
Hillman also gave directly to many national candidates, often exceeding the $5,800 candidate limits and racking up more than $250,000 in refunds.
Of that $250,000, nearly $60,000 was refunded by the campaign of recently elected House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, a California Republican. The maximum federal donation for candidates was $5,800.
Among the federal candidates who didn’t get cash from Hillman: Colorado GOP U.S. Senate nominee Joe O’Dea.
There’s no record of Hillman donating to the Colorado Republican Party’s federal committee or any state-level GOP PACs or candidates.
2. Merle Chambers
Chambers is a lawyer who served as CEO of a Denver-based oil and gas company for 20 years. After selling the company in 1997, she turned to philanthropy — and Democratic Politics.
She donated $627,500 to various Democratic National Committee accounts, including nearly $300,000 each to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee.
Chambers also donated to several federal committees for state Democratic parties and Democratic candidates in key U.S. Senate contests in Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Ohio and Wisconsin.
She also donated to the reelection campaign of Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet, who defeated O’Dea, as well as the five Colorado Democrats who won their U.S. House races last year.
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