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Joe Biden delivers a speech at the William Hicks Anderson Community Center, on July 28, 2020 in … [+]
Photo by Mark Makela/Getty Images
Billionaire Lynn Schusterman, who inherited an oil-and gas fortune from her late husband Charles, donated $5,600 this spring to a political committee that raises money for Joe Biden and the Democratic National Committee. Last month, the committee refunded that contribution, according to Schusterman’s daughter, Stacy. Biden’s campaign has pledged to not accept money from fossil-fuel executives or companies.
The elder Schusterman, 81, is the widow of Oklahoma wildcatter Charles Schusterman, who founded oil-and-gas-exploration firm Samson Resources in 1971 and died in 2000. In 2011, the family sold the business for $7.2 billion and directed about a third of the proceeds to their Charles & Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, which supports Jewish causes like Birthright Israel Foundation, the charity that provides funds for Jewish young adults to travel to Israel.
Lynn Schusterman still owns some energy assets, but she does not serve as an executive at any energy companies, which led her family to believe that Biden would accept her donation. “We had been told/thought it was only contributions from people with current roles, but they returned it despite Lynn not having one, and they didn’t say why,” Schusterman’s daughter, Stacy Schusterman, wrote in an email to Forbes. “Maybe it has to do with our family still having ongoing operations, or the foundation having been enabled by money made from oil and gas. Politics is strange!”
A spokesperson for the Democratic National Committee declined to comment. A spokesperson for the Biden campaign, which had previously told Forbes that it was not accepting money from fossil-fuel executives, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. Schusterman said that her mother, who has so far contributed more than $50,000 to other political causes this election cycle, does not plan to support Biden’s bid by donating to something like a super-PAC.
The Biden campaign previously returned a donation from billionaire George Kaiser, who owns a stake in the oil-and-gas company he inherited from his father, Kaiser-Francis Oil. The former vice president has accepted plenty of other money from billionaires. His list of donors now includes more than 120 members of the billionaire class. Trump, by comparison, has just over 100 billionaire donors.