From 2014 through 2025, oil companies and their trade groups wrote 76 checks to James Gallagher's California campaigns, worth $220,000, according to the donor records CalMatters' Digital Democracy keeps on him.

Gallagher was sworn in as the congressman for California's 1st District on June 10, 2026. Six weeks later, on July 21, he brought an amendment to the House floor. It asked the federal government to study how it could override the California rules those same companies fight.

Who paid

The donors:

• Chevron: $48,400 over 17 checks, 2014–2024. Chevron's own disclosure reports show the same checks: $4,700 in 2020, $4,900 in 2022, $5,500 in 2023 and $5,500 in 2024.
• California Resources Corporation: $30,300
• Phillips 66: $23,800
• Marathon Petroleum: $22,500, plus $2,500 from Tesoro, the refiner it absorbed
• Valero: $20,900
• PBF Energy: $16,000
• California Independent Petroleum Association: $13,700
• Signal Hill Petroleum: $10,400
• Western States Petroleum Association, the industry's lobbying arm: $8,000
• BP, Berry Petroleum, Occidental, Aera Energy and ExxonMobil: $23,500 between them

That's $220,000 from 15 oil companies and trade groups. The checks didn't stop in 2025: California Resources, PBF, Marathon and Occidental all gave again that year.

Chevron and the Western States Petroleum Association are the two biggest lobbying spenders in Sacramento. In the first nine months of 2025 alone, they spent $19.8 million between them lobbying California officials.

What his amendment asked for

The amendment was attached to H.R. 8800, the annual defense bill. Here is how the official summary describes it:

"open up a study to be conducted to explore mechanisms by which federal authority can preempt or otherwise mitigate state actions that effectively undermine domestic refining capacity critical to national defense."

The summary never names a state. The amendment's text does. It directs the Government Accountability Office to study how federal authority could "preempt, repeal, or otherwise mitigate" state actions, and to use "as a case study mechanisms available with respect to actions taken by the State of California." Gallagher's office said it plainly: the amendment was about the national defense impacts of California's energy policies.

In other words, he asked Washington to map out how to override the refinery rules his donors have spent years fighting in Sacramento, and he called it national security so it could ride on the defense bill.

The industry's own story doesn't match his

The pitch is that California is driving refineries out of the state. The refiners haven't always said so.

When Phillips 66, which gave Gallagher $23,800, announced it was closing its Los Angeles-area refinery, the company said the decision came from changing market fundamentals, "not because of recently passed regulations" on the state's refining sector.

Valero, which gave him $20,900, did blame California's rules when it announced it would close its Benicia refinery. It announced the closure six months after the Bay Area Air District fined it nearly $82 million, the largest penalty in the agency's history. The fine covered a history of toxic chemical releases, and a 2019 inspection had found that the refinery failed to report toxic emissions from its hydrogen system.

That is what "state actions" against a refinery look like in practice: a record fine for releasing toxic chemicals into the air of a Bay Area town.

Four votes short

The amendment failed. Roll call 261, July 21, 2026: 212 yes, 216 no.

• Republicans: 207 yes, 7 no. Those seven defections sank it. Three votes the other way and it would have passed.
• Democrats: 4 yes, 209 no. Two of the four were Central Valley Californians, Jim Costa and Adam Gray.
• One independent voted yes.

Every California Republican in the chamber voted with Gallagher: Ken Calvert, Vince Fong, Darrell Issa, Young Kim, Tom McClintock, Jay Obernolte and David Valadao.

Gallagher spent eleven years in the California Assembly, more than three of them as Republican Leader, taking oil money the whole time. California Environmental Voters put him in its "Polluter Caucus". He has been in Congress for less than two months, and the oil industry hasn't had to wait for a return on its $220,000.

Californians deserve a congressman who works for them, not for Chevron. We deserve better.

Sources

• Oil-industry contributions to Gallagher, 2014–2025: CalMatters Digital Democracy; Chevron's corporate contribution reports for 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2024
• House Amendment 249 to H.R. 8800, sponsored by Rep. James Gallagher (R-CA-1); amendment text in House Report 119-755; failed 212–216 on roll call 261, July 21, 2026
• Official portrait, 119th Congress