It's a gas! How a fracking tycoon gave Tom Corbett to Pa.

If it weren't for Pennsylvania's lax campaign finance laws, allowing for unlimited donations, and an Oklahoma tycoon's bottomless checkbook, Tom Corbett never would have been elected attorney general in 2004, which means he would not have become governor in 2010. Instead, Corbett is now determined to make Pennsylvania "the Texas of the natural gas boom," and that Oklahoma guy's company, Chesapeake Energy, has the most wells in the state. Coincidence?

Read my story in today's Daily News:

IN THE OIL-AND-GAS business, it's called a wildcat well - when a prospector takes a big risk drilling deep in an unexplored area.

In 2004, a flamboyant Oklahoma City multimillionaire took out his hefty checkbook for what you could call the political equivalent of a wildcat well - and he struck a gusher, right here in Pennsylvania.

The $450,000 in campaign checks that energy mogul Aubrey McClendon wrote that fall helped elect a man he said he'd never even met - a relatively obscure GOP candidate for Pennsylvania attorney general, Tom Corbett.

That investment arguably changed not just the history but also the political direction of the state

Please read the whole thing -- if you have time!.