The surprise is not that First Reliant -- thought to be the culprit of the massive blackout last week -- is in bed with the GOP, it's that someone wrote a story about it:

Roughly 70 percent of the donations from FirstEnergy and its employees to the national parties and congressional candidates in the last election season went to Republicans, figures compiled by the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics show.

Company officials are also active in the 2004 election. FirstEnergy chief executive H. Peter Burg helped organize a June 30 fund-raiser headlined by Vice President Dick Cheney in Akron, Ohio, which brought in $600,000 for the Bush-Cheney re-election effort [...]

President and chief operating officer Anthony Alexander was a Bush fund-raising "pioneer" in the 2000 race, lining up more than $100,000 for the campaign and donating $100,000 himself to help finance inaugural festivities.

After the election, the incoming president named Alexander to his transition team. Alexander was a member of Bush's advisory panel on energy, Schneider said.