The One-Way Political Spending of the Teacher Unions

Teacher union political gifting continues to be almost exclusively leftward bound, but teachers don’t have to finance it.

Courtesy of campaign-finance tracker Open Secrets, we have a reminder of how lopsided teacher union political spending is. Education Week’s Lauren Camera posted a report Friday which spells out some of the nasty details.

In House of Representative races during the 2014 election cycle, the American Federation of Teachers gave $1.4 million to Democrats, compared to just $5,000 to Republicans. The National Education Association donated $857,550 to Democrats and $59,500 to Republicans. In Senate races AFT gave $210,000 to Dems and GOPers got zero. NEA sent $168,750 to Senate Democrats, while Republicans scored a piddling $3,000. 

Sadly, these numbers are not outliers but typical of teacher union spending. From 1989-2014, NEA sent only 4 percent of its donations to Republicans, and rest assured that the few bucks they tossed at the right never wound up anywhere near any Tea Party types. Additionally, NEA has lavished gifts on such leftist stalwarts as MALDEF, People for the American Way, Media Matters, ACORN, Al Sharpton’s National Action Network and the Center for American Progress. 

Here in the Golden State, the California Teachers Association is no better. Between 2003 and 2012, the union sent $15.7 million to Dems and just $92,700 to Republicans – a ratio of well over 99 to 1. CTA also spends millions on controversial, non-education-related liberal causes such as establishing a single-payer health-care system, expanding the government’s power of eminent domain, instituting same-sex marriage and blocking photo ID requirements for voters. In toto, CTA spent over $290 million on candidates, ballot measures and lobbying between 2000 and 2013 (more than double the amount of any other special interest) and just about every penny of it went in the usual leftist direction.

But this must be what teachers want, right? Aren’t the great majority of teachers liberal?

In a word, “No.”

In fact, according to Mike Antonucci, an internal NEA poll revealed, 

NEA members lean no further to the left than any other large group of Americans. The national union conducts periodic internal surveys to ascertain member attitudes on a host of issues. These surveys are never made public, and results are tightly controlled, even within the organization. The 2005 NEA survey, consistent with previous results, found that members ‘are slightly more conservative (50%) than liberal (43%) in political philosophy.’ (Emphasis added.) 

While teachers in 26 states have to pay the union in order to teach in a public school, many are unaware that every year they can withhold several hundred dollars in dues money that the union would spend on politics. Needless to say, the unions don’t advertise the fact that teachers do indeed have any choice. 

Next week is National Employee Freedom Week which is a nation-wide effort to inform unionized employees about their union membership options. If you are conservative, libertarian, centrist or apolitical and are tired of bankrolling your union’s pet political causes, maybe it’s time to just say no. For information on how to do that, please go to the California Teachers Empowerment Network website.

Larry Sand, a former classroom teacher, is the president of the non-profit California Teachers Empowerment Network – a non-partisan, non-political group dedicated to providing teachers and the general public with reliable and balanced information about professional affiliations and positions on educational issues.