Texas Insider

Mike Antonucci – EducationNews.org

When the Florida legislature, on April 8th, passed a bill that sought to replace teacher tenure with merit pay, the Florida Education Association (FEA) sprang into action, organizing members & community activists to lobby Governor Charlie Crist to veto the measure. FEA, with its parent union, the National Education Association (NEA), generated 1,000’s of e-mails, letters, phone calls, and Internet posts in opposition to the legislation.  

A few weeks later, FEA gave a much-needed boost to Crist’s independent bid for a U.S. Senate seat by endorsing both Crist and Democratic candidate Kendrick Meek.

If you think it’s far-fetched to suggest that a teachers union could play the role of political kingmaker, think again. The largest political campaign spender in America is not a megacorporation, such as Wal-Mart, Microsoft, or ExxonMobil. It isn’t an industry association, like the American Bankers Association or the National Association of Realtors. It’s not even a labor federation, like the AFL-CIO. If you combine the campaign spending of all those entities it does not match the amount spent by the National Education Association, the public-sector labor union that represents some 2.3 million K–12 public school teachers and nearly a million education support workers (bus drivers, custodians, food service employees), retirees, and college student members. NEA members alone make up more than half of union members working for local governments, by far the most unionized segment of the U.S. economy.

The Center for Responsive Politics and the National Institute on Money in State Politics joined forces last year to produce the first comprehensive database of political campaign spending at both the state and national levels. The results should open the eyes of policymakers and educators alike, as well as those involved in the wider world of domestic politics. In the 2007–08 election cycle, total spending on state and federal campaigns, political parties, and ballot measures exceeded $5.8 billion. The first-place NEA spent more than $56.3 million, $12.5 million ahead of the second-place group. That’s not all. The American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the smaller of the two national professional education unions, ranked 25th in campaign spending, with almost $12 million, while NEA/AFT collaborative campaigns spent an additional $3.4 million, enough to earn the rank of 123rd. All told, the two national teachers unions distributed $71.7 million on candidate and issue campaigns from California to Florida, Massachusetts to South Dakota. Millions more went to policy research to support the unions’ agenda.

The teachers unions outspent their union peers by a large margin. The next highest-spending public sector union is ranked at number 5: the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) contributed some $35 million. The AFL-CIO’s largest member union, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), at less than half the size of NEA, spent about $21 million and ranked 11th.

A Long Arm

With such large sums of cash in hand, NEA can involve itself in a wide variety of campaigns in many states without diluting its efforts in any single one of them. During the 2008–09 school year, the national union sent a total of $17.3 million to 24 state affiliates, both large and small. In the case of the large affiliates, this money merely supplements what the affiliate raises on its own. According to a 2010 report by the California Fair Political Practices Commission, 15 organizations spent a combined $1 billion on state campaigns and ballot measures from the beginning of 2000 to the end of 2009. The California Teachers Association (CTA) was the biggest political spender over the period, disbursing nearly $212 million. That’s almost double that of the second place spender, which also happened to be a public employees union. A portion of the funds CTA spent was received from NEA, but the bulk was generated from CTA assessments on California teachers.

In the smaller states, NEA’s political reach is perhaps best illustrated by the campaign against Measure 10 in South Dakota, a state not normally considered a union stronghold. The November 2008 initiative would have banned the use of tax money for campaigns or lobbying and restricted political contributions by government contractors.

NEA contributed $1.1 million to air TV ads against the measure. That amount of money goes a long way in a media market so small. NEA’s state affiliate, the South Dakota Education Association, has only 5,600 active members and could never have appropriated such a sum on its own. It would have required an additional assessment of almost $200 per member. Measure 10 was defeated, prompting its committee chairman to say, “We’ll be able to prepare accordingly next time knowing that the real opposition to ethics reform in South Dakota is NEA union officials back east.”

Legislative and campaign spending is far from the sum total of teacher union expenditures with a political aim. Both NEA and AFT send additional millions to a vast panoply of advocacy groups, coalitions, community organizations, and charities. Along with their statutory role as labor unions and stated role as professional organizations, NEA and AFT fill the role of philanthropic benefactors for a host of causes, most of them left-leaning (see sidebar).

Leaning Left

NEA funds groups that overwhelmingly fall on one side of the political spectrum. Here are a few examples of the organiza­tions, large and small, that benefited from NEA’s largesse, along with the amounts they received and excerpts from their mission statements. Alliance for Justice: $7,000. “Our Student Action Campaign cultivates the next generation of progres­sive activists and strengthens public interest grass­roots advocacy.”

America Votes: $150,000. “America Votes is the centerpiece of a permanent progressive campaign infrastructure nationally and in the states, benefiting hundreds of progressive organizations in both elec­tion and non-election years.”

Americans United for Change: $250,000. “Ameri­cans United for Change has challenged the far right conservative voices and ideas that for too long have been mistaken for mainstream American values.”

Campaign for America’s Future: $25,000. “At the Campaign for America’s Future, our daily work is to bring about the progressive transformation.”

Center for American Progress: $110,000 (another $10,000 from AFT). “CAP is designed to provide long-term leadership and support to the progressive movement.”

Center for Community Change: $10,000. “We believe that vibrant community-based organizations, led by the people most affected by social and eco­nomic injustice, are key to putting an end to the failed ‘on your own’ mentality of the right and building a new politics based on community values.”

Democratic GAIN: $10,000. “Democratic GAIN exists to support the professional needs of individuals and organizations that work in Democratic and Pro­gressive Politics.”

Demos: $5,000 (another $10,000 from AFT). “We publish books, reports, and briefing papers that illuminate critical problems and advance inno­vative solutions; work at both the national and state level with advocates and policymakers to promote reforms; help to build the capacity and skills of key progressive constituencies; project our values into the media by promoting Demos Fellows and staff in print, broadcast, and Internet venues; and host public events that showcase new ideas and leading progressive voices.”

Media Matters: $100,000. “Media Matters for America is a Web-based, not-for-profit, 501(c)(3) progressive research and information center dedi­cated to comprehensively monitoring, analyzing, and correcting conservative misinformation in the U.S. media.”

Midwest Academy: $5,000. “Courses and consult­ing services are designed for progressive organiza­tions and coalitions that utilize civic engagement activities to build citizen power at all levels of our democracy.”

U.S. Action: $203,000. “USAction builds power by uniting people locally and nationally, on-the-ground and online, to win a more just and pro­gressive America. We create the nation’s leading progressive coalitions, making democracy work by organizing issue and election campaigns to improve people’s lives.”

A look at teachers union governance and financing will demonstrate how this philanthropic giving occurs. The school district’s payroll office deducts union dues from each teacher’s paycheck as a lump sum. The money is transmitted at regular intervals to the local union affiliate, which keeps its share and transmits the remainder to the state affiliate, which keeps its share and transmits the remainder to the national affiliate. NEA has an affiliate in every state and claims 14,000 locals. NEA received $162 from each member teacher this school year, and $93.50 from each full-time education support staff member. NEA’s budget for 2010 is $355.8 million.

AFT has a similar arrangement, although its power cannot be wielded as widely since most of its members reside in a single state, New York. AFT receives $190.70 in annual membership dues. The union’s 2010 budget is estimated at $165 million.

NEA spends its money in roughly equal thirds. One-third supports the physical plant and operating costs of the union’s D.C. and regional headquarters buildings. Another third pays the salaries and benefits of NEA’s staff of some 600 employees. The final third is returned to state affiliates in various forms, the largest being UniServ grants. This money helps pay for the labor negotiators and professional staffers employed by the state affiliates.

This third pot of cash also includes money for discretionary spending or, as it is categorized in the union’s financial disclosure report, “contributions, gifts and grants.” Ten dollars of each NEA member’s dues is set aside each year for the national union’s Media Fund and Ballot Initiative/Legislative Crises Fund. The Media Fund pays for national media campaigns and PR grants to state affiliates. The Crises Fund is the primary source of funding for whatever ballot measures or pending bills NEA state affiliates are supporting or opposing each year. Unspent money is carried over, leaving the national union with considerable sums to spend on campaigns in general election years.

The discretionary money is disbursed in a number of ways. The money can be distributed to the state affiliates, which then use it for ballot or legislative battles (see Figure 1, and its underlying data). The national union also makes direct contributions to campaigns or coalitions created around single issues. In the 2007-08 cycle, NEA gave some $17 million to ballot initiative groups in 12 states for a variety of measures related to constitutional conventions, property taxes, income taxes, labor laws, hotel taxes, redistricting, corporate taxes, and vehicle taxes.