Whether they like it or not, public school teachers across the country helped stroke some large checks to Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign. Thanks to the power of payroll deduction of union dues, powerful entities like the National Education Association (NEA) are flush with cash, and looking to spend it on Kamala Harris.
The image below displays financial contributions from the NEA’s “NEA Advocacy Fund” into a variety of other political action committees. Each one of these transactions represents hundreds of thousands of dollars handed over to a liberal Super PAC to fund the Kamala Harris campaign.
Just to use the first transaction as an example, the NEA Advocacy Fund dumped $500,000 into Future Forward PAC. This is the largest PAC in American politics, having spent $700 million to help propel Harris into the White House. Go down the list. Every transaction is more of the same. Anti-Trump political entities getting big payouts from a group claiming its mission is “representing teachers.” If you’re interested in a diverting deep dive, click here to go to the FEC’s site.
Dues collected from teachers – whether they intend to vote for Kamala Harris or not – are helping fuel the Kamala campaign.
Conservative lawmakers can try to function under the delusion that there is a “live and let live” understanding with teacher unions, but it’s obviously not mutually held. The cold reality is that – even in conservative states – unions are actively funding the undermining of anything approaching conservative ideals on a local and national level. Even GOP-controlled legislatures end up enabling their most aggressive opposition by dancing around the issue of removing payroll deduction of union dues.
Again, this is a one-sided goodwill. NEA and NEA-affiliate donations go overwhelmingly to Democratic candidates and liberal causes. The few Republicans who receive teacher union crumbs must do so knowing they are getting a payoff from the very people attacking their party and peers across the country.
Look at this list of contributions from the largest teacher unions. $30 million dollars from just the top four teacher union contributors. This is a partial list, and fails to account for any in-kind contributions(i.e. rallying members for phone banks and voter registration drives). While union membership includes many educators who do not support leftist causes, or vote for progressive candidates, the political support of the entities collecting dues from their paychecks is extremely partisan.
There are two obvious questions to be asked. First, why would any public school educator who does not align with the teacher unions’ politics voluntarily give them money? Second, why would any Republican-dominated state legislature allow its opposition to collect resources through the state government?
Regarding Republican officials who take money from the NEA and its affiliates, the conclusion is pitifully obvious. It remains to be seen how quickly parents turn on legislators in the pay of the groups opposing anything like school choice or parental rights, and pushing progressive ideologies on young children. It won’t be long.