Money Talks? (updated)
The democrats have tried to spin the Scott Walker recall election in a number of different ways. Many of GorT’s liberal friends on Facebook like to point out that the Republicans outspent the Democrats in some skewed proportion – some claim as high as 7-to-1. Let’s step back a take a broader look at campaign contributions. The folks at OpenSecrets.org compile much of the freely available data and publish it in different forms and Mike Cornelison put together a piece highlighting the issue. However, I always am skeptical of numbers thrown about, so I did a once over on them and made some adjustments. These adjustments are purely addressing any partial support for democrats vs. republicans. So the numbers below represent the amount of money donated since 1989 with the percentage (as reported via OpenSecrets) towards a political party taken into account.
Organization (Open Secrets rank) | Total To Dem | Total to Rep | |
3 American Fedn of State, County & Municipal Employees | 44,369,104.96 | 482,272.88 | |
5 National Education Assn | 30,682,853.84 | 2,073,165.80 | |
7 Service Employees International Union | 29,139,860.25 | 777,062.94 | |
9 Intl Brotherhood of Electrical Workers | 34,094,136.00 | 710,294.50 | |
10 American Federation of Teachers | 29,629,429.92 | 0.00 | |
11 Laborers Union | 28,693,591.80 | 2,308,679.80 | |
12 Teamsters Union | 28,470,121.86 | 1,636,213.90 | |
13 Carpenters & Joiners Union | 27,214,622.60 | 3,164,491.00 | |
14 Communications Workers of America | 29,007,394.84 | 0.00 | |
16 United Food & Commercial Workers Union | 26,255,811.15 | 0.00 | |
18 United Auto Workers | 27,518,823.36 | 0.00 | |
20 Machinists & Aerospace Workers Union | 27,077,622.46 | 276,302.27 | |
29 National Assn of Letter Carriers | 19,624,308.88 | 2,153,887.56 | |
32 AFL-CIO | 18,520,412.50 | 892,550.00 | |
40 Sheet Metal Workers Union | 18,895,994.00 | 397,810.40 | |
42 International Assn of Fire Fighters | 15,272,628.54 | 3,328,649.81 | |
44 Plumbers & Pipefitters Union | 18,099,154.08 | 778,458.24 | |
45 Operating Engineers Union | 15,927,764.16 | 2,654,627.36 | |
52 Air Line Pilots Assn | 14,427,597.01 | 2,607,397.05 | |
57 United Transportation Union | 13,555,924.80 | 1,694,490.60 | |
58 Ironworkers Union | 14,073,676.08 | 917,848.44 | |
59 United Steelworkers | 15,128,829.54 | 0.00 | |
66 American Postal Workers Union | 13,648,006.85 | 430,989.69 | |
69 National Air Traffic Controllers Assn | 9,980,717.76 | 2,633,800.52 | |
77 Koch Industries | 1,160,999.91 | 11,609,999.10 | |
86 Natl Active & Retired Fed Employees Assn | 8,876,945.00 | 2,536,270.00 | |
Totals | 559,346,332.15 | 44,065,261.86 |
I did leave out the Club for Growth on the Republican side, but even then, it would only add $13M to the Republican total which would change the ratio of 12:1 spending since 1989 to 10:1. If we were to apply an estimate that 40% of union workers would support Republican candidates (as Mike Cornelison points out), that narrows the margin to $335M towards democrats for all the listed organizations and $267M towards republicans. So, maybe keep these numbers in mind the next time a liberal friend of yours spouts off about spending in elections insinuating that it is the GOP that benefits.
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