Public-Sector Unions Shoveled Over $150 MILLION Into Democrat Campaigns in 2018

Ballotpedia reports that public-sector unions donated $159.8 million to candidates at the federal, state, or local level.

The top five states where political candidates received the most monetary contributions from public-sector unions were California, Illinois, Oregon, Minnesota, and New York.

Ballotpedia broke down these numbers:

  • California, where unions contributed $74.1 million, 46.4 percent of the nationwide total.
  • Illinois, where unions contributed $14.2 million, 8.9 percent of the nationwide total.
  • Oregon, where unions contributed $10.6 million, 6.6 percent of the nationwide total.
  • Minnesota, where unions contributed $10.4 million, 6.5 percent of the nationwide total.
  • New York, where unions contributed $9.8, 6.1 percent of the nationwide total.

The total contributions of public-sector unions in the aforementioned states is around $119.0 million, which represents approximately 75 percent of public-sector union contributions nationwide. On the other hand, contributions in the 45 states summed up to $40.7 million — roughly 25 percent of contributions nationally.

These numbers were originally part of the the National Institute on Money in Politics’ findings on political contributions. However, these numbers do not take in to account unions’ satellite spending activities.

Such news should not come as a shock when considering how traditional private sector unions are dwindling in political influence due to technological changes in the economy and the growing presence of right-to-work laws. The Left is likely going to shift towards public sector unionization as state governments in blue states get bigger, and as a result, will have a larger state worker base to target in unionization efforts.

This type of union organization is insidious because public sector unions live off taxpayers directly and they can hold them hostage in any negotiation for cushier pension benefits and other privileges that the state can grant them.

The good news is that Supreme Court decisions like Janus v. AFSCME have greatly limited public sector union’s ability to extract dues from state employees who are not part of a union. However, there is still a lot of work to be done in curtailing public-sector union influence.