The Golden State increasingly moves to the Left politically and the state’s teachers’ union is a large part of this partisan shift. As Americans for Fair Treatment (AFFT) noted, the California Teachers Association (CTA) spent $2.8 million to fund 287 school board candidates in 125 school districts in the state, in rural, suburban, and urban areas. The original report came from The 74 Million.
AFFT pointed out that the multi-million-dollar figure does not account for funding from union’s local affiliates, which potentially adds either tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. The funding helped the union-backed candidates to win 70% of the time in election cycles before Election Day.
The CTA, like most teachers’ unions, is affiliated with the National Education Association (NEA), which is one of the two major teachers’ unions in the country. The other major union, the American Federation of Teachers, has a politically-partisan president in Randi Weingarten. Weingarten publicly backed Democratic Party candidates in multiple election cycles, such as endorsing Joe Biden during his 2020 presidential election bid.
Unions are known to bankroll political causes with membership dues, which is an issue itself considering that using membership dues for political causes violates First Amendment rights of free association and free speech.
