November 2, 2010

The Teachers’ Union’s Election Day Push

Flickr/<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/pirateheart/2416967979/">England</a> (<a href="http://www.creativecommons.org">Creative Commons</a>).

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The National Education Association, the largest teachers’ union (actually, the largest union, period) in America, has long been closely tied to the Democratic Party. This election year is no different: this cycle, the union has spent some $40 million to elect (mostly) Dems around the country. (That’s up from 2006, but down from 2008, a presidential election year.) 

About a third of that money—$17 million—was funneled toward independent expenditures to support three incumbent senators: Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Michael Bennet (D-Colo), and Patty Murray (D-Wash.), as well as Joe Sestak, the Dem candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania. The NEA is also targeting a number of House districts the Dems stand a very good chance of losing: AZ-05 (Harry Mitchell), CO-03 (John Salazar), FL-22 (Ron Klein), IL-17 (Phil Hare), NY-01 (Tim Bishop), NC-08 (Larry Kissell), OH-13 (Betty Sutton), PA-08 (Patrick Murray), VA-05 (Tom Perriello), and TX-23 (Ciro Rodriguez). In a real GOP wave, all of those targeted candidates could lose. But the union thinks it made its targeting choices wisely: “We’ve been very strategic about how we spend our resources,” Karen White, the NEA’s director of campaigns and elections, told me last week. “We targeted [these candidates] because they need a lot of help and they’re in marginal races. That’s where we have the greatest ability to make an impact.”

So what’s happened to the rest of the NEA’s investment? About a third of it was spent on ballot measure campaigns in Massachusetts and Washington, and another third went to member-to-member outreach and get-out-the-vote efforts. That last bit is what will really have an effect today.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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