CPC analysis: Big Union dollars sway local elections

Respected commentator Edward Ring discusses California’s alarming shift to union-controlled elections, under which the dominant Leftist party is often the only one with (far-above) sufficient funds for a successful campaign. Ring’s comments excerpted below.

The reason for this dominance by one party can be misleading, however, because it isn’t a party so much as a political machine, controlled by government unions, that exercises power in Sacramento.

Years of closed shop government employment union dues have gone to supporting campaigns to elect politicians obedient to these unions. After SCOTUS in a 2016 ruling relieved government employees of mandatory payment of union dues (or “agency fees”), union membership is down, but remains formidable, enforced by intimidating in-house peer pressure by union operatives. Union dues now average over $1000 per government employee, and with over a million state and local government employees still belonging to government unions  in California, these unions have over a billion dollars per year to work with. As the government workforce grows, so grows the financial underpinning of even more union domination.

In particular, the growth of SEIU along with the teachers unions has created the two primary sources of the political destruction of California, funded by our own tax dollars to work against us. We voted for “education,” and empowered the teachers union to destroy curricula in favor of indoctrinating a generation of young Californians to resent their nation, reject hard work, mistrust one another based on the color of their skin, and acquire narcissistic self-esteem instead of marketable skills. We voted for humane social services, and instead we got insatiable, inefficient SEIU hiring.

These unions move in unison, threaten one and the entire machine moves against anyone who dares to take them on.

Giving California away to government unions was phase one in the destruction of California’s democracy. Winning elections that might otherwise be competitive has devolved into a formulaic contest where only one political machine has the money and manpower to participate; the government unions….

This article originally appeared in the California Policy Center. Read the whole thing here.

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