Intercepts
A listening post monitoring public education and teachers’ unions.

The Portland Phoenix notices that NEA believes Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) “has a fine record on public education” – in fact, the union gave her an “A” on its Legislative Report Card – but endorsed her opponent, U.S. Rep. Tom Allen, because “if Allen’s elected, the Democratic Party has a chance to create a majority in the Senate, and that could make a big difference in their effectiveness.”

I predicted something like this might happen back in November 2006, though I admit I was wrong about Republican Jim Gerlach of Pennsylvania, whom the NEA continues to support.

In the 2008 campaign, NEA is supporting 31 Senate candidates, all Democrats, and 314 House candidates, 20 of whom are Republicans. Of the 20 House Republican candidates, 18 are incumbents, one is running for an open seat (the Ray LaHood GOP seat in Illinois), and only one is a challenger. But the challenger is Jim Burkee in Wisconsin’s 5th District, who is running against incumbent Republican Jim Sensenbrenner in a race with no Democratic candidate.

NEA continues to insist that it selects candidates “based on the individual candidate’s positions on key issues critical to public education – regardless of a candidate’s affiliation with a specific political party.” However, the NEA PAC Council, which decides which candidates to support, is made up of the union’s national, state and caucus officers. What percentage of these decision-makers are Republicans? If NEA’s own surveys are any indication, not very many, and certainly a lot less than that of the rank-and-file.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 1st, 2008 at 11:54 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.