Missing Wisconsin Dems Rely Heavily on Union Campaign Dollars – Where’s the Outrage?
Since the budget battle began in Wisconsin, so-called journalists have attacked Governor Scott Walker as a union-busting shill representing big corporate donors such as the Koch brothers. The much bigger story media have ignored – that the 14 Democrat senators who fled the state all have serious financial connections to public employees and unions – was revealed Monday by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: In fact, one out of every five dollars raised by those Democratic senators in the past two election cycles came from public employees, such as teachers and firefighters, and their unions, a Journal Sentinel analysis of campaign records shows. [....] According to records compiled by the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, the 14 Senate Democrats have raised a total of $1.9 million in campaign dollars since the start of 2007. Out of that sum, public employee unions and individual government workers contributed at least $344,000. In truth, the figure may be even higher, but candidates don't have to identify the occupations of those giving $100 or less. As you can see from the chart above, the biggest offender received almost two-thirds of his money from unions and public employees: Of the 14 missing lawmakers, none has received a greater share of his campaign donations from public unions and employees than Spencer Coggs of Milwaukee. Since January 2007, about two-thirds of his campaign donations came from those in the public sector. In addition to winning an easy re-election bid, he was defeated in the September Democratic primary for lieutenant governor. You would think that one of these senators receiving almost two-thirds of his campaign cash the past four years from unions and public employees would be big news, right? Think again, for according to LexisNexis, the only report on this is the one above. Contrast that to Walker whose connection to the Koch brothers has garnered almost 500 reports in the past two weeks including 20 by MSNBC, fifteen by CNN, three by NPR, two by NBC, and one by CBS. This despite the Governor having received only $43,000 from the Kochs – less than half what Coggs got from unions and public employees! – which represented a mere five present of the over $9 million Walker raised . Yep – a less than five percent contribution from a couple of billionaires garnered almost 500 media reports, but Coggs getting two-thirds of his money from public employees and unions mattered not to America's media. And these people believe they're impartial purveyors of information. Makes you sick, doesn't it? (H/T Weasel Zippers )
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Missing Wisconsin Dems Rely Heavily on Union Campaign Dollars – Where’s the Outrage?
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on February 28, 2011. Filed under