Republicans Who Get NEA Funding

Human Events reports:

The National Education Association distributed its election post-mortem to its activists last week. As you might imagine, NEA's score was pretty good: union-recommended candidates won 14 of 21 gubernatorial races, 14 of 15 U.S. Senate races, and 18 of 25 targeted U.S. House races.

The union deployed 67 staffers in 26 states, sent 188 different direct mail pieces with a combined distribution of 3.6 million, and racked up 28,000 hits on its member-only, political action web page.

But there was one statistic that NEA disaggregated that was worth further examination. Of the 27 NEA-recommended Congressional candidates who were Republican incumbents, 26 won. There's a lot of meat there, so let's cut it open.

The first thing it shows is that NEA is formidable when protecting incumbents, of either party, and on a par with other special interest groups when it comes to capturing open seats or defeating incumbents.

NEA donated 12% of its PAC money to Republicans this cycle, which is higher than usual. But a quick examination of the recipients shows no money going to Republican challengers (it's possible I missed one, so I'm willing to be corrected). So the second lesson is that even if you are a Republican who supports NEA's agenda, you need to be elected first, before you start to see any support.

The NEA loves the status quo more than "the children".