Though it’s given $3.6 million to outside spending groups so far this cycle, the nation’s largest labor group has joined advocates of overhauling the campaign finance system who are explicitly angling to be the subjects of mass arrests on Capitol Hill this month if their demands to Congress aren’t met.
The AFL-CIO is the only organization involved in the coalition, called Democracy Spring, that has a serious political money operation itself. The alliance of unions, however, called for the overturn ofCitizens United as early as 2012 and in February endorsed Democracy Spring, which is planning a demonstration that will include a march and sit-ins on Capitol Hill from April 2-11. But to overturn the Supreme Court case would be to end the system a handful of unions — but far more wealthy individuals and corporations, especially those who employ dark money — have come to dominate.
Why, then, support the movement? The AFL-CIO, after all, once opposed campaign finance rules designed to limit corporate and union spending in elections. The group and its member unions helped the Democrat Party with huge soft money contributions in the mid-1990s.
In short, it’s because when it comes to money in politics, unions and the liberal Democrats they support are fighting a losing battle.
After Citizens United, campaign finance law gives a big voice to very few megadonors — and those individuals are often not exactly labor-friendly. A few unions have flexed their muscle, but the fact remains that labor is losing the money-in-politics fight as their existence comes under threat from declining membership in the workforce and a jeopardized ability to collect dues.
Just this week unions narrowly avoided a cataclysmic upheaval — and likely only because of the death of Justice Antonin Scalia — when the Supreme Court deadlocked 4-4 came a narrow miss for union opponents: the U.S. Supreme Court, down one justice, deadlocked four-to-four in a case that could have wiped out public sector unions’ ability to collect dues.
And look at what’s going on in the current campaign cycle: On a list of combined organization and individual donors ranked by amount given to outside groups, theCarpenters and Joiners Union is the first labor organization to appear coming in at No. 13. It has given $6.8 million. The Laborers Union ranks 14th, with $6.6 million in contributions, and the AFL-CIO ranks 28th with its $3.6 million given.
In between those unions on the list are 20 conservative-leaning megadonors, compared to nine who give to liberal groups. What’s more, rankings of the top organizations that give to outside groups can be misleading, since it’s impossible to know all the donors to politically active non-profits, or dark money groups, that are also are active in the ad wars; they, too, skew conservative.
For unions, which want Democrats to win, that’s not a sustainable fight.
“Reforms that help that cause will be considered more kindly [by unions] than reforms that might inadvertently undermine the Democrats in favor of Republicans,” said Taylor Dark, an associate professor in political science at California State University, Los Angeles and an expert on organized labor’s political activity. “I think the final judgment would be that reversing Citizens United would be beneficial to the goal of electing Democrats — especially liberal Democrats — and is therefore worth supporting.”
None of this is to say unions are small players. A few have invested quite a bit in the system as it currently exists. The AFL-CIO has been among the top givers, individual contributors aside, to super PACs for the past two cycles — in 2014, the unionranked seventh among organization donors to super PACs and similar groups, giving more than $8.2 million that cycle. It ranks fifth among all organizations — corporations and LLCs included — to give to super PACs so far in 2016. Nearly all of that went to the AFL-CIO’s own super PAC, AFL-CIO Workers’ Voices PAC, which mainly made its own independent expenditures in 2014.
It’s not alone. Center for Responsive Politics data show the Carpenters and Joiners Union has this cycle given $6.9 million to outside groups like its own super PAC,Working for Working Americans. Some of that money found its way to Senate Majority PAC and House Majority PAC, the Democratic Party’s main super PACs. Contributions totaling $2 million from LIUNA Building America went to the Clinton-backing group Priorities USA Action.
Their support, of course, helps Democrats. Building trade unions, as an industry, have this cycle given super PACs supporting former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton nearly more than $9.5 million, while public sector unions have given more than $1 million to those groups. Much has been made of the National Nurses’ United‘s independent support for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to the tune of $2.3 million.
The AFL-CIO maintains it’s not afraid of losing whatever political influence it gained from super PAC contributions by fighting to overturn Citizens United, much preferring to rely on an ability to nationally rally workers and their families to show political muscle, the union’s associate general counsel said Thursday.
“We understand that we won’t ever be able to raise as much or contribute as much to causes and concerns as corporate spenders can, as outside dark money can,” Angela Wade Stubbs said during a conference call for Democracy Spring. “Our power lies in our workers and our boots on the ground.”
Dark said corporations don’t have the advantage of mass membership. Besides, he noted, even though union membership has declined — down from one-third of American workers in the mid-1960s to one-tenth last year — there’s never been a time when business couldn’t outspend unions
“Business depends more on money for influence,” Dark said. “So, at the end of the day, unions would rather have a system that de-emphasized and contained private campaign spending even if it did restrict some of their activities or donations.”
As an active political spender itself, the AFL-CIO’s involvement in Democracy Spring brings heft to a list of supporters that skews toward activists like academics Larry Lessig, a Harvard Law School professor who ran a brief, long-shot campaign for president last year, and Zephyr Teachout,a Fordham University law professor now running for Congress in New York, along with a famous Hollywood name (Mark Ruffalo) and a host of liberal organizations.
The planned dysfunction is meant to fight dysfunction in Congress; activists are calling for hearings on President Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland, “small-donor empowerment” initiatives and public funding for elections.