ALEC chairman Kirk Dillard. The unions’ choice for governor in the primary.
There are two (at least) models of union electoral strategy on display in Illinois that we can look at.
In the primary election just past the state union political action committees were estimated to have dropped somewhere in the $4 million range on ALEC state chair Kirk Dillard in his failed race against Bruce Rauner on the Republican side.
Their argument was that Rauner was so bad that they would prefer the chairman of the leading anti-labor organization in the country, the American Legislative Exchange Council.
This crazy choice resulted from the union leadership’s failure over time to organize a labor and working families electoral movement that could provide a real choice to voters.
And the amount spent was staggering.
The other model is one we see unfolding in the City of Chicago. Progressive forces, community based groups and some unions are preparing for the February Chicago election with progressive alternatives in every ward and to the Mayor.
The IEA leadership and the We Are One Coalition Illinois claimed great success in challenging Rauner with their funding of the Republican Dillard campaign.
There was no serious challenge to Governor Quinn on the Democratic side.
But how successful was it?
Republican analyst Mark Sheldon took a look at the numbers.
One belief is that public employees, active and retired, turned out in large numbers for Dillard. I’ve taken the statewide voter file and merged it with the state employees database to analyze that theory.
Matching the list of state employees to the voter file is certainly a challenge. For example, some employees have a mailing address instead of a street address as is required with the voter file. Another problem is that some employees, such as DCFS workers and Corrections workers don’t have their addresses disclosed on the Comptroller’s list of employees. Further, even when presenting a street address, it may not match the voter file because one or the other isn’t updated. Finally, some of these employees may not even be citizens or may not be registered to vote.
At the end of my work, I was able to match up 78% of the 76,000 state employees (including part time employees) with a voter record. A lot more work might yield a little more matching. But to obtain larger leaps would require applying some actual knowledge by individuals to the lists.
This analysis is just for the state employees. It does not include annuitants of any public pension and does not include any teacher or state university employees. Those projects are in progress.
Results
My results show that there was a very significant increase in participation among state employees in the Republican Primary. For clarity, let’s focus first on the last two gubernatorial primaries. In 2010, of the identified state employees, 9,189 voted in the Republican Primary. In 2014, that number increased to 14,590, a 59% jump. By contrast, in the 2010 Democratic Primary, 11,073 state employees voted. That number dropped by 36% to just 7,151 this past March.
He counted roughly 5,000 Democratic voters pulling a Republican ballot to vote for Dillard.
It’s apparent that there was a high degree of motivation among state employees to participate in the Republican Primary. At the same time, Dillard’s loss by 25,000 votes could have been made up by moving even more state employees to the polls. If the participation rates of university and teaching staff as well as annuitants mirror this analysis, it will mean that Dillard had the means of winning without the ability to execute.
Even if you increase Sheldon’s numbers to include IEA and IFT members – a generous count – that would mean we spent $4million dollars for 10,000 votes. Rauner beat Dillard by 25,000.
I don’t get how the IEA get’s to claim this as a success.
Even if you believed electing Kirk Dillard was a good idea.
Fred Klonsky 