Donald Trump has “yuuuge” leads in the polls and could be unstoppable in the primary with all the money his campaign has. Despite all the winning Trump has done in the polls thus far, and the $5.8 million his campaign has raised, there’s one category where Trump comes in last: contributions from college employees.
Those workers have given just $6,350 to Trump’s campaign, as of October 2015. That’s even less than the amount received by Larry Lessig, a Democratic candidate whose campaign lasted less than two months and who failed to garner invitations to any debates. Then again, Lessig is a professor at Harvard’s law school.
With leading Democratic candidates calling for massive subsidies for colleges, it will surprise few that college employees prefer Democratic candidates to Republicans. Democrats have gotten about three times as much money from college employees as the GOP candidates have, according to Meredith Kolodner with The Hechinger Report.
Hillary Clinton leads all candidates, with nearly $1.7 million in donations from college employees. That’s more than eight times the amount Bernie Sanders has received: about $365,000. Jeb Bush is first in the GOP, with $206,000. Clinton’s receipts are 268 times higher than Trump’s, while Bush has received 32 times as much as Trump. Bush got more than twice as much as the next closest Republican, Marco Rubio.
Many college employees make their contributions based on non-education issues, but a candidate’s positions on higher education certainly have an effect.
Employees from the University of California have contributed the most to candidates this cycle, more than $200,000. Employees from Harvard, Yale and Stanford have given more than $100,000.
“Hillary Clinton is the top pick among employees of 19 of the top 20 contributing universities,” writes Kolodner. “Ms. Clinton dwarfed all other candidates overall in fundraising from [college employees], which might be expected since she is the Democratic front-runner; also, she came out in August with a plan to lower student debt levels. Bernie Sanders, who has proposed making public colleges tuition-free, is significantly behind Clinton, but is nonetheless the second biggest recipient of higher education employees’ campaign cash as tallied so far.”
Jason Russell is a commentary writer for the Washington Examiner.
