SUNLIGHT FOUNDATION – A Supreme Court decision Monday involving the right of public employee unions to collect dues threatens one of the Democratic Party’s major treasure chests.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which was on the losing end of the court’s 5-4 decision, has contributed more than $275 million since 1989 to campaigns at the federal and state level. That’s according to data that Sunlight’s Influence Explorer compiled from the National Institute on Money in State Politics and the Center for Responsive Politics.
The top beneficiary of the union’s largesse: Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn, the defendant named in the case that the Supreme Court decided Monday. Quinn, who is up for re-election this year, collected nearly $4.5 million from the union, nearly twice as much as he collected from his second biggest donor.
SEIU’s political activity, and whether employees who don’t agree with it should have to underwrite it, was at issue in the majority opinion: “If we accepted Illinois’ argument, we would approve an unprecedented violation of the bedrock principle that, except perhaps in the rarest of circumstances, no person in this country may be compelled to subsidize speech by a third party that he or she does not wish to support,” wrote Justice Samuel Alito.
Read more at the Sunlight Foundation.
