Romney: Campaign Funding Okay For Corporations, Not Teachers
Mitt Romney appeared on NBC's Education Nation Tuesday morning to give a pitch for private schools and charter schools. During the question and answer session with Brian Williams, he was asked about the Chicago teachers' strike, and whether he thought teachers should be allowed to go on strike.
His response was quite remarkable. While he believes teachers should have the right to go on strike (or so he says), he was quite adamant that teachers and by extension, teachers' unions, should not have the right to donate to campaigns or purchase advertising in the same fashion that corporations do.
If Citizens United ruled that money is speech, then why isn't teachers' money speech? They're citizens, they vote, and they also happen to be public employees.
According to Mitt Romney, "in the case of the Democratic Party, the largest contributor to the Democratic party is the federal teachers' unions." He went on to say that "if they elect someone, then that person is supposed to be representing the public, vis a vis the teachers union, but actually most of their money came from the teachers' union." He wrapped it all up by declaring it an "extraordinary conflict of interest."
I'm going to do my best to first sort out what Mitt Romney actually said, without regard to whether he's factually correct. As I understand it, he says elected officials represent the public, but their campaigns are funded by some thing that's not the public called a union and therefore there's a conflict.
I don't think I did that very well. Or perhaps he didn't say it very well, because it's just a silly argument. Teachers are citizens. They vote. They contribute to a union which then contributes to candidates and clearly discloses that they have made that contribution. When a union pays for an independent expenditure, it's clearly understood that union members paid for that. When a corporation pays for an independent expenditure, it's not even disclosed.
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