Active Federal Meddling in Elections: Federal Employees

Active Federal Meddling in Elections (full series)
“Bidenbucks” | “Listening Session”
Federal Bureau of Prisons | Federal Employees

Federal Employees

While the Biden administration didn’t give federal employees a whole day off to vote, as Fair Fight Action called for, the Office of Personnel Management adopted a policy to give four hours of leave to federal employees to vote and volunteer to be election workers, a population that donates overwhelming to Democratic politicians.

The largest federal union, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), representing 750,000 federal workers, became a member of the AFL-CIO in 1997.

During the 2022 election cycle, the AFGE political action committee gave 94.6 percent of contributions to Democratic candidates, according to data compiled by Open Secrets, which monitors money in politics. Those contributions amounted to $712,725 to Democrats, compared with $40,000 to Republican candidates.

In 2020, the union’s members gave 94.5 percent of its donations—$818,868 in contributions going to Democrats. It contributed $43,115 to GOP candidates.

The same is proportionally true for the much smaller National Treasury Employees Union political action committee (PAC), which includes Internal Revenue Service employes. The union gave $509,000 (about 95 percent) to Democrats and just $22,000 (4.14 percent) to Republicans in the 2022 cycle.

The disparity was somewhat less for other federal employee unions. For example, the National Association of Active and Retired Federal Employees Association PAC contributed $693,500 to Democrats in the 2022 election cycle. That’s 85 percent of its contributions. It gave $116,500 to Republican candidates in 2022.

Not surprisingly, State Department employees lean left and shelled out 77 percent for Democrats in 2022. Justice Department employees who made political donations gave 76 percent to Democrats, according to Open Secrets. Another 74 percent of contributions by employees of the Department of Veterans Affairs went to Democrats in the 2022 midterms. Department of Homeland Security employees who made donations cut 70 percent in favor of Democrats, and even 63 percent of Defense Department employees did the same.

For postal workers, it’s still pretty lopsided. The National Association of Letter Carriers PAC donated 73 percent to Democrats in 2022. That’s $1.4 million compared to $514,000 for Republicans.

The sector with the most parity is the Federal Aviation Administration Managers Association, a group whose PAC gave $169,000 (58 percent) to Democrats compared with $120,500 (41 percent) to Republicans.

A few other agency strategic plans became public, typically through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Peace Corps, and the Railroad Retirement Board plans didn’t reference which approved private organizations are working with them, or even if they were working with any.

The Justice Department—the one agency that is charged by the law to enforce voting rights—still refuses to release its strategic plan for implementing Biden’s executive order on getting out the vote, as it is fending off a public records lawsuit.

Past presidential administrations—such as Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt—certainly bent bureaucracy toward political ends. But the level of brazenness in the Biden order might be unprecedented, as Biden codified in an executive order what past presidents had done in secret.

Government agencies working hand in glove with political cronies to ensure a favorable election outcome is an old system, reminiscent of Tammany Hall in New York, the Daley machine in Chicago, the Pendergast machine in St. Louis and others that wielded tremendous political power to win elections by hook or by crook.