Partisan Polarization And The Electoral Endorsements Of Teacher Unions

Much is often made of the fact that in elections, teacher unions endorse more Democrats than Republicans, a trend that has seemingly become more pronounced in recent years. Perhaps Kevin Carey is right that teacher unions are too defensive about the subject, although we doubt very much that the editing of Wikipedia entries, which in many cases could use work by knowledgeable folks, demonstrates much of anything. Yet without a frank conversation of the reasons for the electoral endorsements of unions, superficial claims that teacher unions endorse more Democratic candidates because of the partisan predilections of their leadership remain unchallenged.

The long-standing endorsement policy of the UFT [and many other teacher unions] is that we will support any incumbent — regardless of party — who has a positive record on the educational, labor and human rights issues that are important to us. Upon occasion, we have been criticized for supporting a Republican incumbent by those who think we should have a more ideological stance and always support the more progressive candidate, regardless of the record of the incumbent or the likelihood of their victory. Our view, however, is that as stewards of the interests of public schools and public school educators, the UFT must support incumbents who have supported public schools and public school educators. Anything less would undermine our credibility and our influence with all legislators.

What has changed over the years is not UFT policy, but the larger political terrain in American politics. There was once strong bi-partisan support for public education. But as with many other issues, this consensus has eroded significantly. The leading forces in the national Republican Party have moved sharply to the right over the last twenty-five years, and adopted a laissez-faire market fundamentalism that treats every public institution, including schools, as suspect and flawed. While public education is a particularly important focus for teacher unions, the general animus of market fundamentalism toward the public square and the common good runs counter to the core values of all unions. Thirty years ago, the UFT could endorse an incumbent Republican like Senator Jacob Javits, who had as strong a pro-public education and pro-labor stance as any senator of his day. There are many, many fewer Jacob Javits Republicans today, and those who remain seem to be isolated in the northeastern United States, where their numbers as rapidly dwindling. Some political analysts even suggest that they are an endangered political species. That, as much as anything, explains the trends in teacher union endorsements.

In this regard, it is instructive to look at some of the details of what political scientists call partisan polarization in American politics. A particularly interesting post on this phenomenon in the field of foreign policy appeared recently on Crooked Timber, citing evidence that the partisan gap had grown among voters since 9-11. What is especially fascinating is that the polarization was not limited to the Iraq war or national security issues, where one might expect it, but extended to issues like global warming. While a strong consensus has taken shape within the scientific community on the reality of global warming in recent years, this was reflected by a growing recognition of this reality only among Democratic and independent voters. The numbers of Republican voters who accept the reality of global warming has actually declined. [The research is drawn from a paper delivered to the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association.]

The interesting question here is why. To what extent are Republican voters receiving different information from Democrats and independents — more consumers of Rush Limbaugh type talk radio and the New York Post, where scientific evidence for global warming is denounced as an attack on American ‘free enterprise’ and individualism, as opposed to NPR listeners and New York Times readers? To what extent are moderates being driven out of/leaving the Republican Party, leaving a harder core of dogmatic true believers behind? To what extent has the issue of ‘global warming’ become identified as a partisan issue [Al Gore's cause], such that one takes a position on the issue based on one’s partisan allegiances?

Those questions are worth contemplating not simply for their insight on the instant issue of global warming, but for their larger relevance to issues such as public education. Has education been transformed into a partisan wedge issue, with support for public schools becoming polarized along the same lines as global warming and other issues, and teacher unions function as the same sort of partisan signifier for the right as Al Gore? Are their different universes of information on public education, with partisans on each side listening to quite cognitively dissonant discourses? Perhaps most importantly, if the partisan polarization of American politics over the last 25 years has been driven by the post-Reagan turn of the Republicans to the hard right, what are the consequences of the growing electoral backlash to the Bush administration’s rule?

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