Here’s a shocking statistic: according to a new report, among employees working in the University of California system, 98% of funds donated for partisan campaigns went to Democrats.
That statistic comes from an exclusive analysis from Campus Reform, which analyzed the political donation records of employees at UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, UC Santa Cruz, UC Merced, UC Riverside, UC San Francisco, UC Santa Barbara, UCLos Angeles, UC Irvine, and UC Davis gleaned from 2017-2018 records from the Federal Election Commission.
Grace Gottschling of Campus Reform writes:
96.65 percent of all college administrators at UC schools who donated to partisan candidates or causes gave a total of $132,526.56 to Democrat politicians or Democrat organizations … UC System employees donated $4,681,192.76 to partisan groups or individuals from 2017-2018. Of that amount, 97.46 percent, over 4.5 million dollars, was given to Democrat politicians or Democrat organizations, while just 2.54 percent of the donations, totaling 118,899.11 dollars, were made to Republican politicians or Republican organizations …
1,644 faculty members at UC schools donated $3,315,553.92 to partisan politicians or political organizations. Faculty members contributed 97.39 percent of the money to Democrat politicians or organizations. Just 2.61 percent of donations went to Republican causes or politicians … 209 administrators donated a total of $135,264.06 with seven donors giving $2,737.50 to Republican politicians or Republican organizations from 2017-2018.
Campus Reform Editor-In-Chief Lawrence Jones went to California and found that many voters, despite the fact that they regarded the views of Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) as impractical, were not averse to voting for her. He said, “There is a group of people out here [who are] going to vote for her radical agenda even if they know that it’s not practical.”
Those donations could well spur Harris to the forefront of candidates; California has pushed it presidential primary ahead to Super Tuesday, March 3, instead of lagging behind the other primaries, as it has done before. That could prove a boon for Harris, as she hails from the state, but it also could be her downfall if she doesn’t win there. Howard Dean, the former Vermont governor and former head of the Democratic National Committee, told Yahoo News. “The advantage will go to Kamala Harris and anybody else from California,” but added, “It puts her at some risk. If she goes in to California, she has to win. If for some reason she doesn’t, that’s going to be very problematic for her.”
It’s not exactly a surprise that the UC system swings wildly to the left; this is, after all, the same system whose president, Janet Napolitano, the former secretary of homeland security from 2009 to 2013 under President Barack Obama, took a shot at Daily Wire Editor-In-Chief Ben Shapiro after the University of California, Berkeley, spent $600,000 on security when Shapiro spoke there in 2017:
As far back as 2012, the California Assn. of Scholars said the UC system was unbalanced toward the left; John Ellis, president of the association, said, “It has reached an extreme where one couldn’t not comment.” The Los Angeles Times reported, “The study looked at UC graduation requirements, course descriptions and class reading lists, and included interviews with students and faculty. It also cited, among other things, research done by others that examined the voter registration patterns of UC faculty and national tests of college students’ knowledge and writing skills.”