PAC-12 Conference Has Millions For Dems, Pennies For GOP

Political diversity is almost non-existent among faculty and staff at every Pacific-12 Conference university, according to a Daily Caller News Foundation analysis of campaign contributions between 1990 and 2014.

Faculty and staff members at the University of California at Berkeley gave President Obama more than 1,300 individual contributions collectively worth $865,000 in 2008 and 2012, but his Republican opponent in 2012, Mitt Romney, didn’t get a penny. Obama’s 2008 opponent, Republican Sen. John McCain, received just five Berkeley contributions worth a total of $6,750.

Berkeley donors have given $2.69 million to Democrats, versus $194,800 to Republicans, over the last 25 years. TheDCNF analysis was based on FEC data compiled by OpenSecrets.org.

University of Colorado Boulder has the worst record in the conference’s southern division football standings, but the Buffaloes lead the way with the Pac-12’s most liberal professors. CU-Boulder faculty and staff have made more than 230 donations worth $89,700 to Democrats over the last 25 years, compared with only 11 donations totaling $3,400 to Republicans.

University of Washington employees also stand out as exceptionally liberal, donating $2.97 million to Democrats, versus $140,300 to Republicans.

Professors and administrators at the Pac-12’s most politically balanced schools — the University of Arizona and California’s Stanford University — still gave roughly three times more to Democrats than Republicans.

Faculty and staff at the University of Arizona donated $934,300 to Democrats, versus $323,000 to Republicans.

Stanford University employees, the most politically active in terms of total contributions, donated $5.8 million to Democrats, compared with slightly more than $2 million to Republicans.

Every U.S. House and Senate member representing Utah is a Republican, but that strong Republican preference isn’t reflected in political donations from University of Utah employees. Faculty and staff there donated nearly four times as much to Democrats as Republicans — $628,600, versus $164,400.

Here are the political donations from employees at the other Pac-12 schools:

• Washington State University employees donated $276,800 to Democrats, versus $43,000 to Republicans.
• Professors and administrators at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) donated $2.87 million to Democrats, versus $440,000 to Republicans.
• Employees at the University of Southern California (USC) donated $1.3 million to Democrats, versus $259,300 to Republicans.
• Arizona State University employees donated $712,700 to Democrats, versus $164,200 to Republicans.
• Faculty and staff at the University of Oregon donated $213,600 to Democrats, versus $23,800 to Republicans.
• Oregon State University employees donated $250,300 to Democrats, compared with $29,100 to Republicans.

Academia has been home to far more liberals than conservatives since the New Deal era, but recent surveys suggest liberals are pushing out many in the tiny minority contingent of non-liberal professors and administrators.

Roughly 16 percent of professors identified themselves as “far right” or “conservative” in a 2007-2008 survey by UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute, compared with roughly 56 percent who identified themselves as “liberal” or “far left.” The rest — 28 percent — identified themselves as “middle of the road.”

Three years later, 12 percent of the professors UCLA surveyed identified themselves as “far right” or “conservative,” compared with nearly 63 percent who identified themselves as “liberal” or “far left.” Only 25 percent identified themselves as “middle of the road.”

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