IL Teachers’ Union gives $1/4 Million to ALEC Chairman. Betrayal or Incompetence?
Handing the Illinois Chairman of ALEC, Kirk Dillard, a quarter of a million dollars is the single most debilitating blow to active and retired teacher morale that any public employee union could deliver. His Illinois Education Association gubernatorial endorsement is contemptible.
For IEA President Cinda Klickna and the IEA board to do this is unjustifiable and indefensible. (The smirk on Dillard’s face as Klickna endorses him says it all.)
If that same amount of money and proportionate amounts from other state employee unions had been contributed to any other potential candidate earlier than this, public employees would be far better off.
Who could have foreseen that there would be a gubernatorial election in November?Who could have foreseen that there would be a primary election in March? Who could have foreseen that the super-majority Democrats would run an anti-union, anti-pension incumbent who has repeatedly stated that he was “put on God’s Earth” to cut pensions in spite of the Illinois Constitution and contract laws? Who could have foreseen that the major Republican candidates would be a Tea Party billionaire and a mere millionaire who is the IL Chairman of the American Legislative Exchange Council,