EXCLUSIVE REPORT: 96.1 percent of University of Texas administrators, 93.5 percent of faculty donated to Dems
Campus Reform analyzed the 2017-2018 political donation records of employees at the University of Texas (UT), using publicly available records from the Federal Election Commission, in order to determine the political leanings of faculty and administrators at the college.
According to the Campus Reform analysis, 96.1 percent of all UT system administrators who donated to political candidates or causes gave a total of $36,852.20 to Democrat politicians or Democrat organizations, such as Texas Senate candidate Beto O’Rourke and New York congressional candidate Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
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In total, UT employees donated $642,693.43 from 2017-2018. Of that amount, 94.7 percent went to Democrat politicians or Democrat organizations, while just 5.3 percent of the donations were made to Republican politicians or Republican organizations.
In total, 917 faculty members, specifically, donated a total of $481,853.56 to politicians or political organizations. They contributed 93.5 percent of the money to Democrat politicians or organizations, such as the Texas Democrat Party and End Citizens United. Just 6.5 percent of donations went to Republican politicians or Republican causes.
Of 140 UT administrators, 137 donated $36,852.20 to Democrat political candidates and politicians. Three UT administrators gave a total of $1,500 in donations to Republican politicians or organizations from 2017-2018.
Act Blue and It Starts Today received the highest amount in donations in the Democrat and Democrat category while Donald J. Trump for President, Inc. and Ted Cruz for Senate received the highest amount in donations in the Republican category.
For the purposes of this data, Campus Reform defined “faculty” as employees of the college that have direct instructional contact with students, such as professors, teachers, and instructors. “Administrators” were defined as employees who manage programming or are responsible for students and faculty, such as department chairs, deans, presidents, and provosts.
Campus Reform sorted individual donors using their self-stated position at the college. For example, if the individual donor noted that they were a “professor of literary theory,” they were designated as a faculty member. If an individual noted that they were employed as an “executive director,” they were designated as an administrator.
In the event that an employee’s title was ambiguous and could not be confirmed, they were marked as a general employee, but not sorted into faculty or administration categories. Campus Reform did not account for retired UT System employees who made political donations. Campus Reform used 180 variations of keyword searches to cull data specific to UT employees at all 14 institutions listed on the University of Texas System’s website.
Campus Reform used the most recent FEC donor records from Jan. 1, 2017 to Oct. 22, 2018.
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