Federal Employees Are Donating Almost Exclusively to Hillary Clinton
Of the $2 million contributed from employees at 14 agencies, just 5 percent went to Trump.
The Office of Personnel Management recently launched the 2016 Combined Federal Campaign, but non-profit charities are not the only cause to which agency employees are donating this year. Federal employees are opening their wallets for presidential candidates, and doing so overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton, according to a new report.
Feds at 14 agencies have donated $2 million to the top of the ticket, according to an analysis by The Hill, 95 percent of which has gone to the Democratic nominee. Republican Donald Trump has received just over $100,000 from federal workers in the examined sample.
At the State Department, which Clinton ran for four years beginning in 2009, 99 percent of contributions went to the former secretary. Employees at the departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Education and Labor all gave at least that percentage of their presidential campaign donations to Clinton.
The Homeland Security Department saw among the lowest rates of Clinton contributors, though 90 percent of donations still went to the Democratic nominee. Unions representing employees at two DHS components -- Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol -- endorsed Trump.
Employees at the departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense were the only ones to give to Trump at a higher rate. VA workers gave 12 percent of their donations to Trump, and Defense employees, 16 percent.
The 5 percent of donations from the federal workforce Trump received was lower than that of the previous Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, The Hill noted. The former Massachusetts governor took 14 percent of federal employee donations last election cycle. The Hill’s analysis examined data from the Federal Election Commission of donations over $200 through September.
Jason Miller, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, told The Hill the donations were an example of a “rigged system” stacked against non-politicians like Trump. Federal employees are not prohibited from donating to political campaigns, so long as they do so on their own time. They may not solicit donations for a campaign at any time.
The lopsided donations do not necessarily reflect how the federal workforce is voting. The former State Department secretary led the businessman by 5 percentage points among federal employees in a July poll by the Government Business Council, the research arm of Government Executive Media Group, with 42 percent of respondents saying they would vote for Clinton, compared to 37 percent who said the same for Trump.