In 2018, businessman and philanthropist Eli Broad spent $19 million to help elect a slate of pro-charter-school legislators. Nearly all of his chosen candidates won. Yet, in the next legislative session, almost all of those newly elected officeholders voted for an anti-charter-school bill sponsored by the California Teachers Association (CTA). When I met with Eli shortly after the bill was signed, he asked how things had gone so wrong. My explanation was simple: “Now that they are officeholders, those former candidates know that the CTA will forever be an active force in California politics, with the power to make or break their careers—and that you will not. Once they had your money, they had nothing left to gain or fear from you.”
The CTA understands a fundamental truth: the incentives for candidates are different from the incentives for officeholders. The union operates by controlling officeholders who enact the budgets and statutes under which CTA members collect tens of billions of dollars annually from the state. Officeholders submit to CTA control out of a combination of greed (the desire to advance politically) and fear (the certainty that the CTA will crush them if they step out of line). This model is replicated by nearly every other rent-seeking interest group whose livelihood depends on California’s government or governance.
One ironic consequence of the CTA’s control over lawmakers is underpaid teachers. Teachers are receiving smaller shares of school revenues because districts are shifting more funds toward soaring pension costs—a problem that emerged because officeholders under the CTA’s influence blocked pension reforms two decades ago. Now, the CTA views these underpaid teachers as a political opportunity. This is why the union is orchestrating a series of school strikes despite record school revenues, aiming to frighten voters into approving a tax increase on the November ballot. Rest assured, the officeholders under the CTA’s thumb will declare that school services will collapse without this tax increase and once the tax increase is approved, those same officeholders will fail to enact the reforms needed for the money to actually improve schools. You do not have to take my word for it: that is precisely what happened after the last major school tax increase was enacted.
Incentives matter.
