Right-Wing Educators

This story from Capital Eye suggests that educators are not necessarily the left-wing lap dogs of popular song and story:

Campaign giving by education interests, an area dominated by contributions from college and university professors, totaled more than $2.4 million to the presidential candidates in the first three quarters of this year. More than half of that money went to President Bush, the presumptive Republican nominee, and Howard Dean, the early Democratic favorite to face Bush next November.

According to opensecrets.org, Dean has pulled in around $718,000 so far this cycle while Bush has raised almost as much: $680,000. The next candidate is John Kerry with $325,000.

Neither Capital Eye nor opensecrets breaks the giving down (other than CE's claim that giving is "dominated" by higher-ed types), so it's hard to know how much of the moolah is coming from college profs and how much from K-12 teachers.

But Bush's strong showing surely reflects not only status as the presumptive GOP nominee but also his willingness to toss everlasting gobstoppers of taxpayer cash at education. As this unintentionally hilarious GOP press release makes clear, Bush isn't just making sure that no children are left behind–he's making sure that educators have plenty of walking-around money too. And that everyone knows about.