Teachers union quietly aiding candidates

With Governor Mitt Romney's push for education reform stalled, a review of state records has found that the Massachusetts Teachers Association has used a little-known avenue in a state campaign finance law to quietly add legislative allies to fight the initiatives.

A Globe examination of campaign finance records has found that the association pumped $341,849 into last year's legislative elections. That figure amounts to more than six times as much as any other group gave last year.

The funding also provides a glimpse into how the state's largest teachers union has built itself into a powerhouse lobby on Beacon Hill.

Rather than donate directly to candidates, the teachers' association spent its money on mass mailings and on telephone calls, on behalf of 20 Democrats who ran in the legislative elections last year. Unlike direct donations by political action committees, which are capped at $500 per candidate per year, there is no state limit on such ''independent expenditures," as the funding is called.

Independent expenditures have to be reported but they do not appear on the candidates' campaign finance forms. And the union was free to use members' dues to pay for them.

Apart from a handful of private citizens, no one other than the Massachusetts Teachers Association made independent expenditures in 2004. Business groups, organized labor's usual adversaries, cannot counter with independent expenditures because state law bars them from doing so.

In one race for an open State Senate seat, for example, the union spent $47,008 to boost the candidacy of Edward M. Augustus Jr., a Democrat who was running against Robi Blute, a Republican and a charter-school supporter.

The union sent pamphlets featuring photos of smiling teachers across the district, saying Augustus ''supports the everyday miracle of public education."

Blute, who spent only $25,746 more than the amount that the teachers had chipped in on behalf of Augustus, voiced surprise at the level of funds the union had put into the race.

''I always said during the campaign that he was in the tank for the unions, and that proves it," Blute said last week.

Critics said that the money the union has put into the system helps to explain the teachers' prodigious power on Beacon Hill.

With the solid support of many Democratic lawmakers, the teachers unions and allies are hoping to fend off Romney's proposals to institute merit pay for teachers, and to give administrators more power to hire and fire them. The governor's bill is pending in the Legislature's Education Committee.

Catherine A. Boudreau, president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, defended her union's use of independent expenditures as legal, transparent, and a way ''to speak directly to a larger audience of voters about public education."

Under state law, campaign spending qualifies as ''independent" as long as it is not coordinated with the candidate. Boudreau said the union had met that standard.

''We are transparent, we report everything we do, and there is no coordination, no discussion, nothing with the candidate," Boudreau said. ''We try to have a firewall between us and the candidate."

Boudreau said the union does not have to deal with candidates directly, because the policy positions and photographs that are included in the ads are available on the Internet.

She also noted that the union employs a democratic, district-based process in deciding which candidates to endorse. Boudreau acknowledged, however, that union leaders determine which candidates will get financial help, and how much they will get.

In some districts, teachers can direct that their union dues not be used for political purposes.

Romney declined to comment on the independent expenditures by the Massachusetts Teachers Association, but the leader of a group that is pushing a similar package of school changes, William H. Guenther of Mass Insight Education, said union power ''does present a problem."

''I don't think in every case that campaign contributions dictate votes on policy, but they do get you a hearing," Guenther said. ''Clearly we don't have the same budgets and weight that the teachers unions have."

In addition to its independent expenditures, the Massachusetts Teachers Association's political action committee gave $15,125 to candidates in 2004.

Two other teachers unions, the Massachusetts Federation of Teachers and the Boston Teachers Union, contributed only through their political action committees, giving $29,800 and $21,300, respectively.

Other groups, notably those favoring gay marriage, spent on so-called ''issue ads" in the past campaign. But unlike ads that are paid with independent expenditures, issue ads cannot expressly advocate the election or the defeat of any candidate.

Spending on them does not have to be publicly disclosed.

In addition to the help for Augustus, the Massachusetts Teachers Association spent $40,405 on direct mail and phone banking to help Senator Pamela P. Resor, an Acton Democrat on the Legislature's Education Committee.

The union spent $7,484 to assist Representative Kathleen M. Teahan, a former teacher from Whitman who spent only $55,927 herself. Senator Therese Murray of Plymouth, chairwoman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, received assistance totaling $25,279. More than a dozen other legislators also got help.

The union's help will not ''change my behavior in any way."

''I think it represents their knowledge, and their watching my behavior in the past and knowing that I will continue to support public education," she said.

Augustus, a former Worcester School Committee member and a Department of Education official during the Clinton administration, said that he was aware of the mailings but that he was also surprised by how much the teachers union had reportedly spent.

He offered a similar response: ''They saw somebody who would be advocating for the interests of kids, their members, and education in general," he said.

Pamela H. Wilmot, head of Common Cause Massachusetts, said she knew the teachers were using independent expenditures to influence elections but described the $341,849 figure as ''shocking." Wilmot said a US Supreme Court ruling in the 1980s opened the door to unlimited independent expenditures by equating them with free speech.

But she said more recent court cases have begun to chip away at that rationale.

Wilmot also said that Massachusetts should follow the federal government, as well as the actions of some other states, in curbing it.

''It's a major problem in the campaign finance arena," Wilmot said. ''We need to catch up with new laws and enact some serious regulations here."

Matt Wylie, the current executive director of the state Republican Party, said it would be ridiculous to think that the union's independent expenditures do not buy influence on Beacon Hill.

''It's not supposed to be coordinated, but a candidate who receives all this extra help, you know where their loyalties are going to be," Wylie said.

''They are spending money that is essentially untraceable to help candidates," he added.

''It's no wonder," Wylie said, ''the Democrats up there don't want to work with us."

Scott S. Greenberger is at greenberger@globe.com.