[TRU Research] Election-related mini research project

[Katie Wilson]

Ok, never mind with this, I did some poking around this morning and the results are a little interesting but not enough to warrant making a big deal about. Also, I ran a search for the UW (second-largest employer) and City of Seattle (~10k employees) and roughly I’d guess Amazon employees have made fewer political contributions per capita but not remarkably fewer; also now that we have the Democracy Voucher program it’s really hard to infer political engagement from monetary contributions, and the vouchers don’t require voters to identify an employer, so who knows how Amazon employees have used their vouchers.

Removing District 5 and discounting PACs (it was almost exclusively high-level execs that donated to PACs) I found:

Progressive candidates Primary: 24 donations, average $173.40, unique individuals 16
Progressive candidates General: 47 donations (14 post 10/15), average $140.21, unique individuals 28
40 unique individuals total (4 overlap)
Without 1 S-team member, 39 total donors

Amazon-approved candidates Primary: 51 donations, average $244.71, individuals 36
Amazon-approved candidates General: 34 donations (3 post 10/15), average $292.14, unique individuals 29
52 unique individuals total (13 overlap)
Without 8 S-team members, 44 total donors

> On Oct 28, 2019, at 8:44 PM, Katie Wilson <katie at transitriders.org> wrote:
> 
> Hey folks,
> 
> I was reading this article <https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/amazons-growing-spending-on-seattle-politics-includes-a-spate-of-donations-from-jeff-bezos-s-team/> and noticed this interesting bit:
> 
> Through Oct. 15, about 139 Amazon employees had made contributions to various council candidates and PACs, totaling more than $102,000, according to city election data. More than half that total came from 11 individuals on the S Team. Meanwhile, 14 Amazon employees contributed about $3,773 to Sawant.
> 
> My first thought is that 139, out of ~50,000 employees in our region, seems VERY low, especially since Amazon went out of its way to host a candidate meet-and-greet and a candidate forum just for employees. 
> 
> My second thought is, I wonder, apart from the contributions to Sawant, which candidates and PACs these Amazon employees are contributing to, and how much. It would be super interesting to know what the breakdown is, in terms of number of employees, number of donations, and dollar amounts, between candidates/PACs that Amazon itself supports v those it doesn’t.
> 
> If anyone has a little time in the next day or two, would you care to dig into this and report back? It’s all available at https://www.pdc.wa.gov <https://www.pdc.wa.gov/>, but I’m guessing some of you will have an easier time than me getting the info quickly and in a comprehensible form. There are 14 candidates, and main the PACs I would look at are People for Seattle, Moms for Seattle, and Civic Alliance for a Sound Economy— though there may be others that indivduals are donating to that would also be worth checking out, maybe it’s possible to poke around the site and find out.
> 
> If you’re going to work on this, say something so that I (and others) don’t duplicate your work!
> 
> If what we find is interesting I will try to write something about it fast and get it out into the world...
> 
> Katie
> 
> Katie Wilson
> General Secretary
> Transit Riders Union
> https://transitriders.org <https://transitriders.org/>
> 206-781-7204
> 
> The Transit Riders Union is a democratic organization of working and poor people, including students, seniors, and people with disabilities, taking control over our own lives, and building up the power we need to change society for the good of humanity and of the planet. We will fight to preserve, expand, and improve the public transportation system in Seattle and beyond, so that every human being has access to safe, affordable, and reliable public transit.
> 
> 

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