A newly released report by the Freedom Foundation details just how politically one-sided Missouri’s most influential teachers union truly is.

The report, “Out of Touch: The Hyper-Partisan Politics of the Missouri National Education Association,” analyzes political expenditures disclosed to the Missouri Ethics Commission (MEC) from 2017-2024 and reveals how the Missouri National Education Association (MNEA) and its parent union, the National Education Association (NEA), almost exclusively seek to advance Democrat politics in the state despite attempting to appear bipartisan and buy political cover by funding certain Republican primary elections.

The study’s key findings include:

• 83.9 percent of the political expenditures by the MNEA and NEA in Missouri elections from 2017-2024 went to support Democrat or Democrat-aligned candidates, political committees, organizations, and primarily Democrat-supported ballot measures.
• In every legislative race decided by a margin of less than 10 percentage points, the MNEA exclusively funded Democrats.
• The MNEA only expended funds for GOP candidates in races where a Republican won the general election by an average margin of 42.8 percentage points or ran unopposed. Further, the MNEA’s only notable support for Republicans over the seven-year period was its efforts to defeat other Republicans in certain GOP primaries.
• In the 2018 and 2020 elections, the NEA and MNEA together spent more than $3.2 million bankrolling ‘Clean Missouri’ in high-profile ballot fights over legislative redistricting, which Republican leaders characterized as an underhanded attempt to win Democrats more seats in the statehouse. The NEA and MNEA were Clean Missouri’s largest source of funds, outspending the next highest contributor by more than $928,000.

The data suggest the MNEA’s strategy is to back a small number of GOP candidates in strategic primary elections — where a GOP victory is all but guaranteed anyway — in an attempt to claim bipartisanship and curry favor with key players of Missouri’s Republican legislative majority, all while devoting significant resources to erode that majority wherever it can.

Though the MNEA is free to support whatever political candidates or causes it likes, Missouri policymakers and the public should have a comprehensive understanding of the union’s extreme partisanship considering the various taxpayer-funded handouts the MNEA receives — not the least of which is the use of school districts’ payroll systems to collect union dues and political contributions on its behalf.

There is simply no public policy justification for using Missouri’s taxpayer-funded public payroll systems to subsidize political campaign activity for one of the largest — and most politically one-sided — special interest groups in the state.

Finally, the report dispels the myth that MNEA members’ dues are not used to make political contributions. Given the First Amendment implications, Missouri’s teachers and other school employees deserve to know the true extent of the MNEA’s partisanship — and how their dues fund it — so they can make an informed decision about whether membership in the union aligns with their values and interests.

The full report, “Out of Touch: The Hyper-Partisan Politics of the Missouri National Education Association,” is available below: