Steve and Connie Ballmer’s political contributions

I downloaded from the state Public Disclosure Commission a database listing contributions to political campaigns and initiatives. The database is for direct contributions to candidates and initiative campaigns. It excludes independent expenditures. So the data shown below are incomplete, but still, I hope, enlightening.

You can see in the table below that the Ballmers donated a lot of money to support gun control and to support charter schools. Stand for Children is a charter school promoter. (Part of the aim of the charter school movement is to destroy public education by “monetizing” it, in order to enrich entrepreneurs.)

Integrity WA appears to be the same things as Rodney Tom’s Judicial Integrity WA PAC, whose 2016 donations are listed here on the PDC website. That PAC and a similar one, Judicial Integrity Washington, are funded by rich Washingtonians including Kemper Freeman. See this article, which also discusses Citizens for Working Courts, which was funded by the Ballemers, Paul Allen and Bill Gates.

You can below that most of the Ballmers’ contributions to individual candidates were to Democrats: the middle-of-the-road (“Road Kill”) Democrats who supported charter schools. Perhaps the Ballmers knew that the Republicans were already on their side, so there was no need to give money to them.

Interesting that the only Republican supported was Steve Litzow, whose charter school bill passed in 2016 with help from the Road Kill Democrats.