Union Funds Used Against GOP

Your Nov. 13 editorial echoes the growing media concern in the last weeks about excessive fund-raising for campaigns, more successfully by incumbents than by challengers. This isn’t surprising, but you seem to find it unfair.

Surely if one candidate, because of debating skill, character or charisma can persuade more people to give him or her money and votes than can his opponent, he deserves the office, even if you and I don’t like him. It’s called democracy, I believe.

The most outrageous fund-raising effort, far exceeding the millions in Asian money raised by the White House for the president (which is attracting media scrutiny), is the millions the AFL-CIO poured into dozens of races all over the country to defeat GOP incumbents and candidates. The ads they bought were so overwhelmingly negative and untrue many stations refused to carry them.

Big labor’s shameless scheme to buy dozens of elections, largely targeting GOP freshmen, reeks of union corruption. Elected officials spend much of their time fund-raising, under very strict rules. The unions simply lift it from their treasury, which consists solely of their members’ dues, without seeking permission.

This violates the U.S. Supreme Court decision in the Beck case of 1988, when the court ruled that every union must return to its members dues money spent on nonunion activities, such as political contributions, with which they may disagree. A few unions have complied with this; the AFL-CIO International has not.

If U.S. Steel makes a contribution to a campaign, any dissenting stockholder can sell his shares. Union members have no such choice.

I’m proud that one of my own unions, the Screen Actors Guild, is the only union to refuse to allow its members’ dues to be spent in this way.

CHARLTON HESTON

Beverly Hills