We may be Notre Dame, but our faculty is feeling the Bern
None of them have donated to Cruz or Trump
The Federal Election Commission website offers a look into how much money Notre Dame faculty members have contributed to political campaigns over the past few decades. We took a look at the most recent election cycle – donations to political candidates between April 2015 and March of this year.
Notre Dame has not been very financially active this election season, only contributing $11,815. Contributions to Republicans and Democrats are comparable – $6,100 and $5,715 respectively.
Bernie Sanders received the most individual donations with five members of the Notre Dame faculty contributing to his campaign, a total of $4,415. Marco Rubio, Chris Christie, and Hillary Clinton have also received money, while candidates Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and John Kasich are absent from the list of recipients.
Surprisingly, the candidate who has received the most money from Notre Dame faculty is Chris Christie, who dropped out of the race on February 10, 2016 and endorsed Donald Trump on February 26.
In October of 2015, two Notre Dame employees maxed out their donation limit under US Electoral Law by giving $2,700 each to Christie’s campaign fund. Those two donations account for 89 percent of donations given to the Republican party by Notre Dame faculty, with the other 11 percent accounted for by Rubio.
These two contributors must be either the most wealthy, the most generous, or the most passionate about their candidate. Now that Christie is out of the race, perhaps Notre Dame money will be directed to another candidate. We can only hope that it won’t be Trump.