If the SF State employees who have given money to presidential campaigns this election cycle were to pick the next president, John Kerry would win in a landslide.

Campaign donors who identified themselves as SF State employees are giving nearly $88 to John Kerry and the Democratic Party for every dollar their colleagues on campus are contributing to President Bush and the Republican Party, according to campaign donor receipts collected by Political Money Line, an independent non-partisan campaign finance organization.

The organization warns that some political campaigns skirt the law and fail to identify their donor’s employer, but results from Political Money Line’s database indicate the presidential campaigns to elect Bush and Kerry accurately report their donor’s occupation and employer.

“One hundred to one. That sounds about right,” Ellen McElhinny said, when told an earlier slightly higher estimate of how much her fellow employees favor Kerry.

McElhinny, a Geography and Human Environmental Studies lecturer, has donated $2000 to Kerry's campaign this year.

She is one of 25 SF State employees who have made contributions of greater then $200 this election cycle. Twenty-four have contributed a total of $21,900 to Kerry and the Democrats.

The Republicans have netted one donation of $250.

Dr. Phil Kipper, the Broadcast and Electronic Communications department chair, did not get the opportunity to go on vacation this year. So he and his wife donated $6000 from their vacation funds to Kerry’s campaign and the Democratic National Party, making him the largest contributor at SF State this year.

Kipper donates yearly, but he has contributed more this election cycle than ever before, he said.

“I feel that this is an incredibly important election, in terms of what future effects it could have on the economy and the Supreme Court,” he said.

The strong support for Kerry came as no shock for Ambassador David Fischer, SF State’s diplomat in residence.

“San Francisco State is one of the 10 most liberal universities in the
country. I’m amazed you found even one Republican. I only know two,” he said, after giving a lecture on terrorism and its effect on the presidential election.

Fischer teaches courses in International Relations at SF State.

He strongly criticized the President and the current administration in an Aug. 15 lecture he gave for a course on the presidential election and the issues surrounding it.

“The Bush Administration is the most extraordinary ruthless political machine in my lifetime,” he said at the beginning of class. Near the end of his lecture he added, “I’ll vote for anybody, but Bush.”

SF State employees’ financial support of Kerry’s campaign is similar to the amount of support Kerry is getting from those working in education as a whole. Seventy-three percent of the more than $20.5 million contributed this election cycle by donors who work in education has gone to Kerry and the Democratic Party, a report prepared by the Center for Responsive Politics said.

Dr. Robert Cherny, a SF State history professor, and a large contributor to the Kerry campaign this year, is not surprised that his colleagues support Kerry by such a wide margin. “It is nothing new that university faculty members in a liberal city to be liberal and Democratic,” he wrote in an email.

Cherny said Liberals and Democrats are more concerned about the nation’s future than ever before and President Bush is taking initiatives that break with American traditions. He blamed the president for declaring war without being first attacked, for creating a “monumental debt that is likely to be a crushing burden on our children,” and for endangering civil liberties, he wrote.

“I am deeply worried about the future course of the nation. So I've contributed more to the Kerry campaign than I've ever contributed before,” Cherny wrote.

Last July, Dr. Christopher Carrington, an assistant professor of sociology at SF State wrote a check for $500 to Kerry’s campaign. At the age of 18 he made his first $25 donation to President Jimmy Carter’s re-election campaign and has continued to support every Democratic presidential and senatorial nominee since.

He said the President and his administration have a “public policy driven by ideology, ignorance, greed, short-term interests, and pandering to the most extreme and insidious special interests.”

“In my view," he added, "when someone cares both about evidence, and about the well being of others, such a combination inevitably leads to support for Democrats over Republicans, liberals over conservatives.”