In addition, NNU gave the California WFP’s preferred candidate, San Francisco supervisor Connie Chan, $3,000 ahead of her advancing from the June 2 primary in the state’s congressional race to succeed retiring Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). The Pelosi-backed Chan will face off against Democratic state Sen. Scott Weiner in the November general election for the speaker emerita’s deep-blue congressional district, which sits almost entirely within San Francisco’s city limits. Chan is politically positioned to the left of Weiner, an LGBT activist, who has emerged as a relative centrist on other issues, aside from gay rights, in the context of San Francisco’s left-wing landscape.

NNU has also given $3,000 each to other WFP-endorsed congressional contenders, including social justice activist Analilia Mejia; labor leader Bob Brooks; Mai Vang, a member of the Sacramento City Council who refuses to recite the Pledge of Alliance and routinely turns her back to the American flag at council meetings; and Rep. Eric Swalwell’s (D-CA) potential replacement Aisha Wahab, whose progressive platform has earned her the moniker “West Coast AOC.”

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Now a sitting congresswoman, Mejia won the special election in April to replace Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D-NJ), who stepped down from Congress after winning New Jersey’s governorship, and will battle it out again in November before finishing Sherrill’s term. Mejia, previously the political director of Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign, is co-director of the Center for Popular Democracy, a progressive group “unapologetically demand[ing] transformational change for Black, brown, and low-income communities.” The organization is allied with teachers unions to prevent the proliferation of charter schools, which operate independent of the public school system. Mejia, the daughter of an initially “undocumented” immigrant, herself is in favor of tuition-free college, student loan forgiveness, and has called for the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Brooks is the handpicked choice of Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) to take back Lehigh Valley’s congressional seat, which national Democrats have set their sights on as one of the most likely to flip blue. NNU gave an additional $100,000 to Stronger Together PA, the newly established super PAC dedicated exclusively to supporting Brooks through digital advertisements and text banking.

Among other non-WFP candidates, NNU donated similar amounts to climate activist William Lawrence, leader of the Sunrise Movement; incumbent Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL); and Illinois Lt. Gov. Juliana Stratton, who is seeking the Senate seat left by departing Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL).

Stratton believes “ICE must be abolished” and that universal healthcare coverage is “a right” that can be guaranteed by instituting a “Medicare for all” model, an idea in line with NNU’s primary policy position of advancing the government takeover of health insurance through a single-payer “Medicare for all” system. Frost, formerly the national organizing director for March for Our Lives and the first Generation Z member of Congress, initially ran against the centrist wing of the Democratic Party, particularly its willingness to “compromise” on key issues, including gun control. NNU has cut checks to outside groups like March for Our Lives, giving grant money to the gun control group’s action fund.

NNU, the largest union of registered nurses in the United States, has faced criticism for spending donor funds on political issues ostensibly unrelated to nurses’ interests, all while collecting membership dues from working nurses. Even some Democratic strategists have said NNU is too radical to be an effective advocate of matters concerning healthcare.

Since 2010, NNU’s super PAC has amassed over $26.6 million in campaign contributions, more than $20.1 million of which came directly from the union itself. Meanwhile, its federally registered labor organization PAC, called Fund for a Healthy America, has made over $630,000 in campaign contributions since 2008, giving repeatedly to Sanders, Ocasio-Cortez, and her fellow “Squad” Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Cori Bush (D-MO), who later lost reelection.

National Union of Healthcare Workers

The National Union of Healthcare Workers, another purportedly nonpartisan union of medical professionals, has given $10,000 to Wahab’s upstart campaign and a total of $50,000 to the WFP this year alone through its Federal Committee on Political Education.

NUHW sees political action as “critical in the healthcare industry.”

The union says its advocacy work “will never be complete until we create an anti-racist healthcare system,” believes that “medical racism,” a concept derived from critical race theory, is “a crisis” in America, and has hosted inclusivity training sessions aimed at “dismantling white supremacy culture.” Its candidate questionnaire includes a question asking political aspirants if they have “taken concrete steps to support the work of Black Lives Matter.”

NUHW has also declared itself a so-called sanctuary union for illegal immigrants, promising to do “everything in its power” to protect all of its members, their families, and patients, regardless of immigration status.

American Federation of Teachers

According to its 2026 filings, the American Federation of Teachers, the country’s second-largest teachers union, has financially supported the congressional bids of Wahab and Mejia, respectively donating $2,500 and $10,000.

The union’s Committee on Political Education also earmarked $500,000 for the Democrat-dedicated Senate Majority PAC, $150,000 for the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, and $250,000 for the Democratic Governors Association, all of which were categorized as “annual contributions.”

Additionally, the AFT donated $150,000 to Gov. Tina Kotek’s (D-OR) reelection campaign on the eve of the May primary. Kotek then decided in June to opt Oregon out of the Trump administration’s school choice program, which would subsidize scholarships for K-12 students to cover the cost of private school tuition and homeschooling expenses.

AFT has been lobbying Democratic governors to reject the education tax credits offered by the program, calling it a “private school voucher scheme.” Meanwhile, the Oregon Education Association declined to endorse Kotek, despite doing so in the past, out of frustration with the state’s school funding levels.

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National teachers unions claim the initiative would divert taxpayer dollars away from the public school system, though the funds could also pay for programming that public schools have historically struggled to fund, such as tutoring, technology, special education services, and after-school activities, through partnerships with nonprofit organizations or their existing not-for-profit foundations.

Kotek, who was on the fence about whether to allow Oregon to participate in the federal tax credit program, made her decision a week after the Treasury Department released guidance on how it would be implemented. “At this point, I simply cannot trust that any education policy coming from Trump’s White House is in the best interest of Oregon’s kids and our public education system,” Kotek said.