Feds & politics: Remember the DDAOSATO rule & you’re OK

Now that both of the major political parties have chosen their presidential candidates (sigh!) the next step is up to you.

And you’ve got a lot of company, in the form of fellow feds and government retirees in your state. That could be important if it is one of those must-win, up for grabs states. States like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Florida and Virginia. Those happen to be places where there are lots of feds and lots of retirees, most of them likely voters this time out.

While many people think the Hatch ‘no politics’ Act insulates feds from political life, it has been watered-down over the years to the point where feds can do most things other citizens can. In fact, those who heed the DDAOSATO (don’t-do-anything-obviously-stupid-at-the-office) rule are good to go.

When many people think of the federal workforce, they focus (fixate?) on the Washington, D.C. metro area. And while it has lots of civil servants, roughly 14 percent of the total federal workforce, that means 86 percent work elsewhere, in places like Ogden, Utah, San Antonio, Houston, and Raleigh-Durham, N.C. The largest percentage of feds in any state’s workforce (5.6 percent) is in Hawaii.

California has the most feds of any state (245,000), and federal government workers make up 5.6 percent of the non-farm labor force in Hawaii.

Texas has about 193,500 active-duty federal workers, who make up 1.7 percent of its total nonfarm workforce. Florida has 129,800 federal workers and, like California, Arizona, and Texas, has lots and lots of registered-to-vote federal retirees.

Virginia is considered a must-win state by both political parties. That’s one of the reasons former Secretary of State Clinton chose Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) to be her running mate. Virginia has 172,500 feds, and many of its 3.7 million private-sector jobs are either federal contractors, researchers or are directly linked to the federal government or Defense Department.

Maryland usually votes Democratic. But its 145,300 active duty feds could swing almost any statewide election.

The federal government presence is also large in swing states like Pennsylvania (96,200 feds), Ohio (75,700), Indiana, (37,000) and Illinois with 81,000 feds — 1.4 percent of its total workforce as of 2013.

Feds jobs, payrolls and voters are also a major factor in New York (115,400), North Carolina (67,600) and Colorado (53,800). Federal civil servants make up 2.4 percent (97,800) of the state workforce in Georgia.

So what next? For feds, that’s mostly a personal choice. For candidates, in an election that could be close and surprising, the advice might be to cool it with the anti-fed rhetoric. It is probably safe, in most places, to denounce pointy-headed-bureaucrats in Washington. But they might want to make clear that they are talking about Washington, D.C., not Seattle-Tacoma or beyond-the-Beltway places like Oklahoma and Alabama, which are chock-full of U.S. government workers, all of them old enough to vote.

How important is the federal vote in your state. Check out the numbers by clicking here.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By Michael O’Connell

A Badminton shuttlecock weighs between 0.168 and  0.194 ounces.

Source: Top End Sports

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