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Business interests outspent organized labor 13 to 1 during the 2009-10 election cycle, according to a new report from the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign, a non-partisan group that tracks campaign spending. Business interest shelled out about $18.8 million to statewide and legislative races – much of it to Democratic candidates – and union employees and union political action committees gave just $1.4 million.

An additional $6 million came from other sources. WDC research director Michael Buelow says this “other” category included “retirees and homemakers, political and ideological groups, contributors whose occupation and employer are unknown, civil servants and public employees, education and nonprofit/social services outfits.” Some of these could have come from individuals who belong to unions, but Buelow says campaign disclosure rules don’t require individuals to disclose union membership when making contributions.

According to Buelow, individual contributions from union members, even in total, are much smaller than union political action committee (PAC) spending. “In the world of organized labor, PACs, as opposed to individuals, make most of the contributions.”

In the 2009-10 cycle, business interests gave $11.3 million to Republicans and $7.5 million to Democrats. “Business interests,” says Buelow, included groups and individuals who listed themselves as employees or business owners in the following industries: “banking and finance, health services and institutions, manufacturing and distributing, law firms, retail business, tourism and leisure, insurance, construction, energy, real estate, transportation, agriculture, telecommunications and computers, natural resources, road construction and defense.”

According to the report, “Most contributions from business interests come from individual contributors … Over the years, the number and size of contributions from wealthy individuals in construction, real estate, energy manufacturing, health care and other business sectors has outpaced PAC giving.” Business interests, it says, have also used “conduit groups” to legally bundle individual contributions together into “one large check to a candidate” and avoid PAC contribution limits.

Labor gave $1.3 million to Democrats and just $109,873 to Republicans, a scant 1 percent of their overall contributions.

The balance between labor and business spending in the 2009-10 cycle, as determined by the WDC, was similar to past cycles. In recent years, the balance has ranged from $17 to $1 in 1999-00, when the gulf was widest, to $10 to $1 in 2001-02, when it was narrowest, according to the report, which only counted what the state deems “large contributions,” any exceeding $100.

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