By Jordan Fenster, Staff Reporter

During an edition of “Where We Live” Monday, Democratic 5th Congressional District candidate Chris Donovan told WNPR host John Dankosky that his campaign funding comes “hardly at all” from labor unions.

That’s false by most people’s definition of “hardly at all.”

All told, Donovan has raised more than $1 million over the course of his campaign. About a quarter of that, $235,680, has come from political action committees, and much of that figure is made up of donations from labor unions.

Since the start of the cycle, Donovan has received $177,000 in donations from political action  committees associated with 18 union organizations. That’s about 15 percent of his total raised, and doesn’t include donations from individuals who are union members and-or activists.

The largest donors were the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which gave the candidate $25,000, but other union donors include the postal workers, two teachers unions, iron workers, sheet metal workers, food and commercial workers, painters, firefighters and service employees, among others.

“As he said in the interview on NPR this morning, Chris is very proud that his campaign has more than 8,500 individual donors, that more than 83 percent of the money raised from them came from within the state of Connecticut, because they support his lifetime of standing up for hard working men and women who are looking for dignity, fairness and respect,” said Donovan campaign spokesman Gabe Rosenberg. “That’s who he has always stood up for and will always stand up for in Congress.”

Donovan, who has been employed as a labor union organizer for most of his life, has lobbied for union interests as a legislator and Connecticut’s speaker of the house. He recently argued that members of the food and commercial workers’ union should get a $220 million school refurbishment project in Meriden, according to the Record Journal, and pushed a bill that some critics said forced child and home care workers to unionize.

They voted to join a division of the Service Employees International Union on Dec.20, and the SEIU gave Donovan’s campaign $15,000 in three donations, two $5,000 donations a day later, on Dec. 21 and $5,000 in September.

Email Jordan Fenster at jfenster@nhregister.com. Follow him on Twitter @jordanfenster.