[6] AFSCME was one of the first groups to take advantage of the 2010 Citizens United decision, which allowed unions and corporations to directly finance ads that expressly call for the election or defeat of a candidate.

The WSEA was launched amid fears of politically based firings within the state, the possible elimination of the civil service and a return to patronage jobs.

[13] In 1935, after meetings between Zander and AFL President William Green, AFSCME became a chapter within the American Federation of Government Employees.

[2] In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated while in Memphis, Tennessee to support a strike by the African-American sanitation workers' union, AFSCME Local 1733.

[11] In 1982, the union voted to endorse the passage of federal, state, and local legislation to extend civil rights to gay and lesbian citizens.

[17] In 1989, a third of the locals and the headquarters of the dissolving National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees (NUHHCE) joined AFSCME.

[2] AFSCME led an effort to oppose Clinton's signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Saunders defeated Civil Service Employees Association president Danny Donohue with 54% of the votes[23] and was re-elected without opposition in July 2016.

[28] In 2005, when Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich signed an executive order allowing home child care providers to collectively bargain with the state, a turf war broke out between AFSCME and the Service Employees International Union for the exclusive right to organize them.

[32][33] In 2007, AFSCME resolved a two-year dispute with the University of California that raised pay for the system's lowest paid workers.

[2] According to OpenSecrets, AFSCME is the United States' fifth largest organizational contributor to federal campaigns and parties, having donated more than $126 million since the 1990 election cycle.

[35] In addition to combating privatization of public sector jobs, key political objectives for the group include raising the minimum wage and opposing the substitution of vacation time for overtime pay due workers.

[34] In June 2008, AFSCME, along with MoveOn.org, spent over US$500,000 on a television advertisement, Not Alex, critical of the presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain.

[37] With the loosening of restrictions by this Supreme Court case, AFSCME has widened its political funding base through the use of member dues.

[5] AFSCME was the biggest outside spender in the 2010 midterm elections, spending a total of $87.5 million in support of Democratic Party candidates.

[41][42] In 2012, AFSCME, SEIU, and the American Federation of Teachers agreed on a politics-only alliance for the 2012 national election campaign.