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October 16, 2025A new low for Mendacious Michael “Hundreds of Millions” Gottesman, progressive zealot and founder of the NJEA-funded, dark-money Super PAC New Jersey Public Education Coalition (NJPEC). Gottesman is a proven, serial bully — as well as a proven, serial liar — but Gottesman used to pick on adults. Now he’s picking on high school freshmen and college kids, and is once again seeking the New Jersey press corps’ assistance. And once again, Gottesman uses incendiary language to describe Turning Point USA, which is highly irresponsible in the current environment where political violence is an looming threat for TPUSA members. And these are high school and college kids! When will New Jersey’s political leaders and press corps stand up and condemn Gottesman’s bullying and reckless behavior?
The bully Gottesman goes after high school freshmen for stupid Halloween costumes. Gottesman’s most recent attacks involve emails sent to the press and NJPEC’s members (one of whom shared them with Sunlight) about alleged anti-Semitism by some Freehold high school FRESHMEN students. The 14-year-olds apparently dressed in stupid Holocaust costumes for a Halloween party and have been suspended from school. For some reason, Gottesman felt it was necessary to insert himself into the incident by alerting the press (and of course one of Gottesman’s favorite media megaphones, Fred Snowflack of InsiderNJ, dutifully penned a piece on it) as well as NJPEC members. This is a new low for the progressive zealot Gottesman.
But Gottesman was silent about the NJEA’s “violent, anti-Semitic” editor. But what is so revealing is that just last week, Rep. Josh Gottheimer wrote an official letter to NJEA President Beatty demanding the firing of the editor of NJEA Review due to her “violent, anti-Semitic” social media posts:
Ms. Oraby has an extremely troubling public record of promoting divisive, violent, and hate-filled rhetoric that has no place in our great state …
Democratic gubernatorial nominee Mikie Sherrill seconded Gottheimer’s demand with strong, unequivocal words. Here we have the editor of a magazine for (something less than) 200,000 NJEA educators, whose actual words were truly vile, but Gottesman was silent. We’re guessing money talks and the NJEA’s funding for NJPEC curbed Gottesman’s enthusiasm. It’s so much easier to bully high school freshmen who wear stupid Halloween costumes.
This is not the first time Gottesman has gone after high school kids. As Sunlight blogged two weeks ago, Gottesman sent two emails to reporters to try to pressure them into opposing student efforts to start Turning Point USA (TPUSA) chapters in New Jersey high schools. More ominously, Gottesman’s emails were also sent to NJPEC’s progressive membership and contained incendiary rhetoric — calling TPUSA “Charlie Kirk’s hate group” — and specifically identified people that were working with TPUSA. In the wake of the murder of Charlie Kirk and an environment of increased political violence, this was highly irresponsible and indifferent to the safety of others. We asked whether such behavior was putting a target on TPUSA supporters’ backs — even if they were only high school kids.
Gottesman also went after college kids. Gottesman also saw fit to send an email to the press and NJPEC members attacking the Rutgers TPUSA chapter for circulating an on-line petition calling for the firing of a Rutgers professor who wrote an Antifa handbook. As of last Thursday, it had 1,100 signatures, per NJ.com. Regardless of the substance the petition, it’s quite clearly a legitimate exercise of these students’ First Amendment. Gottesman suggests that Rutgers TPUSA is responsible for subsequent death threats, the professor’s moving to Spain, and even an apparent ticket mix-up at the airport, but of course provides no proof whatsoever. What Gottesman does do is use incendiary rhetoric again:
Once again we implore you to investigate the actions of TPUSA and inform the public about what we consider to be an extremist organization whose actions border on fascism. (Emphasis added].
Are conservative high school and college students at risk for political violence? Again, Sunlight asks how this is acceptable behavior in today’s environment where political violence looms menacingly over TPUSA’s activities. It was certainly not lost on the Rutgers student and TPUSA chapter treasurer, who said conservative students are “at risk from such political violence,” (NJ.com).
When will New Jersey’s political leadership and press corps stand up and condemn this bullying and reckless behavior by Mendacious Michael “Hundreds of Millions” Gottesman? Again, we’re talking about New Jersey high school and college kids. It has to stop.