NJ.com: Sean Spiller Finally Admits What the NJEA Has Been Hiding: Teachers’ Regular Dues Are Funding His Vanity Run for Governor

The dam has finally broken: two more news stories on NJEA leadership’s spending $35 million of teachers’ mandatory, annual dues on NJEA President Sean Spiller’s vanity run for governor.  These news stories have finally forced Spiller to admit — albeit with much dissembling — what the NJEA has long tried to hide from teachers.

Last week, it was the New York Times and today it’s an excellent article by Riley Yates and Brent Johnson of NJ.com as well as an extensive piece by the Bergen Record‘s renowned columnist Charlie Stile (behind a paywall).  Sunlight wants to focus on the NJ.com report because they really delved into the issue and spoke to teachers about these revelations.

Here are some of the highlights, which confirm Sunlight’s own reporting on this issue:

• The $35 million backing Spiller’s run “was made possible by one thing alone: the coffers of the powerful union he leads.” The NJEA money has provided Spiller with “a pot of cash expected to dwarf even the best-funded and best-known candidates.”  And it is “all being fueled by [regular] union dues.”
• Importantly, “some teachers say the [NJEA] hasn’t been entirely transparent” about Spiller’s run.  Veteran teacher and former-union officer John Napolitani was “dismayed” when he learned his regular dues were funding Spiller. Here’s the crux of the matter: Napolitani calls the effort to back Spiller against five better-known candidates as “insane,” and adds “I’m sure that if the average NJEA member knew that, I think they’d probably blow a gasket.”  NJ.com also talked to several other teachers who “complained their union has been keeping them in the dark [about their dues funding Spiller].”
• When asked directly where Spiller is getting all this funding from, Spiller is characteristically evasive but is forced to admit the truth: “Everybody knows” [which the teachers above prove is a false claim].  Spiller adds about his donors: “These are people who voluntarily join a union. We know we’ve got to collectively pool dollars to be able to compete.” We would note that teachers who joined the NJEA did not join to have their hard-earned dues fund Spiller’s “insane” run for governor, as indicated above. It’s also noteworthy that Spiller cannot bring himself to state the truth clearly: that it’s members’ mandatory, annual dues that are funding his run. Instead, he dissembles.
• Once again, the NJEA claims that Spiller is not involved in NJEA funding decisions about his run, but once again it does not say who does make the decisions. NJEA spokesman Steve Baker speaks of the NJEA’s elected delegates who make the “endorsement and budgeting decisions.” That is true so far as it goes: delegate assembly committees do indeed make budgeting and endorsement decisions, but that does not tell us who made the decision to spend $35 million to back Spiller.  You can be sure that if the NJEA’s funding vehicle for Spiller’s run — the NJEA’s Super PAC, Garden State Forward — was run by a delegate assembly committee, Baker would have made that explicitly clear. But he didn’t.  We do know that Spiller himself told the Star-Ledger that decisions about Garden State Forward were made by three top NJEA executives, including Spiller.
• The NJEA-run, NJEA-funded, pro-Spiller Super PAC Working New Jersey is allowed to spend unlimited amounts backing Spiller, but it must act independently of Spiller’s campaign. The article quotes an elections expert who is skeptical that there is no coordination between Spiller’s almost non-existent campaign — with no paid staff and near-zero funding — and Working New Jersey, which is spending all the NJEA’s millions. He said “it is hard to believe Spiller isn’t talking to [Working New Jersey].”
• The article quotes Micah Rasmussen of the Rebovich Institute calls Spiller’s resume “the thinnest of the Democratic hopefuls in the race.”
• As reported elsewhere, Spiller has raised so little money that he is the only Democratic candidate not to qualify for matching funds and the only candidate who will not be on stage for the next two gubernatorial debates.

The bottom line is that NJ.com confirms what Sunlight has been saying all along:

1.  NJEA leadership (including the conflicted Spiller) will spend $35 million (actually $40 million) of teachers’ mandatory, annual dues on Spiller’s vanity run for governor, which Spiller himself finally admits;
2. Spiller is a weak, flawed candidate and the NJEA money is the only thing keeping Spiller’s campaign afloat;
3. NJEA leadership is funding Spiller via an opaque process that has never been explained to anyone, let alone teachers; and
4. NJEA leadership (including Spiller) has been hiding the truth from teachers.

It’s scandal of the first order and the news media is finally catching on to it.