The NJEA Slings Mud and Peddles Falsehoods to Keep Teachers from Sunlight’s Facts

In a recent ad on InsiderNJ, the NJEA reached a new low.  They previously tried to block Sunlight’s emails from reaching teachers, scare teachers from opening Sunlight’s messages by falsely labeling Sunlight’s texts as a “phishing scam” that might infect their phones, and discredit Sunlight by putting us at the top of the NJEA’s “propaganda” watch list on the NJEA website.  Now they’re just flinging mud at us and hoping it sticks. (See below for Sunlight’s video response to the NJEA’s mudslinging.)

Their recent 30-second ad had these completely and verifiably false claims:

• DARK MONEY: Sunlight is described as a “dark-money” group in order to characterize us as nefariously political. But that is false. The Campaign Legal Center defines “dark money” as 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(6) organizations that “inject massive amounts of secret money into elections.”  But Sunlight is a 501(c)(3) research non-profit that cannot and does not participate in electoral politics at all.  Sunlight cannot and does not endorse any candidates, and we certainly do not inject any money into elections.
• PROJECT 2025: The NJEA ties Sunlight to the Heritage Foundation and Project 2025.  But Sunlight has never had anything to do with Heritage or Project 2025.  A search of our website for “Project 2025” yields this result: “No posts found. Try a different search?”  That’s because Sunlight has never even mentioned Project 2025.  We could not tell you what’s in it.  The NJEA knows more about Project 2025 than we do.
• ELIMINATE SCHOOL LUNCHES! By falsely tying Sunlight to Project 2025, the NJEA ad then spuriously claims that Sunlight advocates for some truly outrageous policies: cutting special education funding, eliminating school lunches (!), and defunding Head Start.  But this is all completely fabricated.  As a search of our website will confirm, Sunlight has never advocated for any of these positions.  In fact, we have never addressed these issues at all.

We’re guessing that the NJEA went out and polled teachers to determine which attacks would resonate and then hurled them like mud at Sunlight.  We can’t help but sense some desperation on the part of the NJEA.  Seems like Sunlight’s campaign to provide teachers with the facts is working, and since the NJEA fears teachers learning the facts, they are reduced to increasingly unhinged mudslinging to try to prevent it.

We’re flattered in a way because the most powerful special interest in the state feels the need to sling mud at us. Don’t be surprised if the NJEA accuses us of kicking puppies next.

Here’s Sunlight’s video response to the NJEA’s mudslinging that we will be running next week: