According to Mike Lilley of the Sunlight Foundation of New Jersey, Montclair Mayor/NJEA President Sean Spiller is using teacher union dues to fund his campaign to be New Jersey’s next governor. “So much for NJEA President Spiller’s duty to look out for his members’ best interests,” Lilley writes in his new report. “In a political career filled with serial conflicts of interest,” a dark money PAC called Protecting Our Democracy “is Spiller’s biggest conflict of interest yet.”

The New Jersey Education Association, with almost 200,000 school employees paying dues, has three Political Action Groups, or PAC’s. One is traditional and subject to lots of rules about disclosing revenue and payments; also, teachers get to opt in or out of their dues going to the PAC and an elected NJEA committee makes decisions about spending. The second, Garden State Forward, is a a 527 Super PAC, commonly known as a “dark money PAC,” which allows NJEA to hide much information from the public. It is this PAC that spent millions to elect (and re-elect) Gov. Phil Murphy.

In October, 2022, NJEA launched a second dark-money Super PAC called “Protecting Our Democracy” which, according to Lilley, appears specifically set up to fund Spiller’s desire to be NJ’s next governor..

Teachers have no choice about whether their $1,200 annual union dues—the highest in the country—.are used to support Spiller or, for that matter, Murphy. Who gets to decide? NJEA’s executives, which include NJEA President Spiller. He has personal input into how much of teachers’ money goes to his campaign. “NJEA leadership appropriates whatever they deem necessary,” Lilley told me, “and teachers have no say.” One example is NJEA’s spiteful decision in 2017 to spend $5 million to defeat then-Senate President Steve Sweeney because he passed a pension reform bill. (Sweeney won anyway but lost in 2021.)

Is something wrong with this picture?

Lilley thinks so and decided to do a little digging. Here’s what he came up with.

To no one’s surprise, Garden State Forward has much more money to work with than the NJEA’s traditional PAC, which teachers can choose to opt out of and is far more tightly regulated. From 2013, when the dark money PAC was founded, until 2020, Garden State Forward has spent $58.6 million while the other opt-in PAC has spent only $11 million.

Spiller first ran for Montclair Mayor in 2012 when he didn’t have access to Garden State Forward. In 2016 he did and NJEA teachers paid out $16,800 for his re-election campaign. Then, with Spiller contemplating higher office, Garden State Forward paid out far more for his 2020 campaign: $67,110 for two mailers and $89,000 to Working Families Alliance, a far-left organization that is largely funded by NJEA. WFA used the money for get-out-the-vote phone calls and texts (as we were social-distancing due to COVID-19).

The result? Through the use of teacher dues, Spiller outspent his opponent Renee Baskerville by a ratio of over 30:1 but won by only 195 votes. (The report also includes a short description of Spiller’s dodgy record as mayor of Montclair.)

Then in 2022 NJEA launched “Protecting Our Democracy,” which Lilley (as well as other media outlets) says is specifically for Spiller’s gubernatorial run: He writes, “as with Spiller’s political ambitions in Montclair, NJEA backing was both assured and essential. But clearly a run for governor would require a lot more NJEA money – and therefore teachers’ dues.” Patrick Murray, director of Monmouth University Polling Institute, noted, Spiller alone could not bankroll a run for governor, ‘but with the teachers ’union [NJEA] behind him, there’s a lot of ways he could … get support.'”

A teacher called the new PAC’s mission “disturbing and nauseating,” writing in a comment appended to the press release,  “the union dues of hardworking, underpaid teachers are underwriting Spiller’s gubernatorial ambitions? How does the rank and file put up with this??”

Because they have no choice. Lilley says the new PAC will spend millions of dollars on Spiller’s bid to be Murphy’s successor, adding, “of course, the NJEA could immediately eliminate the guesswork by disclosing how much they have contributed, but they won’t. They prefer to keep New Jersey teachers – and citizens – in the dark.”