Last month NJ Spotlight analyzed the growing influence of Super PACs on New Jersey’s elections, concluding that this past November’s election marked the highest influence in state history, 69% higher than the previous high. This data caught the attention of Michael Lilley of the Sunlight Policy Center of New Jersey (and a NJ Ed Report contributor) so he decided to do the math himself. While some of his calculations verified Spotlight’s research, he found a few errors that ended up understating the influence of the New Jersey Education Association’s political action committee, which can raise and spend unlimited amounts of money, and is required to report all expenditures to the Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC).  This a summary of Lilley’s inspection, which can be found in full here.

• NJ Spotlight overstated the amount spent in 2021 because it “double-counted the money contributed to Super PACs from other Super PACs.” Huh? Here it is: Garden State Forward is the NJEA super PAC and it contributed $3 million to the Murphy super PAC called Build the Economy. But it’s the same $3 million, just pushed from one PAC to another. So, while Spotlight said this amounted to $5,938,127 spent for 2021 elections (Build the Economy kept a few bucks), the real number is $3 million. Lilley writes, “Build the Economy essentially served as a vehicle for NJEA money to support Murphy.”

This overstatement conceals the real impact of NJEA on the 2021 election because Build the Economy is not officially an NJEA PAC, although it acts like one. “After removing the double-counting,” Lilley explains, “Garden State Forward can be seen to have provided over 44% of pro-Democrat independent spending overall and over 46% of the pro-Murphy independent spending.”

• While NJEA leaders like to say they support candidates “on both sides of the aisle,” all their money went to Democrats. In fact, “by itself, Garden State Forward spent twice as much as the two top Republican Super PACs combined.” (Note for history buffs: In an exception that proves the rule, in 2017 NJEA’s super PAC endorsed and paid out millions in member dues to support a Trump-loving, climate change-denying Republican because union leaders were furious with Senator Steve Sweeney’s fiscal prudence.)
• Murphy’s former campaign manager Brendan Gill, who is now Essex County Commissioner, got himself a nice little nest egg through NJEA’s largesse. During the 2021 gubernatorial election campaign, the Build the Economy PAC paid Gill $237,500 for “consulting. Another political action committee connected to the Democratic Governors Association and NJEA (the teachers union contributed $2.5 million to that PAC) paid him $88,000 for “fundraising services.” And Garden State Forward, NJEA’s official PAC, paid him $547,321. So Gill got a grand total of $872,821. Not too shabby!

Where does all that money come from? Lilley:

All of this Garden State Forward political spending – all of it – was paid for by teachers’ highest-in-the-nation regular dues. Teachers do not opt into this political spending the way they do with the NJEA’s traditional PAC, NJEA PAC. These millions in political spending are simply extracted from their automatically withheld dues by the NJEA leadership.

Here’s a look:

During the period leading up to and during the 2021 elections, concludes Lilley, “Garden State Forward spent a total of $20,871,588 of teachers’ regular dues supporting Murphy and Democratic legislative candidates. This equals $167 for each and every teacher, even including those teachers who did not vote for Murphy or a Democratic legislative candidate…This strikes Sunlight as patently unfair.”

Lilley’s not the only one who might question NJEA’s lavish spending of other people’s money.

(Photo courtesy of North Jersey)