Dr. Marc Gaswirth, a retired public school administrator, has written extensively for nearly 50 years about public sector bargaining and school human resources.

In keeping with the recent post-mortems of Sean Spiller’s fanciful foray into the political arena, here is a hypothesis likely to be tested in the months ahead.

The soon-to-depart president of the state’s largest public employee union suffered a humiliating defeat in last week’s Democratic primary, obtaining less than 11% of the total vote and coming in fifth in a six-way race after spending upwards of 45 million dollars of dues-generated-money—an amount greater than any of his more seasoned competitors and one close to the estimated cost of this past weekend’s massive military parade in the nation’s capital.

Who bears responsibility for this poorly conceived endeavor? Certainly Spiller does, as do his closest aides and supporters who deserve blame by naively believing that the campaign had a reasonably good chance of winning.

With or without serious reflection of this debacle, the NJEA will continue to play its traditional role as a major power player in this year’s elections.  A long-time supporter of Democratic legislative candidates, the union is expected  to commit millions more to support those seeking the entire 80 Assembly seats up in November’s general election.  

Unless the Republican candidate Jack Ciattarelli wins in an improbable landslide, the Democrats are likely to remain in control of both legislative houses after the November election where, according to Ballotpedia, they have held the majority since 2004.  

(The last time the Republicans flipped the Assembly in a gubernatorial election was in 1985, 40 years ago, when Thomas Kean, Sr., a highly popular governor at the time, won a second term by an overwhelming margin of 70%-29 %.)  

If Ciattarelli does win, his margin of victory will not come anywhere close to Kean’s.

The Democrats will still retain control of the state Senate by a comfortable margin in the next legislative session. So with a likely majority status in both houses, the Democrats need to win the governor’s chair to retain a state government political trifecta: control of the Senate, the Assembly, and the Governor’s Office.

To attain this goal, substantial NJEA resources, including whatever remains from the Spiller campaign, can shift to Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic gubernatorial nominee, as well as Assembly and Senate candidates.

This would create conditions conducive for a quid pro quo strongly favoring the union’s legislative agenda. 

These legislative majorities, if retained in the same numbers, could also thwart a new Republican governor’s agenda by limiting his appointment authority, opposing legislation he prefers, and even overriding bills he vetoes, ones that the NJEA may wish to become law.

There should be no need to be concerned about the Spiller campaign busting the NJEA budget or draining its considerable reserves. Although the information is a tightly kept secret, the organization appears to have been on solid financial footing for years, and there is no reason to believe that that is likely to change anytime soon.

Given its extravagant spending on Spiller’s flirtation with political office, NJEA could probably suspend annual dues collections statewide for the next several without any major financial distress.

Notwithstanding its political muscle and its fiscal depth, the NJEA could face serious public relations and internal organizational problems, the scope and nature of which may play out in the months and years ahead.

One possible challenge is whether even some portion of the 200,000 strong member organization reacts less to Spiller’s defeat than to his effort to become a major political player using ample union financial resources from rank and file dues to finance it, or to try to represent a political point of view that they may not share, or perhaps both.

While its leadership, now in damage control mode, spins a Spiller-defeat narrative to retain its damaged credibility, the normally compliant, tranquil and highly affinity-driven membership could express its displeasure and temporarily suspend or even terminate its relationship with the union

This won’t be as easy or inconvenient, however.  

Some seven ago, The United States Supreme Court in its Janus decision declared agency shop provisions in public employee labor agreements unconstitutional.  Previously, non-union members covered under a collective bargaining agreement were required to pay a representation fee, usually 85% of regular union dues. 

The state legislature quickly reacted to counter the effect of the decision.

A law with an extravagant and pretentious title “Workplace Democracy Enhancement Act” limited union members employed after the law took effect from withdrawing their consent to pay dues to only once a year, effective 30 days following their employment anniversary date.

This means that union members hired after the effective date of the 2018 law need to recall their exact work anniversary date and submit in writing a request decision to the public employer that they no longer wish to pay union dues.  

Dues-paying members hired before the new law retain the right to drop their union affiliation twice a year, effective either on January 1 or July 1 each year, also with written notice.

Nowhere in the 2018 law is the union required to inform its members or public employers to notify their employees of their rights to end their association with the union. 

To the contrary, a separate law enacted at approximately the same time specifically bars public employees from encouraging or discouraging employees from joining a labor organization or withdrawing authorization for their dues to be withheld.  

The major concern here is less the NJEA’s successful legislative agenda on this and so many other issues, but the complicity of their enabling allies—the state’s politicians who, to ensure their own political support and survival, have regularly voted to support union rights rather than protect individual ones or promote the larger public interest.

The electorate especially focused on and concerned about the direction of education policy might want to keep this in mind when casting their ballots this fall.