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.
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.”
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)
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