When Working New Jersey, an independent expenditure group supporting New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) President Sean Spiller’s campaign for governor, filed with the state’s campaign finance agency last year, it raised some eyebrows with the vast amounts of money it pledged to spend. A new filing from the PAC confirms that its commitment wasn’t just talk.
According to a pre-Primary Day filing with the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC), Working New Jersey has spent a whopping $37.5 million so far this cycle to support Spiller. Every single dime – all $40 million that the PAC has reported raising – has come from the NJEA’s own super PAC, Garden State Forward.
That’s a mammoth investment that the state’s largest teachers’ union has put behind its own president, also the former mayor of Montclair, as he tries to break out in a six-way field for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. And it doesn’t even include the millions of dollars that Garden State Forward funneled into another pro-Spiller group, Protecting Our Democracy, in the lead-up to the campaign.
The union’s investment has made Spiller’s ads and mailers ubiquitous across New Jersey for months; long before any other Democratic candidates began seriously spending money, Working New Jersey was making a concerted push to introduce Spiller to voters around the state. But recent polling has shown that Spiller’s path to the nomination has narrowed; he’s typically placed near the bottom of the pack in both independent and internal polls, and some have even shown him losing ground compared to earlier in the year.
Last August, Working New Jersey made a splash when it filed with ELEC and indicated that it planned to spend $35 million on the 2025 election cycle, presumably in support of Spiller. While it was always clear that this year’s crowded race for governor would be expensive, that spending estimate single-handedly represented an enormous increase from what New Jersey campaigns have historically cost; candidates who participate in the state’s matching funds program, by comparison, can only spend $8.7 million as part of their campaigns (though they can also have affiliated PACs spend on their behalf).
At the time, it wasn’t officially confirmed that the NJEA would fund the new group, but it was widely suspected to be the case. NJEA spokesperson Steve Baker told Politico at the time that the union “will be proud to support organizations that state very explicitly that they plan on making independent expenditures that support the election of a governor for New Jersey who supports public education and working New Jersey families and who understands the struggles and needs of everyday people.”
Now, nine months later, the NJEA – via Garden State Forward, which has operated as the union’s independent expenditure arm for years – has not only made good on that promise but surpassed its own spending estimates. That’s allowed Spiller, who’s only ever appeared before on the ballots of a few thousand voters in Montclair, to become a household name across the state.
Baker told the New Jersey Globe today that the NJEA stands firmly behind Spiller, and that the union’s investment in the race was needed in order to counter the money spent by his opponents, many of whom have super PACs funded by big-money donors or their own congressional campaigns.
“The only way for working people to have their voices heard above the billionaires and power brokers is to pool their resources and support candidates who support their values,” Baker said. “Our members endorsed Sean Spiller because he’s the only candidate who truly understands the challenges they face and the only candidate they trust to put students and working families first. And it’s about so much more than just money. NJEA members are knocking on doors, making phone calls and telling their friends and families why they support Sean. When NJEA members endorse a candidate, they mean it.”
It’s not the first time the NJEA has made sizable investments in gubernatorial candidates; term-limited Gov. Phil Murphy has been a close ally of the union during his time in office and benefited from many of the union’s millions during his campaigns for governor. But spending nearly $40 million in less than a year’s time – to support its own president, no less – is a new frontier for the NJEA.
And it’s a strategy that has come with some substantial downsides. For one, Working New Jersey essentially supplanted Spiller’s own campaign operation, which has no staff and has spent nearly no money. That prevented Spiller from qualifying for ELEC’s matching funds program, depriving him of extra state-funded millions and blocking him from the debate stage during the final two Democratic debates of the year.
Moreover, the NJEA has come under scrutiny – including from some of its own members – over whether Spiller’s campaign is the best use of teacher’s union dues. The 200,000-member-strong union raises its money from its own members, and some teachers have wondered why that money is then going towards its president’s gubernatorial bid (in a field with many Democratic candidates who say they’ll be a friend to organized labor if elected).
“I’m sure that if the average NJEA member knew that, I think they’d probably blow a gasket,” Ocean Township Mayor John Napolitani, a teacher and union leader in Asbury Park, told NJ Advance Media in April.
The Sunlight Policy Center (SPC), a group that has long been critical of NJEA leadership and Spiller in particular, called the spending on Spiller’s candidacy a “scandal of the first order.”
“NJEA leadership (including the conflicted Spiller) has hidden the truth from the very teachers who are being forced to fund Spiller’s vanity run,” SPC founder Mike Lilley said in a statement. “When they finally learned the truth, rank-and-file teachers have spoken out, only to be ignored by the brazen Spiller. Sure looks like the NJEA has become Sean Spiller’s own teacher-funded political machine.”
This story was updated at 11:54 a.m. with comment from the NJEA, and again at 4:57 p.m. with comment from the Sunlight Policy Center.