NJEA President Sean Spiller’s Run for Governor Is a “Weird Spiller Ego Trip,” Says Noted Journalist Matt Yglesias

Sunlight has been calling NJEA President Sean Spiller’s campaign for governor a “vanity run,” but noted journalist Matt Yglesias has a better term: “weird Spiller ego trip.”  As Yglesias wrote (as reported in the always excellent NJEdReport):

This weird Spiller ego trip is … a reminder that unions sometimes make bad calls due to weird leadership priorities …

“Ego trip” sounds right, given that, as Yglesias points out, the most recent poll of the Democratic primary field showed Spiller near the bottom:

• Rep. Mikie Sherrill – 20%
• Jersey City Mayor Steve Fulop – 14%
• Newark Mayor Ras Baraka – 12%
• Rep. Josh Gottheimer – 11%
• NJEA President Sean Spiller – 9%
• Former-State Senate President Steve Sweeney – 8%

Remember that Spiller’s poor poll results occurred after two pro-Spiller Super PACs, Protecting Our Democracy and Working New Jersey, have spent $22.25 million blanketing the state in mailers and ads backing Spiller.  That money dwarfs what any other candidate has spent (see below).  Yet Spiller sits at 9%.

Here is the most recent ELEC data from InsiderNJ:

Note who is NOT listed: Sean Spiller.  That’s because Spiller has raised so little money that he is the only Democratic candidate who failed to qualify for matching funds. He’s also the only candidate to fail to qualify for the next two gubernatorial debates.  Spiller won’t even be on the stage!

And now it looks like Democratic activist groups know Spiller is a weak horse. InsiderNJ recently reported that a “powerful coalition of progressive labor unions and advocates” endorsed Ras Baraka, not Spiller.  Notably, the coalition includes Citizen Action and Working Families Party, both of whom have received substantial amounts of NJEA money in the past.  Despite that, they are not going to waste their time on Spiller.

Weird Spiller ego trip, indeed.

This raises three related concerns:

1. Yglesias points out that Spiller’s presidency of the NJEA juxtaposed with the NJEA’s Super PAC spending $35 million* to back his run “render[s] the polite myth of non-coordination between campaigns and super PACs unusually untenable.”  To be clear, coordination between them would be illegal. We ask whether state and federal election authorities should be looking into this.
2. If Spiller’s run is indeed a “weird Spiller ego trip,” then Spiller is putting his own interests above those of his members, to whom he owes a fiduciary duty.  That clearly violates the NJEA’s own conflict of interest policy. And NJEA leadership is complicit.
3. As Spiller was finally forced to admit last week, all of the $22.25 million (with plans for $40 million total*) already spent on Spiller’s weird ego trip came from teachers’ mandatory, annual dues.  But NJEA leadership (including the conflicted Spiller) has hidden this truth from teachers’ up until now.  As Yglesias notes above, “unions sometimes make bad calls due to weird leadership priorities” [emphasis added].  In other words, NJEA leadership has a lot to answer for.

Will there be a reckoning for the $40 million, weird Spiller ego trip and NJEA leadership’s complicity?

*The total is $40 million: $5 million already spent on Protecting Our Democracy and $35 million to be spent on Working New Jersey.