It’s a challenge to keep up with the mendacity of Michael “Hundreds of Millions” Gottesman, founder of the New Jersey Pubic Education Coalition (NJPEC) and bomb-throwing, would-be intimidator of school boards around the state.  As Sunlight has documented in the past, Gottesman has a tenuous relationship with the truth, and here his brazen audacity predictably veers into his trademark mendacity

In a recent email shared with Sunlight, Gottesman states of NJPEC:  “Our goal is to ‘Protect Our Public Schools’ from PACs and ‘Dark Money'” that oppose NJPEC’s progressive education policies.

Gottesman is on record falsely claiming that opponents are spending “hundreds of millions” of dollars in New Jersey trying to gain control of school boards (see above).  Now he talks of fighting mysterious dark-money PACs but does not name any.  Why so vague, Mr. Gottesman?  Perhaps these are the same organizations who are spending the phantom “hundreds of millions” in New Jersey?

Sunlight will be specific: it is a FACT that NJPEC is funded by a dark-money PAC, Education Truth Project (ETP).  So the only organization engaged in New Jersey school board politics that we know for certain is a dark-money PAC is ETP, which very much looks like the NEA/NJEA dark money behind NJPEC’s muscle.

The audacity of Gottesman to claim to be fighting (unnamed) dark-money PACs while being funded by a dark-money PAC is breathtaking.  Audacity that’s so brazen that it veers into mendacity.  Which fits perfectly into Gottesman’s mendacious modus operandi.