Teachers' unions have spent decades insisting member dues aren't funding Democrat politicians.
A New Jersey union just got caught funneling $114 million of mandatory teacher union dues into a secret super PAC.
What happened to that money when their union boss ran for governor is a story Democrats do not want told.
Two New Jersey public school teachers – Marie Dupont and Ann Marie Pocklembo – are asking a simple question: Where did their union dues go?
The answer is worse than either of them expected.
According to their lawsuit, the New Jersey Education Association created a super PAC called Garden State Forward in 2013.
Then the NJEA quietly pumped $114 million in mandatory teacher dues into that PAC over the next decade.
Members who specifically declined to fund the union's political committees had their money taken anyway.
The NJEA kept Garden State Forward invisible for over a decade – no mention in budget documents, no entry in meeting minutes, nothing on the union's own website.
And going back to 2013, the NJEA never once classified those Garden State Forward contributions as political activity on its federal tax filings.
Somebody designed it this way.
In 2018, the Supreme Court ruled in Janus v. AFSCME that government workers cannot be forced to pay union dues as a condition of employment.
The NJEA responded by getting more creative.
Teachers could opt out of PAC contributions – the union told them so in its own membership materials.
The union just didn't tell them about the $114 million shadow PAC it had been running since 2013.
This Teachers Union Boss Spent 40 Million Dollars of Mandatory Dues on a Campaign He Lost
In 2024, NJEA president Sean Spiller announced he was running for governor of New Jersey.
He didn't need to raise much money on his own.
Garden State Forward transferred more than $40 million – originally mandatory teacher dues – to two union-tied political organizations called Protecting Our Democracy and Working New Jersey.
Those groups spent the money on campaign ads, billboards, mailers, and flyers promoting Spiller's candidacy.
Spiller finished fifth in the Democrat primary.
Every dollar of that $40 million came from teachers who trusted the NJEA's own membership materials, which stated that regular dues were separate from voluntary PAC contributions.
"Teachers had no say in this," Dupont told reporters. "It came out of members' paychecks."
Dupont has since surrendered her union membership in protest.
The NJEA's response was exactly what you'd expect from people who got caught.
The NJEA called the lawsuit "baseless and without merit" – without explaining why the union quietly updated its most recent IRS return to now report Garden State Forward contributions as political activity for the first time in its history.
The NEA Has Been Running the Same Teachers Union Political Spending Scheme Nationwide
New Jersey isn't a coincidence.
It's a blueprint.
The NJEA's parent union – the National Education Association – pulled the same move at the national level.
The NEA reported less than $100,000 in staff compensation for political activity in fiscal year 2024.
That's a 99 percent drop from its decade-long average of $7.9 million – with no corresponding drop in actual political spending.
The money didn't disappear. It moved off the books.
The following year, the compensation figure bounced right back – because the election was over and nobody was watching anymore.
Chicago teachers' union bosses refused to release five years of audits until members and lawmakers forced their hand.
When those audits finally came out, the union's own accountants wouldn't certify them – because tens of millions of dollars in related foundation assets had been hidden from members entirely.
Connecticut put a financial disclosure law on the books in 1957 – requiring public-sector unions to report their finances annually to the state labor commissioner.
Most of them had never filed a single one.
The commissioner had never made them.
That changed only after two workers went to court and won last month.
Public-sector unions send 90 percent of their political money to Democrat candidates and causes.
Union bosses have a financial pipeline that flows whether members consent or not – forced dues collected before workers ever see their checks.
The NJEA ran that pipeline as a political slush fund for 11 years before anyone forced them to answer for it.
The NJEA is the template.
This is how the Democrat political machine funds itself – one teacher's paycheck at a time.
Sources:
- Nathan McGrath, "How Public Sector Unions Hide Member Dues To Finance Political Activism," Daily Wire, September 2, 2026.
- Dupont & Pocklembo v. NJEA & Spiller, Complaint, Mercer County Superior Court, filed September 30, 2025.
- Commonwealth Foundation, "Political Spending by Public-Sector Unions Is Deep Blue," December 2023.
