tonight a deeper look at the role outside spending is playing in this year's race for governor nja President Sean Spiller's campaign for the Democratic nomination has built the one-time mayor as an underdog who represents the common worker but a $35 million war chest has allowed him to outpace each of his opponents in advertising wars boosting his name recognition and chances at winning the catch is that pot of cash is funded by teacher membership dues to the powerful union Spiller Heads and in full transparency Sean Spiller is a member of the NJPBS community advisory board brent Johnson and Riley Yates of NJ Advanced Media dug into the campaign finance issue and Brent joins me now brent thanks for coming in um right off the bat I I want to know how this level of spending by a single source and by a union of which this candidate is the head of shaping this election and future elections down the road yeah and this is an very unusual instance of we've seen outside spending from other sources but this is a unusual situation because you have the union president getting the money from the union so I don't know if you'll ever see something like this again but it is indicative of how much outside spending pours into races these days it's not just candidates raising money it's all these different places pouring money into candidates and that they're not supposed to have coordination or anything but it's all money that does boost the candidate um you spoke with teachers largely were they aware that their union dues are being spent to help prop up this campaign and how did they feel about it because obviously not every teacher I mean teachers are not a monolith they fall all across the political spectrum we called several recently retired teachers and most of them didn't were not aware this that their money was being used in this way um one told me that uh if this is really happening I'm not very happy about it uh one teacher went on the record and said that this is this is not how they expected their union dues to be spent but you know this is there there are 20,000 teachers in the union and there certainly are several teachers who do support his candidacy see it that he is going to give them the biggest voice and be stand up for teachers but no not every this is not a everyone's happy about it some are happy about it yes they want to see their union teachers have a seat at really the highest table in government and the idea is that that will help drive turnout that teachers will come and vote for him because they they feel like they will get a voice with him um but yeah c certainly a number of teachers are felt like they were in the dark on this and not happy about it is the spending coming primarily from the dues i mean how are we able to track um this this pack money and are there other sources that are being used toward it yes it's tough to track um IRS filings uh show so much but he uh uh Sean Spiller told me that yes union dues are going to this i don't know exactly how much but it seems to be that union dues and money from the the union is where primarily the money is coming from so is there an argument then to be made hey listen you can at least know where this money is coming from it's not coming from um dark money uh Elon Musk as as at least one person said in your story yeah that that's the argument he makes that you know where my money is coming from it's coming from teachers bus drivers workingclass people it's not Elon Musk's SpaceX pack it's it's not from all these big corporations and that's his argument is that I'm getting it from sources that you know and these are workingclass people what does what do we know about his campaign in terms of how much he's looking for outside uh campaign donations and funding we're hosting a debate in May um he did not qualify for the debate because he didn't qualify for matching funds from the state i mean what does that say about the viability of his campaign stacked up to some of the other candidates there's two two parts of that one he won't be on the debate stage which is definitely a hit to his campaign because he's not raising money beyond what he's getting from the union and so that that will be a detriment to him because he won't be standing there with the other candidates but you could say that all the money he's getting from the union all $35 million of it is funding all these television ads and flyers and you basically drive down the turnpike and you're going to see a picture of Sean Spiller uh on a billboard saying he's going to fight Trump so having the money there helps in that way but it getting it from the teachers union means he's not getting it elsewhere and he won't be on the debate stage is there a sense that it will uh impact voter perception when you have a union like this which has long been influential in Trenton um has spent lots of money in past elections that's not new um but that they're blurring the lines this time did you get that sense in talking to voters it it's it's tough because in the primary uh this is not as much of an issue because the union is a large voting block among a a smaller primary uh pool but the NGA on the right is certainly been seen as an enemy for many years so if he does get to the general election this will definitely be an issue that the right will bring up saying "Look the NGA has their own candidate trying to trying to get the union into the governor's office."

So um it's not as big a deal in the primary right now although except for the teachers who don't don't like that this is going on is there anything very quickly happening either with Elch or elsewhere in terms of campaign finance to really look at this money scrutinize um the fact that it's coming from a union or for other candidates for that matter because we know that with the election transparency act um it's a little dodgy now in terms of tracking the the thought is experts will say this shows that maybe there needs to be reform down the road but right now it's perfectly legal you have other candidates certainly getting outside pack money um it's a brave new world with dark money coming into to campaigns it's become the norm all right Brent Johnson with NJ Advanced Media brent thanks so much for coming in thank you