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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we continue to interview candidates in the primaries for mayor of New York and governor of New Jersey. This time, Sean Spiller. He's president of the New Jersey Education Association, the big teachers’ union in the state, and a former mayor of Montclair, now running in the Democratic primary for governor. Mr. Spiller, thanks for coming on for this. Welcome to WNYC today.

Sean Spiller: Yes, Brian, thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.

Brian: I'll let you introduce yourself a little bit to our listeners who may not know you as well as they know some of the other prominent elected officials who are running and who've been on. Where'd you grow up? How'd you get into politics?

Sean: Oh, wow. I smile on that question. I'm always like, well, how far back do you want to go? Listen, I say it as a kid who came to this country. I was born in Jamaica. My family immigrated to the United States when I was pretty young, and my parents chose this country and our state because they knew of the wonderful opportunities that were here. My mom was a math teacher in Jamaica, hence the focus on quality education.

I became a high school science teacher myself, anatomy and physiology, life sciences. I became a labor leader, fighting for folks as well, and certainly had the opportunity to serve as a councilman and mayor for 12 years in my town here of Montclair. All of these experiences have kind of shaped who I am and certainly also why I'm running for governor. I've seen the challenges. I know it has to be done, and I know it matters who's fighting for us. That's why this moment is so important.

Brian: Going from mayor to union president is a fairly unusual path. What, for you, ties your running of Montclair to the job of representing the state's teachers?

Sean: For me, I've done both of them concurrently, and I've always found that I think they feed off of one another in really positive ways. There are opportunities where you understand how you're engaging with labor. You understand the needs of working-class folks. But when you're serving in public office as well, it's a lot of the same skill sets as an educator or a labor leader. It's making sure you're fighting for what communities need, making sure you're serving your residents as best you can. There's a lot of parallels there.

At the end of the day, it's really fighting to make lives better, and I think that somewhere along the line you realize as an advocate that we all need to be in decision-making roles as well. Oftentimes, we leave those spots to the big-money interests, to others, and oftentimes they have the interests of others in mind, very wealthy, corporate interests, et cetera. This is about changing that. Let's center the conversation around working-class folks.

Brian: Forgive my ignorance on this, but did you just say that you were a teachers’ union leader while you were mayor of Montclair?

Sean: Yes, I was a councilman, at the same time I was a leader, a councilman for eight years, and then mayor for four years as well.

Brian: Why isn't that a conflict of interest? Because the city has to negotiate with the union for how much the taxpayers of the city are going to pay the teachers.

Sean: Yes, because it's a local issue. At the local level, we've got local unions that do negotiations, they work that with the board of education, et cetera, not the mayor, and certainly there's that separation.

Brian: Do you have a signature campaign? Oh, let me open up the phones first. Listeners, your questions, candidate questions for Sean Spiller from the New Jersey Education Association, now running in the Democratic primary for governor, 212-433-WNYC, 433-9692, call or text. Do you have what you would call a signature campaign proposal that you're hoping people latch on to?

Sean: Listen, for me it's about making New Jersey more affordable, right? I've seen it from go. My parents worked really hard. My dad would be away for months at a time. My brother and I realized my parents were sacrificing to make this work for us here. I've seen it as that labor leader, where folks were saying, my God, I can barely take care of my own kids and I'm trying to take care of others. I've seen it as a mayor, where we've got housing costs that keep going up and are out of control and we can't afford to buy a home or afford our mortgages. All of these things are about affordability. It's only getting harder.

I think it's right now in this state where we've got to focus. We've got to make life more affordable for New Jersey residents. Now, of course, not lost on me. It's with the backdrop of the Trump administration and the additional challenges that he's bringing forward, so that's a huge part of the conversation. We're going to need a governor who's fighting for our interests and certainly our values here in state, and that's what I'm going to be focused on.

Brian: Well, let me take a perennial New Jersey issue. What would you do about property taxes?

Sean: Look, I've seen it as a mayor as well. You've got to invest. The only way that it works to keep property taxes down is if at the state level, you stop with the unfunded mandates and you put the dollars behind the programs you believe in. When I talk about making housing more affordable, you can't leave it up to townships and say, “Hey, you guys figured out how to do housing that's affordable.” They turn to developers, you get things that are out of line with the character, or they've got to try and raise property taxes to pay for things. As a state, we've got to invest those dollars that we can get in much more progressive ways, certainly income tax, corporate taxes, et cetera. That's got to be the focus if we want to really bring down our property taxes.

Brian: Property taxes are often used to fund education. Are you saying that responsibility should go more to the states and take it somewhat out of local governments, which on the one hand we know adds to funding disparities between richer districts, probably including Montclair, and poorer localities around the state. But on the other hand, a lot of the suburban areas with more money to spend on education in New Jersey don't want that taken out of their hands.

Sean: Yes, well, listen, I think whether any district you talk to would love more state aid, I can tell you that right now and guarantee it. I think right now what you have is a situation where there is unfortunately not enough state aid, and therefore people have to rely on property taxes. It's about that investment we're talking about. We want great schools, obviously, for the future success of our students.

We want great schools for the companies that are here, the families that are drawn here, for the great jobs, and all the pieces that that boosts our economy with. We've got to invest in that as well at the state level if we want to make sure that folks who are subsidizing that work through property taxes aren't overburdened. It goes back to the point of investing.

Brian: Two-word question from a listener in a text. Healthcare plan?

Sean: Listen, I'm the only one running for governor who has literally designed healthcare plans that have saved billions of dollars for employees and employers. It is absolutely essential. We see rising costs, 15%, 20%, 25% year over year over year. it's driven by an opaque system where the healthcare, the insurance companies don't tell you why they're raising rates, but you have to pay them. I drive to that as governor and say, “You're going to show us the books. You're going to show us why these costs are going up,” and we're going to address them as we did in the plans where we were able to see that and we're able to make efficiencies where we provided quality plans but gave it at a much lower cost. As governor, that's what I'll do as well.

Brian: Listener writes, “Can the candidate share his top three accomplishments as the mayor and his top three tasks as governor?” Just do the top three accomplishments. If you want people to say he was a great mayor of Montclair, what would the top three things be that you would argue briefly?

Sean: Yes, I mean, first and foremost, and driven by certainly COVID and everybody fleeing New York City and coming here, we had unbelievably rising costs around housing and certainly with our rents. I was able to pass the first ever rent control law in Montclair. That was huge. I had tenants coming to me, 60% rent increases, 70% rent increases, literally in tears saying, “What can you do about this?” I was able to sit down, work with, you might imagine, some of these big property owners who were resistant at first, even threatening lawsuits, and get our core beliefs and values forward, get us to a place where we were able to put something and pass something, get rid of those lawsuits where they were able to dismiss those.

I think that's a really proud accomplishment because I know the difference that made in so many residents lives here in our township. That's absolutely got to be number one. It's huge. There's been a lot of others as well, though, if you want to talk about our energy aggregation that we did, residential energy aggregation, really proud of that because it saved residents dollars, but it also got us more green renewable energy.

I think that's an example of what we need at the state level right now. We keep thinking of these things as different conversations, whether it's environment or energy or things like that. We're seeing 20% energy rate increases in New Jersey right now. Basically, it's because of the fact that we haven't diversified, we haven't gotten away from big oil, and we need to do that. It's an example of that as well, certainly.

I think, along the way, look, I became mayor during COVID. That was a very tough time and certainly one of the things I'm just proud of there is just that, even in that difficult moment, whether it's talking with residents, many who'd lost loved ones, whether it was supporting our businesses with the dollars they needed to stay open and grants, just navigating through COVID, it certainly isn't something I think of with any type of joy, but certainly I think of it in a way where it was an important time. It was a really important time. it always stays with me in a very strong way.

Brian: Here's a former Montclair resident calling in Kylie now of Northern Virginia, Kylie on WNYC. Hello.

Kylie: Hello. I know I miss it so much. I miss New Jersey. Gosh, I miss New Jersey so much.

Sean: Come on back. Come on back in time for the primary. We need you. [laughs]

Kylie: I know. My husband is like, no. He's like, too much, too much, but I wish. I was going back and forth in my email. You worked with us and I was living on Church Street and back in 2012 to get that corner bar, which you don't have to say the name of, but that was just so obstructive to that entire area. You were very helpful. I have lots of good things to say about you.

Sean: Thank you.

Kylie: I'm going to ask a tough question, though.

Sean: Yes, sure.

Kylie: You're very welcome. I'm an educator from New Jersey. You're an educator from New Jersey. I now live in a state where the schools are by county. Everybody talks about property taxes in New Jersey. We all know the property taxes in New Jersey come because we have 16,000 school superintendents in New Jersey. Montclair clearly still boasts of a successful relatively successful integration model. Would you push county schools as a way to really deal with equity, deal with property taxes in New Jersey? If not, then would you at least be clear about the fact that why you wouldn't do it? Because property taxes in New Jersey are probably never going to go down until we address all these school districts. That's my tough question.

Sean: [chuckles] Well, thank you. Well, I'll say this. Listen, I'm a high school science teacher and certainly understand the importance of a great education, but I also understand how important it is to help to desegregate. Here in New Jersey, we've got very segregated communities. That's a really housing conversation, but we know that we see the impact in our schools. We've got very segregated schools, and certainly that leads to challenges. Then, of course, there's the broader funding question, which you also allude to in all of that that you said.

First, let me talk about, I think, the diversity piece and making sure that every one of our students is served. You asked, county systems help to do some of that. Let me tell you what I think right now. Number one, a town like Montclair is really special. Every one of our schools is a magnet school. Certainly a little bit of stress there with our seven-year-old and we're deciding where he's going. Like, is he going to be science focused or math focused or whatever it might be? I pick science. I'm a science guy.

When you do that, our district then has you rank your top three, and all of that is considered when the district looks at where they're sending students. They used to use race explicitly. Now with the Supreme Court ruling, they use a number of other factors. All students are bused all throughout the community, and we get very diverse schools.

What I would do as governor is this. I would say within so many communities right now, Georgia City being a great example, we've got very segregated schools within our communities. We need to use a model like we have here in Montclair to help desegregate and diversify within a community. Then we need to use the school funding formula. We need to incentivize districts, ring districts around more diverse communities to open up their seats, which they legally can right now. Open up those seats to accept students from those neighboring communities to again further diversify our schools.

You see why I say this, because it starts to look like and sound a lot like the more broad county system you're describing. It's done in a way that expands these rings out from our diversity and certainly continues to allow it to grow. While you also then don't get these long busing distances, et cetera, that as you know from when you think back to New Jersey, how densely populated we are, how difficult it is to even get short distances and how long that could take. We've got to be mindful of that. I think it works in some other places because there's much more vast open spaces. Here, it's a lot harder. There's a difficulty in terms of what we do, but around the diversity, that's what I would focus on.

Now, certainly as we talk about trying to bring down costs, the number of districts that we have, it's certainly something that we have to look at in terms of if it's just a K-6 district, if it's a district with one school, what are ways we can combine and incentivize districts to do that? There's been some efforts in that regard. Certainly, we've got to overcome the challenge of home rule. There's plenty of communities that say they still want to have that autonomy. We've got to have those conversations, include everyone in them, not leave them out when we have it. Putting those things together, I think that's how we address the diversity issue and certainly broaden the scope of reach of each of our districts.

Brian: Kylie, I'm just curious as someone who's obviously interested in integration, based on your question, do you like his plan? Very briefly. I don't know if you're familiar with exactly what he laid out there, but does that sound to you like it would work?

Kylie: Probably not, because I think that even as we see in Montclair that people like diversity up until a certain point. I'm not convinced that Montclair would be open to having Newark students, East Orange students come to their school. I'm not convinced that Summit and Westfield are going to opt in to letting Plainfield and Elizabeth students come to their school, so no, not particularly. I mean, I hear it, and I know it's tricky, I know it's very tricky, but I don't know that that would solve the property tax issue, which is very much tied to how schools are done in New Jersey.

Brian: Kylie, thank you for your call. With our latest candidate interview as we're inviting candidates in the Democratic and Republican primaries for governor, and it's Sean Spiller now, the New Jersey Education Association, teachers’ union president, former mayor of Montclair and running in the Democratic primary. I'll give you one more shot at Kylie's question since she wasn't satisfied with your answer there.

Sean: Yes, well, listen, I think Montclair is the example, right? We were facing before Brown v. Board, we had a desegregation order here in our township. What we did was by creating these magnet systems, we went from a very segregated township to a very desegregated township. Then beyond there, what I'm talking about is not, again, bussing great distances, forcing folks to do it. What you do is when you open up seats and you incentivize, when you say to a Montclair, which is already diverse, but if you go right next to the towns beyond us and say, “We're going to give you more money in your school-funding formula if you allow those seats to be open,” which is allowed now and some do, right? “When you do that, we're going to give you more money to take more students, because even in your districts, we'd love to see that magnet style system where you have specific areas that your school will focus on, which is going to be that draw.”

When you do that right now, it wasn't as if somebody said, I just want to love to be in this community, that community. What they said is, oh, my God, I want to go to that school that focuses on the environment, on environmental studies, because that's what my child is really interested in and that might be in the community right next door. That's the draw. That is why people voluntarily chose to send their kids to different schools here in our community and they do it beyond. You bring folks in by what you're offering, which is that specialty school, and certainly you do it to the district by offering them more money to do it. You combine those two things and that's where we have seen it be successful and I think it would be successful more broadly.

Brian: I want to ask you a question that we're getting versions of from at least three listeners, and I can tell they're different listeners because they have different phone numbers, and I got the same question from someone I know personally who lives in New Jersey who wanted me to ask you a version of it, but I'm just going to read you these three texts. One says, “I live in Sussex County. I've gotten more mail from Spiller than any other candidate. I haven't received any mail from all but two candidates and those two only sent one card. I get nearly one piece per week from Spiller money sources. I, like many, a deluge of mail makes me suspicious.”

Another one texts, “He sends an outrageous amount of mail for a ridiculous amount of time since last year. I feel he will not be a good steward of the state budget. Where is all this money coming from?” The last one, “I get Mr. Spillers mailers seemly every single day. The amount of money coming from the teachers union dues to elect him makes me uncomfortable.” What do you say to those listeners texting in and especially to the last one I read, uncomfortable with how much of your money is coming from teachers union dues?

Sean: I say this and I ask everyone just to reflect on this for a moment, because why I'm running and what makes me really uncomfortable is that to run for any political office and certainly even governor of a state of New Jersey requires a lot of money. It requires a lot of money to run. We've got people running in this race right now who are like the people who've always run for this office. They get their big money from some of them on the Democratic side right now, gotten it from Elon Musk and folks like that. We've got one who's getting it from Wall Street. Most money in Congress ever from Wall Street, he's getting it, right? We've got another one who gets it from big developers and another one who gets it from Ed reform, anti-public school.

Big money is always what funds campaigns. That's the only way people get the money to run in campaigns and then we get what we always get. We get folks who, how are you going to focus on housing that's affordable when you're funded by the big developers? How are you going to focus on the income inequality that exists when you're funded by Wall Street? How are you going to focus on the issues affecting all of us? We're surprised we get what we always get when we have to elect what we always elect.

Yes, this race is different. Look, I'm running for governor. I'm focused on middle class, hardworking folks, and the questions that you ask there are, yes, we figured out as educators that in order to even compete to be able to have a voice, we've got to voluntarily join a union. We've got to go through a little D democratic process, endorse someone. We've got to go through that little D democratic process, decide how much money we're going to invest in support.

Now, I am honored and proud to have received that endorsement. I'm thankful. I am proud that as educators we're pooling dollars to help. I'm proud that when I'm making the phone calls and asking for contributions from small dollar donors, my guys are given $20, $30 because that's what they can afford throughout this state. If we want to change a system that is truly going to center us in the decisions that are made, we have to get away from the conditioning.

We've been conditioned to say, “Oh, my God, if this is different than we've always seen, if it's working-class folks coming together to try and make sure we've got someone fighting for us, that doesn't smell right. We're worried about it,” but we don't blink an eye when all of the others, and I mean it in this race, in the democratic primary even, every one of them funded by massive big money. Who do we think they're going to fight for when they're there? For me, it is different. That question is at the core of how this is different and why it's so important and that we finally have a shot to blow up this system and have something that's working for us, and that's what this race is about.

Brian: Just as one follow-up on that. I see you haven't raised enough money from other sources to qualify for the televised debate, which is coming on May 12th, but you have a $35 million war chest. I just want to read as a follow up a quote from NJ.com, NJ Advanced Media about an investigation that they did that alleged your union has not been transparent with its members about how they're helping to fund your campaign.

Quoting one of the reporters here as cited by NJ Spotlight News, the reporter said, “We've seen outside spending from other sources, but this is an unusual situation because you have the union president getting the money from the union. We called several recently retired teachers and most of them were not aware that their money was being used in this way. One told me that if this is really happening, I'm not very happy about it. One teacher went on the record and said this is not how they expected their union dues to be spent.” You just answered part of that, but the question that they're raising at NJ.com is also about the transparency that the dues paying union members apparently don't know and weren't told that their dues are being used for a political campaign.

Brian: Well, I smile also on this and that this is probably the most transparency there is. We're talking about the dollars helping this campaign, because quite frankly my opponents are not transparent with their dollars. Don't have to be. We are, right? Secondly, I laugh at that too. We've got almost 200,000 educators, and the article says we called a couple teachers who were retired and asked them if they're aware of this process.

Look, we are a little D democratic organization when I talk about the organization representing educators. We elect folks from every single one of our locals to serve at the state level. They voted to decide who they were endorsing. I am unbelievably proud that they unanimously voted to endorse me. We then have a separate group representing, again, every single local, every single district, every single community who are elected again to serve, to decide our budgets, to decide where we put our dollars for the first time I could ever think of. They also voted unanimously on the dollars to put forward and how to support this campaign.

Now, look, we've supported other candidates before. We've supported our current governor. We supported everybody in various elected positions because we realized we have to engage in the political process, but it is the most open. It is the most seen, it is the most transparent, and it is the most responsive in terms of being a representative democracy of our membership. I'm proud to have that support.

I go back to we ignore the fact that there are five others out there running for this position, all of which are getting their dollars, barely any of which we can see outright and how much, et cetera,. The ones we can see, we know where it's coming from, which is big dollar donors. Then we wonder why we don't get what the decisions we need for us. This for me is at the core of the piece. It's every bit as much about the policies I'm talking about, and that's about housing that's affordable in every community. It's about healthcare costs. It's about quality, early education and childcare. It's about energy and the environment. These are the issues that matter, but just as much about these policies, it's also about changing systems.

We have to change a system where a person who's more reflective of the working class needs to be in office, needs to be in these positions, making decisions for working-class folks. We can't constantly have millionaires and billionaires making decisions for us, and hopefully feeling they might have us in their minds and they don't. We already know that answer and we're working to change that here.

Brian: After the text that I read, I will also acknowledge that this just came in from the listener who says, “When it comes to funding, the mayor of Jersey City, Steve Fulop, another candidate for governor, is getting funding from a lot of businesses that run healthcare in the city, seeming to put a kind of supportive of you a piece of that and to a larger context. Oh, well, I'm going to take one more question for you from a listener on an issue of widespread concern, and then we're going to be out of time in two minutes. Sam and Englewood, you're on WNYC with Sean Spiller running for the democratic nomination for governor.

Oh, Sam hung up. Sam was going to ask you what you would do about Medicaid if it gets slashed by the federal government and the forthcoming federal budget. Listen, I think this speaks to the issue of what Donald Trump is doing right now in so many ways. I'm troubled by, A, just what he's doing to scare folks. He's scaring folks. I think to myself as a young kid, sitting in my classroom, never having to worry that ICE agents were going to barge in and rip us out of our seats and say, we're never going to see our parents again.

I think to it as a person going through the naturalization process, never had to worry. I say the wrong thing. He's going to pull it. I think of it right now as our children with special needs and others that are being told they're going to lose, in our state, $1.1 billion because you eliminate Department of Education and you're trying to force us to say, we're never going to teach anything about DEI in one of the most diverse states in the nation.

I see it when I go to an assisted living facility and people meet me at the door crying because they say, “Sean, Medicaid is what's paying for the difference between what I can afford and the care that I need.” I see it in the kids who are staying home and they're scared. They're not going to school right now. I see it literally in every single conversation that I have with someone, people are worried, and that's what I hear in the core of the question [crosstalk]

Brian: In 30 seconds, yes, 30 seconds before we run out of time, what could you do as governor with respect to Medicaid in particular?

Sean: Yes, and specifically it means this, we've got to have the dollars. Follow the money. They're doing all of these things to scare us so we don't fight back, but they're doing it to distract us while they steal dollars from every program, from every one of us to give themselves massive tax breaks. They're working on it right now. As governor of New Jersey, I will be aggressive in changing our New Jersey tax code to make sure that we are getting every single one of those dollars and reinvesting it in the state programs that we need here to be supportive.

That means investing in our healthcare. It means investing in programs to help our veterans. It means investing in making up the gap between Medicaid, Medicare cuts, all these other pieces. It's about investing in housing, healthcare, child care. It's about focusing on all of us and supporting our residents. Like I've done in Montclair, we got our AAA bond rating, reduced our debt by 60 million. I know how to work those finances, but it's about focusing on people and caring for people, changing New Jersey tax policy, making sure we do it, going after the dollars and supporting the programs that are important here in New Jersey.

Brian: Sean Spiller, the president of the state big teachers union, the New Jersey Education Association, former mayor of Montclair, and on the ballot and the Democratic primary for governor of New Jersey. Thanks for sitting for this interview with questions from me and our listeners.

Sean: Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Don't forget, folks. June 10th, Sean Spiller. Appreciate it.

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