WASHINGTON — An outside group linked to New Jersey’s politically influential New Jersey teachers union is funneling money to support Democrats running for Congress in the state, including in a South Jersey race that has started to gain national attention.
As of Aug. 31, the New Jersey Education Association had given $825,482 to Garden State Forward, a super PAC headquartered in Trenton, which in turn gave $330,000 to the Turnout Project Inc., according to financial disclosure records.
It is just one of the so-called “independent expenditure” infusions that are marking the final weeks of the congressional elections in the state, including races that could help flip the balance of power in Washington.
The Turnout Project, a super PAC based in Washington, D.C., has in turn spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to elect three Democrats — Zack Mullock, Rebecca Bennett and Rep. Nellie Pou (D-9th) — to New Jersey congressional seats, an IRS filing dated Oct. 15 shows.
The Turnout Project has used that money on election canvassers and printing, Federal Election Commission records show. Representatives for NJEA and Garden State Forward did not respond to requests for comment.
Super PACs are political groups that under federal law can raise and spend unlimited sums of money on elections, as long as they don’t directly coordinate their spending with politicians’ campaigns. In some cases, they are not always required to disclose their donors.
Mullock, the mayor of Cape May, is running as a Democrat against incumbent U.S. Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-2nd). Bennett is seeking to defeat U.S. Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-7th), while Pou is favored to retain her seat centered around Passaic County, even though President Trump carried it in 2024.
Bennett raised about $520,000 in the first two weeks of October and spent roughly $1.1 million, and has approximately $1 million in cash on hand, records show. By comparison, Kean took in and spent about $246,000 during that period and holds $1.37 million in available cash.
In her 2025 gubernatorial campaign, Gov. Mikie Sherrill (D) carried Kean’s district by 2 percentage points – a data point that has encouraged Democrats that Bennett, a first-time politician, will be able to flip the seat.
National Democrats and their allies in recent days appear to be more aggressively targeting Van Drew, a staunch supporter of the president. They are riding hopes that Trump’s sagging poll numbers, malaise over the country’s economic outlook, and dissatisfaction over the war with Iran could sweep in a new wave of Democrats to Congress.
“For the first time, voters had the opportunity to see Zack Mullock and Jeff Van Drew side by side on the debate stage, and the stark difference was clear. Zack fights for South Jersey, Jeff Van Drew fights for Trump,” LeRoy J. Jones Jr., the chairman of the New Jersey State Democratic Committee, said in a statement following a debate Thursday between the candidates at Stockton University.
“Zack’s momentum is growing. And a blue wave is coming to South Jersey,” Jones said.
Ron Filan, Van Drew’s campaign manager and chief political adviser, said he was confident the congressman would win reelection Nov. 3.
“After months of lies, Congressman Van Drew thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to set the record straight tonight and offered voters a crystal clear contrast that showed us all exactly why he’s going to be re-elected decisively in November,” Filan said Thursday night.
Roughly two-thirds (64%) of New Jersey voters disapprove of Trump’s performance as president, while 31% percent approve, according to a poll from the William J. Hughes Center for Public Policy at Stockton University that was released Thursday.
Central to the campaign are the politics and real-world implications of a sweeping tax- and spending-cut law known as H.R. 1 that Republicans including Van Drew backed and Trump signed into law in the summer of 2025.
The law extended certain individual tax cuts for the public, including seniors and tipped workers, while cutting (opens in new tab) roughly $1 trillion from Medicaid and about $285 million from a national food-aid program over the next decade.
Van Drew will be difficult to unseat. He won his seat in 2024 by roughly 17% — 215,946 votes to 153,117 votes — and the congressional redistricting process in 2022 made his district more Republican-leaning.
Political handicappers at the Center for Politics, housed at the University of Virginia, shifted the race from “safe” to “likely” Republican. But they noted it would take a massive electoral wave to sweep Van Drew from office.
In a public note (opens in new tab), analysts said Van Drew’s seat, along with a handful of other likely safe GOP districts, was a race to watch “as deep sleepers in the event of a blue tsunami,” adding that “Democratic challengers outraised the incumbents in several (though not all) of these races.”
In the first two weeks of October – the final batch of scheduled FEC filings available before Election Day – Mullock raised about $137,000 and spent more than $148,000. Van Drew raised less in the same period — about $76,000 — while spending roughly $342,000, The congressman had nearly $900,000 in cash on hand, versus about $105,000 for Mullock.
Van Drew has become the target in October of attack ads and political spending from national Democratic and left-leaning organizations. Committees associated with congressional Democrats, including U.S. Reps. Rob Menendez (D-8th) and Hakeem Jeffries, the party’s leader and presumptive Democratic Speaker in a new Congress, have cut campaign checks for Mullock’s campaign in recent days.
An outside political group called Project 218 — a reference to the number of people needed for a majority in the House of Representatives — disclosed it is spending $1 million on radio ads against Van Drew as well.
The project is linked to a left-leaning super PAC called AB PAC, which has its own plans to spend roughly $229,000 to elect Mullock, according to FEC records.
Last week, a group associated with the national dental lobby filed paperwork showing it will spend about $64,000 on mailers and text messages to support Van Drew, a dentist by training.
Representatives for Project 218 and AB PAC did not respond to requests for comment.