NJEA Clockwork Elections Belie Stormy Relations with Governor, Administration

For all the attention the teachers union and its leadership receive, the election of the NJEA's top officers is uneventful to the point of predictability. There's rarely even a challenger these days.

The vice president gets elected president; the secretary treasurer is elected vice president. The one relatively new face is that of the secretary treasurer, who's starting out on the first rung of the leadership ladder.

Yet for all their predictability, this year's leadership transition comes at a time where the New Jersey Education Association faces some of its biggest challenges, with the union under current president Barbara Keshishian often at loggerheads -- if not open combat -- with Gov. Chris Christie and his administration.

Keshishian, who steps down after her two-term limit, was famously the union president who was shown the door by Christie in his first year in office after the two met and she refused to call for the resignation of a county president who had said he wished the governor dead.

Whether it was pension reforms or the governor’s often-combative rhetoric, the next two years didn’t get much better. While there have been some moments of détente since then, Christie and the NJEA have largely kept a healthy distance. (The county president in question, Joseph Coppola of Bergen County, was reelected this week.)

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