Brian Lerer 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. Yeah, Brian. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it. And 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 were running and who've been on. Where'd you grow up? How'd you get into politics? Oh, wow. I smiled on that question. I'm always like, well, how far back do you want to go? You know, But 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, you know, 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, you know,

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, you know, the focus on quality

education. I became a high school science teacher myself, anatomy and physiology, life sciences, became a labor leader, you know, fighting for folks as well. And, you know, certainly had the opportunity to serve as a councilman and mayor for 12 years in my town here of Montclair. And, you know, 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. And, you know, that's why

this moment is so important. You know, 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?

You know, for me, I've done both of them, you know, kind of concurrently. And I've always found that I think they feed off of one another in really positive ways, right? There are opportunities where you understand how you're engaging with labor. You understand the needs of working class folks. But, you know, when you're serving in public office as well, right, 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 interest to

others and oftentimes they have the interest of others in mind, you know, very wealthy, corporate

interest, et cetera. This is about changing that. Let's center the conversation around working class

folks.

Forgive my ignorance on this, but did you just say that you were a teachers union leader while you were governor, a mayor of Montclair? Yes, yeah. I was a councilman at the same time. I was a leader,

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