Who is behind controversial SuperPAC buying ads for Dawn Fantasia?

A SuperPAC calling itself “Garden State Success” is spending a lot of money running ads for Assembly candidates Dawn Fantasia and Mike Inganamort and trying to influence the June 6th Republican primary. Who is behind this new intrusion into the election process in Sussex, Morris, and Warren counties?
 
Garden State Success was incorporated in New Jersey on April 27, 2023 (NJ business ID #0450961264) as a non-profit corporation. The registered agent is an attorney with a practice in “establishing and operating New Jersey and federal PACs and Super PACs”, according to his website.
 
The lead trustee of the three trustees listed is Danielle Alpert, who is described by InsiderNJ as “a long time Trenton lobbyist”.  She is the wife of Brian Alpert, a highly paid state employee who works at the Senate for Senators Steve Oroho and Tony Bucco.
 
A second trustee is the County Supervisor for Roads of Passaic County. The third trustee is a well-known activist from Newark.
 
Danielle Alpert is the senior vice president of communications and advocacy for the New Jersey Public Charter Schools Association (NJPCSA). A public charter school and a charter school differ in that a public charter school does not charge tuition. It is, under New Jersey law, a public school that receives public funding but is operated by a private organization under a charter granted by the Commissioner of Education.
 
Danielle Alpert works for T.J. Best – who owns a lobbying business as well as serving as Director of Government Affairs for NJPCSA. Best is a longtime elected Democrat. He was a County Commissioner in Passaic County and a legislative aide to Congressman Bill Pascrell.
 
Alpert and Best work for Harry Lee, the CEO and President of NJPCSA. Before joining the NJPCSA, Lee was the Chief Strategy Officer at iLearn Schools, where Sussex County Commissioner Dawn Fantasia worked as a Chief Growth Officer and Chief Communications Officer for iLearn. Fantasia lists this on her LinkedIn page.

Both T.J. Best and Harry Lee hosted fundraising events for Dawn Fantasia’s Assembly campaign committee. Fantasia disclosed this on fundraising invitations posted on her campaign website.
 
Danielle Alpert is listed on the D-4 Form filed with the New Jersey Election Law Enforcement Commission (NJELEC) on May 16, 2023 – along with Theresa Mondella, who lists her personal email address as the committee’s email address. Mondella is a longtime establishment operative who is closely associated with Chris Russell, the political consultant for the Space-Fantasia-Inganamort campaign.
 
Last year, Mondella set-up a SuperPAC for Russell client Bob Healey – a candidate for Congress in South Jersey’s 3rd District. Politico reported that Bob Healey’s mother wrote a $2 million check to a SuperPAC. The SuperPAC created by Mondello in 2022 (she was listed as Treasurer), was called Garden State Advance.
 
According to The Record newspaper & NorthJersey.com, iLearn Schools is linked to an Islamic cleric who is a convicted criminal in his native Turkey and wanted for terrorism.  Here’s a good overview from The Record/ NorthJersey.com (February 16, 2017):
 

Charter school leaders, founders linked to controversial Turkish cleric

 
A group of charter schools that arose from North Jersey’s Turkish community is rapidly growing in the state, with seven schools collecting more than $60 million in taxpayer money last year alone to fund their growth.
 
Now, an investigation by The Record and NorthJersey.com shows that some founders and leaders of the schools have close ties to the movement of Fethullah Gulen, the controversial Islamic cleric accused of working to overthrow the government in his native Turkey last summer. Gulen is fighting extradition demands as he lives in a secluded compound in Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains, about 10 miles from the New Jersey border.
 
…Some belong to Turkish émigré groups that tout the cleric's teachings. There are also political donors who collectively have furnished hundreds of thousands in donations to U.S. office holders while the North Jersey charter schools in general have been adept at wooing state and local government officials with trips to Turkey and, in some cases, jobs.
 
Records show the charter schools in North Jersey also have been a channel for state taxpayer money to private entities that serve the schools as landlords or vendors — in one case, a Wayne boarding school that is openly Gulen inspired.
 
Turkish prosecutors accuse Gulen of attempts to overthrow the government and of instigating the 2016 coup attempt. In 2000, he was found guilty, in absentia, of scheming to overthrow the government by embedding civil servants in various governmental offices. A Turkish criminal court has issued an arrest warrant for Gulen and Turkey is demanding his extradition from the United States. Gulen is wanted as a terrorist leader in Turkey and Pakistan, as well as by the OIC and GCC. Turkey is a member of NATO.
 
…Officials in the turbulent Turkish republic have maintained Gulen is leveraging a network of more than 100 charter schools nationwide and U.S. tax dollars to support revolution back home that would put his followers in power.
 
“It’s clear these schools were being used both to raise funds for Gulen and employ Gulen followers and teachers and basically have them tie a percent of their income back to Gulen,” said Robert Amsterdam, a London-based lawyer hired by the Turkish government who is investigating charter schools in the U.S. that he alleges are linked to Gulen.
 
…As the international controversy around Gulen swirls, the Turkish-led schools in New Jersey continue to collect tens of millions of dollars in state financing and local tax support, public records show.
 
The Record's review raises key questions about state oversight of the schools…
 
The investigation found:
 
A state-financed property deal involving the Paterson Charter School for Science and Technology also benefited its landlord, a private group with close ties to the Gulen movement:
 
That group sold the property and used the proceeds to help open a new campus in Wayne for its private boarding school that hews closely to Gulen's teachings and caters largely to students from Turkey. 
 
Public money, in fees and rent that could amount to millions of dollars over time, continues to flow to the charter school's new landlord, a firm with multiple ties to Turkish charter schools in New Jersey and elsewhere. 
 
Connections run deep among people involved with the schools, Gulenist groups and Turkish charter schools elsewhere in the U.S:  
 
Two of the New Jersey schools, for example, have a founder who has served as a director at the New York-based Alliance for Shared Values, considered the voice of the Gulen movement in this country.  
 
The CEO of iLearn Schools Inc. – an Elmwood Park-based non-profit that manages four of the local charter schools – comes from a charter network in Texas that the Turkish government claims is linked to the Gulen movement. 
 
The schools and their vendors have successfully courted prominent public-school educators and political figures.  
 
…Security consulting contracts at four of the schools worth more than $90,000 a year are held by ex-Bergen County Sheriff Leo McGuire, who took a 10-day trip to Turkey before he left office in 2010 with his family and local Turkish nationals tied to the schools. It was paid for in part by a Gulenist group.
 
More than $30 million in long-term, low-interest loans have been granted by the state to benefit the Paterson charter school despite its continuing financial and academic troubles:
 
In 2014, a Wall Street ratings agency downgraded the bonds issued for its expansion to junk status because the school’s revenues had fallen. Last year, Wall Street lowered its overall outlook on the bonds to “negative.”
 
Tracking tax dollars spent by the schools can be difficult because of loopholes in state law:
 
ILearn, which is set to add a fifth charter to its chain this year, declined to answer routine requests for information about its payroll, saying that as a private contractor it is not subject to the state Open Public Records law.
  
In common with Commissioner Dawn Fantasia, iLearn dislikes having to answer questions and resorts to claiming victim status when asked. It seems iLearn has as little regard for the state's Open Public Records Act (OPRA) as do County Commissioners like Fantasia and Jill Space, who regularly attack anyone who asks questions.

State officials said it is unclear if such charter-management organizations fall under the law, even though charters draw their funding directly from the tax-funded budgets of regular public schools. 
 
…A number of prominent Turkish nationals connected to the charters or their vendors have emerged as fundraisers and contributors to Hillary Clinton and Obama, among other political leaders. A former head of the Science and Technology charter in Paterson, Furkan Kosar, is the president of the Council of Turkic American Associations. Kosar raised more than $500,000 for Obama’s re-election bid in 2012. He did not return calls made to the council.
 
Critics say the presence of big-money contributors connected to the schools in New Jersey and other states is evidence the cleric and his followers are advancing the Gulen movement at the expense of U.S. taxpayers.
 
“They’re engaging in a series of activities that really don’t have anything to do with charter schools, and have much more to do with building political influence in the U.S. for his movement,” said Amsterdam, the lawyer for the Turkish government.
 
Among those critics is retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Donald Trump’s recently ousted national security adviser who claimed American taxpayers “are helping finance Gulen’s 160 charter schools in the United States” in an op-ed piece written in November for The Hill, the congressional newspaper that assailed the Obama administration for allowing Gulen to remain in the United States.

A controversial SuperPAC is backing Dawn Fantasia and Mike Inganamort for Assembly...
Who are they?

 

There is every indication to suggest that Garden State Success was created specifically to help elect Dawn Fantasia to the Assembly. Fantasia bragged to people – including colleagues – that she would be getting help from these sources.
 
We don’t know why, but during Dawn Fantasia’s December 2022 interview with LD24 and SRM staff, she made it very clear that iLearn’s leadership would facilitate her role as a legislator and that they saw her advancement in positive terms for their movement. When questioned about the conflict between her schedule as a school principal and the legislative schedule, Fantasia told interviewers that she had discussed it with iLearn’s leadership and that her role in the Legislature would be important enough for them to accommodate her schedule by assigning her a different role in their organization, like communications or government affairs.
 
Are Steve Oroho and Hal Wirths aware of this? And if they are, do they support Gulen and his works? Moreover, are they comfortable with sending someone from that organization into the GOP legislative caucus?

“Voters can’t make informed decisions unless they’re informed.  If you asked any self-respecting constituent of George Santos, they’d tell you they wish they knew then what they know now.”
 
Micah Rasmussen
Director of the Rebovich Institute of New Jersey Politics at Rider University