SAN JOSE, Calif. – A special statewide election next month to decide eight ballot questions has set off a wild frenzy of campaign spending that seems certain to climb into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

The latest indication of the financial stakes came from a declaration filed by a California Teachers Association official in a court case brought by teachers who object to a three-year dues increase the union recently imposed to fund the political battle against several of the initiatives.

In the declaration, the teachers’ union reported that by September 30, its spending on the ballot fight had already reached the approximately $60 million the dues hike should raise.

“CTA has already spent on the initiative campaign the equivalent of what the temporary dues increase would bring in over three years,” the union’s controller, Carlos Moreno, wrote.

Mr. Moreno also said the union has borrowed at least $34 million and was negotiating for a new $40 million line of credit. An attorney for the union, Beverly Tucker, said that at least part of the new borrowing would go to refinancing the existing loans, but she would not rule out boosting the total spent on the initiative campaign. “It won’t be $100 million,” she said.

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has raised at least $27 million, and hopes to raise $50 million, for the measures he is backing. The initiative that has drawn the most opposition from teachers would extend the time needed to gain tenure to five years from the current two years. One measure that the teachers also oppose would allow the governor to unilaterally rein in state spending. Another calls for putting redistricting in the hands of retired judges.

Public employee unions across the state are bitterly opposed to another measure that could make it harder for them to use dues money for politics. Two measures on pricing of prescription drugs have prompted pharmaceutical companies to shell out $80 million so far.

“I’m hearing all of this election campaign could cost between $300 million and $500 million,” a political analyst with the University of Southern California, Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, said. “It’s astonishing.”

Teachers and professors who object to election-related dues hikes ballot fight asked a federal judge here yesterday to order two unions to notify educators that they have the right not to pay the new assessments.

After a 90-minute hearing, Judge James Ware declined to order the notifications or to force the professors’ union, the California Faculty Association, to put its dues hike in escrow.

A lawyer for the teachers’ union said it has already put some of its hike in escrow to be refunded to teachers who object.