A deeper Election 2024 dive: Delaware's U.S. Senate seat

Returning to my series with an updated post from February.

It’s not the clearest shot since I took it out a bus window, but at a 2009 rally I spotted some CBS reporter doing his stand-up routine with the Capitol in the background.

As I detailed in February, the Senate race turned out to be a three-person race without a primary. So I pick up the thread here.

Normally I start with the Republican candidate but this time I’ll start with LBR*, who’s a fairly known quantity in Delaware. She is 62 years old and, according to her Wikipedia bio, has worked in either government or for a non-profit almost exclusively since she graduated college. (She’s also interesting in that she traveled with her first husband to Europe for his basketball career and her late second husband to China, among other places.)

She essentially parlayed her race and gender into a Congressional seat, arguing in 2016 that she deserved to serve the state as its lone Congressional representative because no minority or female had previously done so. And while she spends her time trying to play up her bipartisan leanings, the sad fact is that her voting record is well left of bipartisan.

And it’s funny: since I used to live (and still work in) Maryland’s 1st Congressional District, I keep tabs on their Congressman (and newly-named House Freedom Caucus leader) Andy Harris. One criticism often lobbed at him by the “traveling roadshow” of the two-dozen liberals who live in his district and respond to his social media is that he’s passed one bill over his years in office, a measure that renamed a post office.

Oddly enough, out of 102 bills LBR has sponsored in eight years, she’s passed one - it renamed a post office. But you won’t see that criticism out of them for her. (And given her propensity for statist bromides, thank goodness that’s all she passed.)

Since it’s gotten to crunch time, she has finally added an issues page to her website. It’s a laundry list of leftist trope, including this howler:

At a time when working families, seniors, and individuals struggle to put food on the table, pay their bills, and stretch their pocketbooks at the gas pump, the wealthy and corporations get richer. This is a status quo Lisa won’t stand for.

In eight years, Lisa, what have you done to change that? You should know as much as anyone that the reason “the wealthy and corporations get richer” is that they have the best lobbyists their purloined taxpayer largesse can buy. (Their PACs sure like to hand your campaign nice checks.) You want to change that? Get some sense and rightsize that honey pot of sweet, sweet cash and debt we call the federal government. Starve the beast.

I noted back in the winter that Republican Eric Hansen believed in his campaign enough to loan it $360,000 to get it underway - plus another $50,000 personal contribution. (As full disclosure, I met Eric at the State Fair and was impressed enough how he listened to my thoughts on the agriculture industry to request a sign for my yard.) I think he’s a decade or so younger than the other two candidates.

In looking at Hansen’s priorities, he still has them in the order of education, health care, environment, crime, economy, abortion, “defending democracy,” and trust in government, but added one called “his goals.” Those goals: passing a “Tax and Spend Reduction Act,” the bipartisan border bill with the twist of mandatory military service (think: Army Corps of Engineers) for illegals, crime reduction through more directed federal spending, and ethics rules for Congress and the Supreme Court as well as term limits for Congress.

As I said last winter, Eric’s definitely not all I’d want in a Senator; particularly on the immigration bill and the Pandora’s box of ethics rules for the Supreme Court knowing how there’s a two-tier justice system these days. However, knowing that LBR will vote against the state’s best interests at every opportunity, I would just have to invoke the Reagan 80% agreement policy and Buckley Rule on this one. Hansen is a bit mixed up on role of government, but give me a little more time with him and I think I can straighten the guy out.

Finally, the Independent Party of Delaware has Dr. Mike Katz. Like LBR, Katz is 62 years old and perhaps he has as much money as she does (more on that in a bit) from being an entrepreneur and businessman.

Regardless, his campaign has perhaps the most unique hook of any you’ll see this year:

Dr. Mike Katz Refuses Donations! His Campaign for U.S. Senate is assisted by all Volunteers. Dr. Mike believes that the millions of dollars other candidates spend on their campaigns can be better spent helping Americans in need and improving our education and health systems.

Join Dr. Mike Katz in his mission to recover America’s democracy in which every citizen’s voice matters, not just those with the biggest bank accounts.

When we remove the influence of money from our elections and governance, we ensure a government that is accountable, transparent, and works for the benefit of all Americans.

So in a way I am performing a service to him by mentioning his place in the race. I also love how he’s taken the time to reveal just how wealthy LBR has become in “public service” and where her campaign money comes from.

Yet besides his idea about taking money out of politics, his top issues are economy and jobs, health care, education, home ownership, veterans, and first responders. One key issue he’s brought to the table is the need for a VA facility in southern Delaware.

And one very important thing to know about him is that this isn’t his first rodeo, as he was a member of the Delaware Senate (as a Democrat) from 2009-13. As Katz describes it, he “irritated those in power so much that he was gerrymandered out of his seat during redistricting.”

When I first heard about his tactic, I was a bit skeptical. So I asked Dr. Mike a question on social media:

I have a couple serious questions on this: is the political money the symptom or the disease? Would we be spending all this money on political donations if there weren't vast honey pots of taxpayer dollars nested in our state capitals and Washington D.C.?

You ran for and won office before and I presume you didn't have the same "no contribution" rule for that race. Why the change? What lesson did you learn in the interim?

It doesn't do me much good if you don't take contributions but keep the same old system in place.

And, by the way, we're a Constitutional republic and not a democracy.

Mike was kind enough to respond with a lengthy, well thought-out reply.

Since I looked at his campaign a few months back, he’s managed to get free media around the state but I’m not sure Mike’s going to make a dent in the race. He’s on the same IPoD ticket as Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has maintained his spot on the ballot in Delaware, unlike other states.

So how do I see all of this?

While there’s little chance Dr. Mike will win, there’s a part of me who would love to see him get 10-15% of the vote, sort of like Ross Perot did back in 1992. I think he gets it to some extent, but as I’ve said the money in politics disease isn’t healed from the campaign finance side but the government side. Alas, most politicians would rather rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic by preaching efficiency and reform than bear full reverse from the looming iceberg. That’s sort of the boat I see Hansen in, although he comes from the world of Walmart so he should know a thing or two about efficiency: as he notes:

At Walmart, he made sure that brands like Equate, Parent’s Choice, and others could be just as good as the national brands, but half the price. Because of his work at Walmart, Eric saved shoppers over $25 billion.  That means he and his team put over $300 back into your wallet.  That’s real money staying in your pocket, not empty promises from self-serving politicians.

Moreover, it will be interesting what the centrist-populist position Katz has staked out does to the race, since it tracks somewhat better with Hansen’s ideas than LBR’s platitudes about bipartisanship - this despite her far-left voting record and relative ineffectiveness at passing measures that could help Delaware. Hopefully Katz takes more from her centrist fringe than his.

Regardless, come January we’ll have both a new Senator and new Congressman. I’m hoping we choose wisely for both.

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*I get tired of typing out Lisa Blunt Rochester, so this is my occasional reminder that my convention for her is LBR.