Delaware decided. I react.
I took a bit of a vacation. Rested and recharged, I have a few more thoughts on what went down.
Glad to be back. Before I get too far along, I want to throw some quick numbers out at you.
Along with the Presidential election, Delaware elects its governor and lieutenant governor in the same year. It also falls on the biennial that we elect our lone Congressman and (in this year’s case) one of our Senators. So let’s look at the GOP percentages in those last three Presidential elections:
President: 2016 Donald Trump 41.92%, 2020 Donald Trump 39.8%, 2024 Donald Trump 41.89%.
Governor: 2016 Colin Bonini 39.18%, 2020 Julianne Murray 38.63%, 2024 Mike Ramone 43.93%.
LG: 2016 La Mar Gunn 40.56%, 2020 Donyale Hall 40.86%, 2024 Ruth Briggs King 44.78%.
Congress: 2016 Hans Reigle 40.96%, 2020 Lee Murphy 40.22%, 2024 John Whalen III 42.14%.
U.S. Senator: 2020 Lauren Witzke 37.9%, 2024 Eric Hansen 39.5%. (There was no Senate election here in 2016.)
Now I can look at these numbers and deduce that things (for the most part) are going in the right direction. Trump was 0.03% off his high-water mark, but all the others established their highs with Trump on the ballot.
But there’s a problem with such an assumption - the Republicans still lost. In fact, they lost another seat in the House (the one Ramone vacated to run for Governor) so their prospects for making meaningful change in Delaware got even more bleak as Democrats now hold a 27-14 House lead, maintaining the 15-6 edge in the Senate. (Which is really 13-6 as two Democrat members have to resign to take the posts they were elected to.)
And the way things were run by the Delaware GOP makes me question how hard they are working to change. There are a couple post-election statements I want to excerpt from and dissect, first from Senate candidate Eric Hansen:
The nation shifted somewhat to the right Tuesday night, and at the same time Delaware shifted left. Democrats won every race with the exception of a few very stable Republican incumbents. Nonetheless...
Now is the time for us to come together as Delawareans - and Americans. I want to congratulate Senator-elect Lisa Blunt Rochester on her victory, and offer best wishes as she navigates preparing to serve the people of Delaware in a new capacity.
My goal in office was to bridge the divide between the two parties. Lisa Blunt Rochester has committed to doing the same. I wish her well with the tough assignment of helping heal our polarized nation. Delaware deserves no less.
Yes, it’s conciliatory, and sets the tone for someone who believes in the old Bob Michel school of go along to get along. But LBR ain’t going to bridge shit - she hasn’t so far when she’s been in the out-of-power party so she’s not starting now. If she wants to heal the polarized nation she’ll get behind the Trump initiatives to help the economy like extending his tax cuts and taking a hacksaw to government bloat.
But the more telling one came from the wife of John Whalen III, who played the part of the Washington Generals in the contest that saw Tim Sarah McBride become yet another “historic” member of Congress. It’s a social media post shared with me that was since deleted, but as I recall in reading it she laid a lot of the blame for her husband’s defeat on a Delaware Republican Party that ignored him, right up to Return Day.
It points out one big problem (to me) with the Delaware GOP, and that’s its practice of endorsing candidates at their spring convention, months before the filing deadline. In Maryland, we always let the primary voters decide, although individual members were always free to back candidates. Being a late entry, John didn’t seem to have a ton of support from the party, but the party may have had a different tale and he was just obstinate.
Perhaps Donyale Hall would have been a better choice, but I guess Republican primary voters - most of whom don’t involve themselves in formal party affairs - saw her as a prototypical perennial candidate who had already lost statewide once and really didn’t change her campaign from the one she lost with. Whalen ran on two issues - immigration and the economy - and those were the bread-and-butter ones as far as GOP voters went.
Our Congresscritter-elect is only there because Delaware Democrats wanted to virtue signal, not send a good representative. So if any candidate should have lost, it was McBride.
Let’s look at Delaware’s situation now.
Because there was such a big deal about the T, the race drew national interest (and money) and naturally s/he will be considered the nationwide point person for those issues. And since there are 1.3 million Americans who claim to be a T, that’s a tiny population pocket. (The true number is probably half that.)
Now it would be one thing if McBride came from California or New York, since they have oodles of Representatives. But Delaware is unique as we have the largest Congressional district (by population) in the country. (Of all the states with three electoral votes, meaning they have just one member of Congress, Delaware has the most people.) So basically our already-lacking representation is sacrificed on the altar of virtue signaling, and people didn’t think this through.
Finally, there is one other set of issues Sussex County is talking about, and those intertwined items are growth and affordable housing. As I’ve said several times in the past, most of our county’s growth comes from people who sell their houses in New Jersey, New York, PA, or Maryland and retire here in a nice new house. Unfortunately, they seem to be bringing their awful voting patterns with them as the area east of U.S. 113 is turning a putrid shade of blue electorally. Neither Republican trying to wrest back the seats the party lost in 2022 succeeded, and that part of the county also lost a Republican County Councilman to an anti-growth zealot.
So perhaps it is time to have that conversation, and since the Democrats have talked about affordable housing and infill development, let’s see them put their money where their mouth is. There’s a lot of decent-to-good existing housing stock in Millsboro and Georgetown that could use investment, and the Trump administration could help by cracking down on the illegal immigration which is living ten or twelve to a house in some areas. A little bit of fixing up and that housing stock can be reclaimed, right? Seems like a good local initiative as long as WE set the strings and pay the freight, not the state or federal government.
Since Republicans seem now to be the party of the working class, let’s build it back up, shall we? Maybe then we’ll get better election results.
Until next time, remember you can Buy Me a Coffee since I have a page there.