Do we have a jumpin' Jeffords?
The party-switching is strong here.
Because early (and often) voting is already underway in Delaware, I have to pay attention to the primary election, even though I can’t vote in it because I’m registered with the Constitution Party. There’s only one statewide primary of interest, for Auditor, and it’s on the Democrat side, so chances are my readers aren’t participating in that one. (If they are, maybe it can be a latter-day Operation Chaos? That would freak the Democrats out of their gourd.) As far as legislative primaries go, only those Sussex Republicans in the Milford and Long Neck areas have a primary, with the former serving as a general election because no Democrat filed for the seat in House District 36 and the latter setting up a balloting in a brand new district this November as House District 4 relocated from New Castle County to eastern Sussex. In addition, Republicans in the Georgetown area have a contentious County Council District 5 primary to deal with that, once again, will determine the next member from that seat barring a late write-in candidacy.
(It’s interesting that my part of the county, which shifted this year from County Council District 5 to Council District 1, now goes six years without a vote - redistricting was done after the 2020 election that involved Districts 1-3; meanwhile, other places get a two-year do-over. Maybe it’s something which needs to be addressed: Sussex should adopt the state policy of having all representatives run immediately after redistricting.)
The only countywide offices to have a primary are those generally not thought of as elected posts: Recorder of Deeds, which has incumbent Scott Dailey seeking a fourth term against challenger Alexandra Reed Baker, and Register of Wills, which is a three-way race pitting appointed incumbent Ellen Magee against former Register of Wills Greg Fuller, who was appointed to the post in 2008, and Candice Green Wilkinson, the daughter of the most recent Register of Wills Cindy Green, who resigned when she won a seat on County Council in 2020. The latter race is the one my title refers to.
Fuller was appointed back in 2008 to finish the term of David Wilson, who at the time was newly elected to the House of Delegates in District 35. (He has since advanced to become a State Senator.) Since there was no restriction on party affiliation with the appointment, the Republican Wilson was replaced by the Democrat Greg Fuller, who ran for election in 2010 only to be defeated by the aforementioned Cindy Green. Fast forward a decade and you have Green resigning and Magee, who was then unaffiliated but had spent most of her adult life as a Democrat, being appointed to the post by another Democrat governor. (If Delaware ever elects a Republican governor with cajones, I’m sure the General Assembly will change that law to where the appointee needs to be the same party as the person initially elected, otherwise Republicans could poach Democrat positions in New Castle County and elsewhere.)
As it turns out, this is Fuller’s fourth try for office but first as a Republican: after losing his bid to stay as Register of Wills, he ran for lieutenant governor in 2016, finishing fifth of six hopefuls, and for the 36th District House seat in 2020, where he lost to Bryan Shupe by a 64% - 36% margin. Instead of staying in the Democrat fold (and presumably having an automatic spot in November), Fuller entered what became a three-way Republican contest.
In the case of Magee, who was appointed in 2020 as unaffiliated, she initially switched to the GOP in 2019, according to this published report. She switched back to unaffiliated in 2020 to serve on the Board of Adjustment but moved back to the Republican fold last year because it better suited her self-proclaimed conservative views.
Of course, I have no idea about Candice Green Wilkinson’s political views, but I’m guessing she’s fairly conservative, too. And while it’s not uncommon for people to switch parties - after all, I did so when I moved here and, before that, I did my own Operation Chaos back in my youth, voting for the candidate I perceived to be weakest against Ronald Reagan (not that I had anything to worry about, since Ronaldus Magnus took care of business in that election) - it’s interesting that two of the three Republicans in the race were Democrats as recently as two or three years ago.
And they say the Republican Party in Delaware is weak? Not in Sussex County, where almost everyone running wants to be GOP.
If you’re looking for endorsements, look elsewhere. I’m pretty comfortable with most of the primary candidates and focused more on November.