The push from the left
Seems like a lot of Democrats have a primary opponent here in Delaware.
In 2024, there were nine Democrat primaries for state legislative posts, some of which involved open seats. Out of those, the biggest upset was seeing former Rep. Valerie Longhurst - who had just been appointed as House Speaker after longtime Speaker Pete Schwartzkopf retired from the task midterm - get dusted in her own primary by current Rep. Kamela Smith.
But if you thought Democrats were a safe bunch who believed in waiting their turn, you haven’t seen the 2026 primary season. Out of six Democrats who are up for re-election to the State Senate, five have drawn primary opponents. (The only one who has no primary opponent is Marie Pinkney of Senate District 13, who must be left-wing enough as both a POC and LGBT. She defeated a longtime Democrat fixture in David McBride to win the seat six years ago.) Meanwhile, David Sokola is retiring after 36 years, and the skids have been greased to have Rep. Mara Gorman move up to take the slot.
On the House side, a number of incumbents from the Democrat side are also facing primary challengers. Out of 25 of them running for re-election - Debra Heffernan is retiring and Gorman, as noted, is seeking the Senate seat opened up by Sokola’s departure - 11 have primary opponents as well. (This doesn’t count Democrat primaries to face Republican incumbents or open seats, of which there are a few.)
Now I’m not going to say all of these incumbents have a Democratic Socialist opponent - as far as I can gather, only two have been endorsed by the Delaware DSA (Shane Nicole Darby in House District 1 and Shay Frisby in Senate District 5) but many of these newcomers are running on those same principles, as if the Delaware General Assembly isn’t already tilting precipitously to the left. (About six of these challengers have a Working Families Party endorsement, a number which includes the two DSA endorsees.) There will likely be more announced in the coming days as the primary draws closer, although it may not be as prevalent locally.
I’ve been working on my Delaware Accountability Project for the 2025-26 term and should have it wrapped up in the next couple weeks, but I can tell you that there’s no such thing as a Blue Dog Democrat anymore - even the centrists like William Bush and William Carson have been cowed into following the party line. For years I had given out what I call the “(Top) Blue Dog” Award for the most centrist Democrat but the award is being retired for this term - and probably the foreseeable future, given the trajectory - because no Democrat got more than 2 votes correct, out of 50 considered. (The tallying is done; I just have to complete the writeup.) There are more Democrats in the Delaware General Assembly than total correct Democrat votes, and it hadn’t always been that way until some of the old-school centrists retired or were primaried out. On the other hand, there are still a couple centrist Republicans who often depart from being the loyal opposition.
The funny thing, though, about these Democratic Socialists and their allies, such as the Working Families Party, is that they’ll give you the siren song about everything being free because it’s being provided by government. But they forget the axiom made famous by the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher - “The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” With some exception in Delaware because of its dependence on fees collected from businesses that are incorporated here - a sum that is shrinking thanks to DEXIT - the money used to run our state government comes from our collective pockets, whether it’s directly taken from ever-increasing taxes and fees or transferred over from the federal government after they take their significant cut. Regardless, wealth transfer is a big business here in Delaware, which is why Democrats run the show but the prosperous part of Delaware where everyone seems to want to move to is Slower Lower and that’s the Republican red area. (Sussex County is the fastest-growing county in Delaware, by far.)
Denizens of the First State have a real choice to make in November. Obviously, we can’t change the executive portion of our state government as this is the midterm election for Governor Matt Meyer and LG Kyle Evans Gay. But the national trend was always that the party out of power gained seats in the legislature; unfortunately that’s not been the case in Delaware over the last few terms. (It was the case in the 1990s and into the 2000s, as the Democrat reign of terror in the governor’s seat has gone on since 1992.) While TEA Party Republicans managed to pick up a Senate seat and two House seats in 2014, in 2018 and 2022 the Democrats have either held serve (2022 in the House) or picked up one seat in each body. That’s bad news for all of us if that trend holds this time.
People talk about our state becoming “Delifornia” as government grows, but this November we can take a first step toward becoming a state where people want to go, “Delorida.” After all, if Florida can both rapidly grow its population and cut state spending for four years in a row, why can’t we? The key is rejecting this push toward “democratic socialism” (read: communism) and restoring sanity to our state government by seeding it with a little bit of conservative wisdom and the common sense of making the argument for limited government in preparation for good conservative leadership to assume command in 2028, kicking the Meyer/Gay/commie lib misery to the curb.
It’s going to be a thousand-mile journey in a state that’s barely one hundred miles long, but we have to make the first step at some point.
In the meantime, though, you can Buy Me a Coffee, since I have a page there.