UPDATED: Bethany Hall Long To Win Steve Amick’s SD 10 Seat
UPDATE: EL Sonambulo has the skinny in the comments.
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This is an easy Dem pick-up. BHL is a determined campaigner and a shrewd electoral tactician so I know she has done her homework on this and then some.
Amick had it easy in 2004 and only polled 55%. Today, the 10th district (map), like every other SD in New Castle, has been trending Democratic.
I’ll leave it to Dave Burris to discuss what a BHL win means for the district. From my perspective she has been a bit of a disappointment as a state Rep. Mostly under the radar and keeping her powder dry for bigger things (did I mention she is a great tactician?) Then again she’ll be working more with the John Kowalkos of the world and less with the Dickie Burris’, so maybe she’ll surprise me. (Note to self: Don’t hold breath.)
Who takes over in her 8th Rep district?
Good question. I know that Cathcart has a protege that he has been working with for a while, what was that guys name again…?
As for the Dems, maybe new elected NCC council man Bill Powers gets the nod. The 8th RD (map) was created so that Cathcart would not have to go head to head with BHL so it is a little bit of a backwater. That is to say, I don’t know of many Democrats that I would get very excited about supporting.
Polling shows Amick beating BHL 50-29, with 21% undecided.
He has a 38-4 fav/unfav and she has a 14-5 fav/unfav.
And we haven’t even begun to tinker with her unfav’s yet. There are plenty of things about BHL’s voting record that the people of the 10th are going to be happy to know in advance of voting.
I can’t believe that she’d jump in without seeing a poll, but I can’t imagine she’d leave the comforts of a safe seat knowing how bad the polling is.
Oh, well. More fun for me.
Yeah, Dave, you’ve been having a lot of fun for the past eight years. Can’t wait for your November party.
Is that the same 2002 poll that Celia keeps bringing up? Or did you call 14 people one afternoon?
Anyway, the incumbent gets a mere 50%? I guess that is good considering his party affiliation.
J – Take a couple of things into consideration, tho. SD10 is almost entirely new voters to her. The overlap of RD8 and SD10 is quite small. Also, given that her gaggle of whisper-campaign BS artists (that she claims no knowledge of) are from the heart of RD8 and will be quite busy pushing Powers, she may be looking at a different type of campaign compared to what she’s been used to.
P.S.: You did your post title wrong. It should have been…”BREAKING: Jason Predicts Local D Legislator Victory Whose Name Is Not Atkins!”
You win some, you lose some, but it’s grand fun 95% of the time. And the voters haven’t had the best 8 years, either.
I don’t see BHL as a shoe in for anything except the seat she’s currently holding. She’s been a bit lackluster as a representative and I’m hard pressed to come up with anything she’s done that’s memorable.
I know that Cathcart has a protege that he has been working with for a while, what was that guys name again…?
Sorry, J. I’m in your district. Thanks for the props, tho. We can talk about this while building your deck.
I’ll bet her poll numbers were like 5% against rep. Cathcart in 2000 at this time. He won by about 150 votes. That’s why he redistricted her out of his 9th district by her backyard.
I understand the dem 8th district is coming out with an outstanding candidate.
Yes, OO, that’s the strength of an anoymous, lying whisper campaign. Ugly, unsubstantiated claims later retracted. None of which she knew about. *wink*
I understand the dem 8th district is coming out with an outstanding candidate.
Oh, it’s not Powers, then?
*rimshot*
Know what? I will give her a little credit here, she may not actually know who is (or are) behind the whisper campaigns. Traditionally speaking, Townsend and Clayton are very tough areas to campaign for R’s.
Powers is an unmitigated shill for the worst DEM’s special interests. His activities on county council prove that.
I don’t understand your comments about a “lying, whisper campaign”. Are you writing that she nearly beat Cathcart because of it? Here’s my one comment. If Hall-Long had the organization foundation when she ran against Appo. board president Bill Hutchison in 2002, rep Cathcart would not even be in elected office now.
If anyone against Dave wins, its because of sleaze. If he wins (and we’re waiting), its all Dave.
I will lend that the machine in what is now RD8 is formidable. No doubt. I will also contend that the whisper campaign engine that churns there is a complimentary driver. Yes, I DO contend that is why she almost beat Cathcart in 2000. Allegations were nasty and she had to distance herself. This is also why I paused above and will give credit to her claim that she is not aware of who (one or many) that make it churn. Traditional-Townsend and Clayton are about as anti-R as you can get below the canal. It’s tough territory. They may like you as a person, but if you are an R-candidate, you’re dirt until after elections.
…And yet Townsend and Clayton might be the next big thing for the R’s.
It is the land that the “Reagan Revolution” forgot.
While many hardscrable white dems (aka “dixiecrat” ) were absorbed by the borg-like GOP machine which ate fear and dispensed comfort in the form of creating racial and social boogey-men, Townsend and Clayton resisted.
Maybe they were too smart, or good hearted in a down home kind of way to be taken in by the anti-gay, anti-mexican snake oil that the GOP has been selling?
That might explain some of it – but I think there was a legitmate isolation from the outside world that is just now breakign down.
Baltimore broadcast TV is fuzzy and Phladelphia feels like a million miles away. The canal created a real barrier for years and one generation melded into the next picking up the 2nd base spot on the softball team or the Axe man spot on the volunteer fireman team just as naturally as the cows walked back and forth between the barn and the pasture.
Even the potato farmers who came down from long island kept to themselves.
Why would Bill Powers want to trade a 4 year seat for a 2 year seat? Makes no sense to me. Even if it is for a higher office. I still wonder in amazement that he won by the margin he did. Not heard much from Mr. Gilsdorf since then.
I ultimately think that Steve Amick will not run again. And speaking as an admittedly partisan Democrat, the Senate will be the worse for it.
Amick is/was a ‘good government’ Republican in the mold of fellow Newark legislators Jim Neal and Ada Leigh Soles. He is a gentleman and one of the most thoughtful legislators currently serving.
Having said that, he is not in the best of health. He is no longer in leadership. The Senate shows no signs of switching to R anytime soon. His current district only has a relative sliver of Newark, so he’s really not in what would be a natural district for him. I doubt that his wife really wants him to run again.
Bethany Hall-Long is a perpetual motion campaigner. I really think that, once he considers the lay of the land this year, Steve will call an end to a very distinguished career.
Only reason I mention Powers was Ron Williams (jokes aside) and then Jason mentioned him. Additionally, why not? With his win in ’06, strike while the iron’s hot, right? As far as his victory in ’06, I will give a couple thoughts: the afore-mentioned Townsend and NCCo-part of Clayton issue for R’s and then RG’s misguided attempt to use the tax issue where Powers was sued by NCCo for payment. It resonated poorly and then someone dropped a photocopy at the Transcript who in turn leaked it to the right group who used it against RG. Where RG lost was completely PR (and affiliation, of course). Powers became a sympathetic figure at the time.
That, and RG was not truthful when he said that he wanted to run on issues concerning the council district, even editorialized it. Then, every Tom, Dick, and Harry he talked to while campaigning brought it up at every opportunity.
El Somnambulo,
I knew something was up. Thanks for filling in the blanks.
Woefully underestimating Amick is music to my ears. Thanks.
Your bravado is legend.
However, we both know BHL is not selfless enough to undertake this without having worked out the odds.
I Amick pulls a levin, I don’t want you to go around saying that I did not warn you.
BHL would be a fucking moron to go against Amick. Isn’t Amick’s district a bit of Newark, as well? Amick’s a guy who’s known for his constituent services — well, they all are really. But Bethany would be a fool to think she could take on a big-ass beast like Amick.
Of course, if Amick does drop out, I see it as a likely win. For now, BHL should keep down the path of holding her House seat and only switch over for a Senate run if Amick drops out.
I’ve never seen a 38-4 favorable ratio. Amick is loved. There’s no impetus for change at all. Matthews is right.
I’m not saying she won’t be competitive, but she’s got a huge task ahead of her.
Her 1st ED of the 8th RD is the only part of the 8th in the Senate district. So she’s got to introduce herself to the 30,000 other voters in the SD (96%) for the first time, AND try to capture their attention in a gubernatorial/presidential election, AND try to leave a favorable impression, AND try to convince them of a need to change representation from a guy who has more than a 9-1 favorable ratio.
That’ll be tough to do.
Not only that, but her own ED is traditionally her worst performer in her district and the only majority-Republican ED in her district.
So Dave, What were the final election night numbers in the race when Julie Dugan ran against Steve Amick?
55% to 45% She barely raised $6000. I find it hard to believe he is that well liked and could only defeat Ms. Dugan by that much.
Oh. Ok….
Thanks Observer for the history.
Now that we have that established , can Dave tell us how many votes were in the 10 % difference when incumbent Amick (R) received 55 % to challenger Dugan’s (D) 45 %?
Besides, the last thing we need is another damn Democrat in the Senate.
I can guarantee you that the 2008 Steve Amick campaign will be completely different than the 2004 Steve Amick campaign. Count on it.
Hey. He can win by one vote for all I care.
He won by 2,000 votes in ’04. Not exactly a squeaker.
Why not Dave. You can repackage the Christian campaign you did and “Tell the Truth”.
And how many votes did Powers ( Who filed in June) get over Rob Gilsdorf (Who filed A LOT earlier) and was campaigning for that council seat for almost 2 years?
I am not saying that Amick would not have a chance of winning were he to run. I am not saying that BH-L should’ve left her seat to run. I actually think she’s an attention junkie who needs to be in the spotlight.
However, FSP’s bravado is typically misplaced. It’s hard to run a campaign against an energetic and well-funded candidate, no matter how much money you can raise. For better or for worse, Hall-Long is tireless, and the Steve Amick of 2008 is 4 years older than the Steve Amick of 2004.
I have no inside information on this race on either side, so it’s possible that Amick will run again. However, considering the circumstances, and considering my take, which is that Steve isn’t like a Vaughn, Cook, or Adams, who would just as soon be taken out of the building on a gurney than voluntarily give up power, I think Steve is more likely to retire than fight.
“Why not Dave. You can repackage the Christian campaign you did and “Tell the Truth”.”
It’s hard to compete when you’re running against someone who will blatantly lie to win an election. You know, like “I’ve been leading the fight to end the desk-drawer veto.”
Everything we said in that race was true. It may not have been welcome, but it was true. And it has played out exactly like we said it would. But hey, I bet those sidewalks are getting fixed!
El Somnambulo has an opinion that is shared by a lot of people, so he can’t be faulted for that. By a majority of people, I’d say.
El Somnambulo,
Other than being in the spotlight during the DSP hearings, why do you think Rep. Hall-Long is an “attention junkie”? Other than being “everywhere” in her district(which she or any elected official should be). Your statement does not make any sense to me.
Dave is sort of the Bob Shrum of Delaware politics.
I’m pretty sure Jabba the Hutt will drop out.
One campaign loss against a 25-year incumbent and I’m Bob Shrum? Come on, man.
A little birdie told me that Steve Amick has decided to retire, and that he has notified the press of his decision. Those with official contacts might want to start with the Newark Post…and tell ’em El Somnambulo sentcha.
You are the man. (?)
I knew BHL had some inside info on this. There is no way she would have made a move otherwise.
EL is right. Amick has told the press he is not running. By the way, BHL had lunch with him several weeks ago and told Amick she was considering running against him. So, the information that she knew he was considering retiring is not true.
There happens to be some recently unturned dirt on BHL regarding emails FOIA’d out of DelDOT. Something tells me that she is going to have to tread carefully here.
Well outside I’d say there is a gray are around knowing and “knowing” that is difficult to talk about in english.
Suffcie to say that BHL was not about to risk her seat in form foolhardy quest to knock off an incumbent.
FWIW, I don’t think she knew he wouldn’t run. She made a calculated decision. And, while her election vs. Amick wasn’t a sure thing, it wasn’t a foolhardy quest on her part.
I also don’t think there’s really any merit to what Nancy Willing’s implying. Needs to be a little more meat on dem bones…
O.O. Comment #8,
You are correct and win the balloon. The 8th Dem. District Committee has endorsed S. Quinn Johnson and he’s filed. At the State Rep level once the local committee has endorsed the party has endorsed. He’s the man.
He’s young, energetic, a good speaker, owns his own successful business, and has the full backing of the 8th District Dems. He’s being supported by BHL, Ennis and Gilligan, along with the Party. As an “open seat” you can expect the Party to throw extra resources into this race if it starts to look close. So don’t get too excited Dave. In fact, you might just want to sit this one out.
In the 20th century, it is said, there lived a scientist who gained a reputation as an insufferable braggart. At cocktail parties, this man would introduce himself by saying, “Hi, I’m Albert Einstein.” His interlocutor, if he had a mischievous sense of humor, might reply, “Pleased to meet you. I’m Napoleon.” But most people were just taken aback, even offended. Who did this guy think he was?
But it was all a misunderstanding. The scientist was actually both amazingly accomplished and quite humble. It just happened that his name was Albert Einstein.
Some people take the wrong lessson from the story of Einstein. They think that brilliant people boast of their brilliance, that people who boast of their brilliance are brilliant, and that they, by boasting of their brilliance, will thereby ensure that they are brilliant.
Take Meghan Daum. (Please.) She is a columnist for the Los Angeles Times, and when she was young, she thought it was OK to make fun of intellectuals. She even said so at a dinner party. Oh, how wrong she was! Now that she has matured, she realizes how difficult it is to be an intellectual, for–and she wants to make sure you know this–she is one:
As dumb as things were back then, it’s fair to suggest today’s culture is even dumber. Granted, the police aren’t raiding highbrow cultural events and arresting anyone who uses a three-syllable word, but something uncannily similar is playing out, minute by minute, on television and the Internet. . . .
What’s more, a lot of people who harbor an intolerance for complexity see it not as a character flaw but a cognitive virtue. That’s because they’ve fallen into the trap of believing that complicated ideas (“complicated” now constituting anything that requires reading, watching or listening to in its entirety) are the purview of the “elite.”
The effect of that trap has been on a continuous loop in recent days, following Barack Obama’s ill-chosen remarks about bitter rural Americans clinging to guns and religion. The takeaway, of course, is that this sentiment proves once and for all that Obama is an elitist fatally out of touch with the average American. But in deference to my onetime dinner companion, let me ask this: Is he vulnerable to the out-of-touch charge because he is an elitist, or because he is usually (even if not in this case) comfortable with and in command of nuanced ideas? Is he bashable because he’s a snob or because he’s an intellectual?
Now this is very complex and nuanced, so let us spell it out. Obama is really, really smart. So is Meghan Daum. You bitter people who cling to your guns and your religion–well, frankly, you’re just not very bright. Try going to college sometime, and maybe you’ll be able to do a better job voting.
Pleased to meet you, Meghan. We’re Napoleon.
Thank you Senator Amick for you years of service to the residents of the 10th Senatorial District.
You have made the right decision for your family and yourself. We wish you well in your new endeavors.
STATE SEN. STEVE AMICK WILL NOT RUN FOR RE-ELECTION
By Celia Cohen
Grapevine Political Writer
Political combat is not really state Sen. Steve Amick’s style. A lawyerly Republican from Newark, he fits the city that the University of Delaware calls home, where the voters prefer the campaigning to lean toward the academic, not the acrimonious.
It keeps with his character that Amick has decided not to put himself through a bellicose defense of his seat against state Rep. Bethany Hall-Long, a Democrat who announced two weeks ago that she wanted to wrest away the 10th Senatorial District, which stretches from Newark south to her home territory in Middletown.
Amick delivered a letter Monday morning to the Newark Post for its weekly publication Thursday to tell his constituents he will not run for re-election because of family and health reasons, Delaware Grapevine has learned. In a brief interview later in the afternoon, Amick declined to talk about it.
Amick is 60, a retired lawyer with a reflective and sedentary bearing. He has spent more than two decades in Dover — with eight years in the state House of Representatives and 14 years in the state Senate, where he had stints as the minority whip and the minority leader.
Hall-Long is 44, a University of Delaware nursing professor whose personality is Amick’s polar opposite, projecting energetic bursts. She was elected to the legislature in 2002.
The district favors the Democrats. Between the registration and the varying approaches, this contest was taking on the attributes of a miniature version of the 2000 showdown for the U.S. Senate between Bill Roth, the aging five-term Republican, and Tom Carper, the politically-robust Democratic governor. The voters in that election figured they had to make a change sometime, and they were trending Democratic, anyway. Roth was out, and Carper was in.
Now Amick is out without a vote.
Amick signaled last year that his heart might not be in another Senate race. He applied to be the Newark alderman, the chief judge of the municipal court. According to the minutes of his meeting with City Council members, he told them, “Another campaign for a state Senate seat did not really appeal to him after doing it for 21 years, and [he] was looking for other opportunities for something different, and this one really appealed to him.”
Amick did not get the judgeship. At the time he said he was returning his attention to the state Senate and intended to run for re-election.
Instead, he became the second Republican senator to walk away from his seat, rather than deal with the threat from a hard-charging challenger. State Sen. John Still, a Dover Republican, is retiring rather than take on a rematch with Brian Bushweller, a Democrat who was in Carper’s gubernatorial Cabinet and nearly beat Still four years ago.
The Republicans came up with a formidable candidate to replace Still by recruiting James Hutchison, who served as Dover’s mayor and police chief. They are scrambling for someone for Amick’s seat.
The Republicans really cannot afford to lose any more ground in the state Senate. They already are outnumbered 13-8 in the chamber, which the Democrats have controlled for 35 years.
Amick is one of the last of his kind. As a first-time candidate in 1986, he was a Republican and a lawyer with the DuPont Co. when both the party and the company dominated Delaware, and there were a lot of Republican DuPonters in the legislature. Their makeup was more civic creatures than political animals, a breed increasingly out of place in the rough-cut partisanship today.
Still, this may not be the last of Steve Amick. As he exits the state Senate, there are whispers that he could be persuaded to run for his old House district, where the Republicans need someone to take on state Rep. John Kowalko, a rookie Democrat, as they fight to hold onto their 22-19 majority.
The registration in the House district tilts the Democrats’ way, too, but legislators are most vulnerable in their first term and the voters in this more-compact area are Amick’s longtime neighbors. Besides, it would be nervy and captivating if Amick did it.
When asked about running for the House seat, Amick said a lot simply by saying, “No comment.”
Steve, please don’t run against John Kowalko. We would hate to what we have to do to make sure that you lose, but we will.
/DEMs who have known you a long time.
I also don’t think there’s really any merit to what Nancy Willing’s implying. Needs to be a little more meat on dem bones…
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I would hate for anyone to think that I was merely implying unfounded crap.
The Middletown Corridor Coalition FOIA’d emails from DelDOT (I have copies) and BHL presents herself as less than forthright in some of the correspondences. Go to my blog, punch up the MCC label and call or email your inquiries directly to the MCC.
Or just ask BHL yourself. She knows the scoop.
I just verified with MCC chair that she will provide copies of the emails where BHL compromised her intergity for thosewho are curious.
IMO, Bethany is one of the worst legislators in the General Assembly. She, a nurse, was willing to support a rollback of the anti-smoking bill.
Yeah, she understands tactics and she’ s a determined ticket-puncher. But there’s really nobody home…..
Ay carumba! This thread is from the days before the Beast Who Slumbers found his true voice, which does not include speaking in the first person.
Perhaps it was reading that Bob Dole bio that did it…