LiberalGeek in the Land of Ascots
Today, Republican Bill Lee kicked off his campaign for Governor. His afternoon stop was in New Castle just a few miles from work, so I stopped over to meet Maria Evans and see what’s happening with Judge Lee.
The scene was the Old Courthouse in New Castle and the turnout was good. The place was packed to hear Charlie Copeland introduce Mike Castle and Castle introduce Lee. The crowd was what you would have expected. A variety of people (at least a variety of ages) were there along with some guys with some heavy-duty video equipment. I was a little annoyed by a woman in the audience that gave the older white person equivalent of “amen” when Bill Lee talked about home-schooling and charter schools.
Lee covered many of his bases in the speech, hitting education, government waste and loss of big businesses in Delaware. There was no mention of the comment this morning on WGMD regarding giving licenses to “illegals.”
After the speech, I got to meet Maria and she convinced me to head over to the Arsenal for a small reception. In attendance were the Republican bigwigs you would expect, including Terry Strine. But one of the odd attendees (besides me) was Tommy Little. I can only assume that he was was here to confer the IPOD nomination on Lee. There was also a guy wearing an ascot. That cracked me up. There was also a guy with shorts and black socks.
Maria was able to introduce me to Lee and I got a good 15 minutes with him. Bill and I talked about education. He seemed to indicate that the school districts of the state were inefficient because there were too many of them. I pressed him on this and on his talking point in favor of referenda. I thought that consolidating schools would screw up the tax structure of local property taxes. His plan isn’t as bold as I had imagined. His plan was mostly about combining purchasing power and standardizing textbooks across the state.
He also spoke in glowing terms about charter schools. I pointed out that the advantage that charter schools have is that they can kick kids out for misbehavior. This means that those kids end up in the regular schools in a much higher percentage than in charters. The Judge agreed and would allow schools to essentially banish those kids to self-contained classrooms with higher staff ratios. The kids could then earn their right back to the general population.
The plans are still quite sketchy, and I’m not sure how Bill expects to pay for it. He did say that he agrees with Markell’s plan to cut waste to balance the budget or pay for new programs. “I sure hope he’s right” said the Judge. I definitely feel like Lee has a lot of ideas, but I thought he hadn’t really fleshed them out in the way that wonks like Markell and Carney have. In this way, he isn’t all that different than Protack.
I will say this, the judge was engaging and open. I appreciate the time that he gave me. Shout out to Charlie Copeland, too. I appreciate that he doesn’t deck me every time he sees me. 🙂
I have some video that I took at the event and will try to put it up, if for nothing else, than to hear Mike Castle talking about how good Charlie is with the bull.
Did you walk away with an ascot of your own — a personal souvenir of the event?
Seriously, this is a great account of this event, LG. Do you have a sense that the Judge is going to expand on (and talk about how to pay for) his ideas or did you get any sense of going through the motions?
Great blogging, LG! I’m interested in Lee’s educational platform, which seems a little thin on details. Did he seem to have a grasp of the situation, or was he simply “Charters are the solution to everything” kind of guy?
No ascots for me. I don’t look good in silk.
I am sure that the Judge will develop some more tangible parameters around his plans. He does seem interested in public education and seemed to be interested in applying what we have learned in charters to regular schools. But I definitely got the feeling that he was still coming up to speed on specifics.
This is a bit strange, since this isn’t the first time he has done this dance.
As for paying for it all, you just have to cut taxes, duh. Well… OK… cut taxes and cut government waste.
We had an interesting exchange about people that work in Delaware, but live in PA for the better schools. This was 5 minutes after he said that people don’t want to be taxed any more. I pointed out that PA property taxes were way higher than DE taxes, because that gets them better schools. He stumbled a little, but basically felt that we couldn’t get better schools if we spend more on a bad system.
Hmmm… pretty standard reply by Lee.
Great point on PA school taxes!
Awesome round up, LG. Was supposed to make it, but had a bunch of personal shit that had to get done.
LG.
Nice work. The ascot thing cracks me up. Did anyone have a monocle?
Is Dave Burris working for Lee. I’d be shocked to find out that he is not.
The point of the day was Lee supporting giving driver licenses to illegal aliens. This statement clearly shows a lack of reality on his behalf and also shows he is not ready to be Governor.
Lee was completely unaware of the E-Verify system and argued with callers when Lee was clearly wrong.
One of the problems for Lee in fleshing out his educational plans is, I’d guess, the lack of senior education administrators and policy makers willing to sit down and advise his campaign.
Education in Delaware (I’m not sure, but suspect we’re not unusual in this) is pretty much dominated at the top by Democrats. So while I know who the folks are advising Markell and Carney (and what each of them expects to get out of it), when I go down the State register of Ed professionals to see who Lee might call on as a principal advisor, the list is pretty short.
I doubt that Carney or Markell is that much more wonkish on education, just better drilled. Both of them at the first education debate merited their DSTA endorsements by giving virtually the same answers to all the critical questions, but I have seen Carney pressed on details in a different setting and draw a complete blank. (Not saying this makes him inferior to Markell; never had the chance to see Jack handle the same kind of impromptu question.)
Protack is pushing a big brother monitoring system and wants to rob state employee’s pension funds.
I’ll take Lee over that any day.
Protack ought to see about that filing fee. The education sytem in Delaware is horrendous! Too much administration and not enough money to attract teachers who have a passion for education and the interests of parents and teachers. The unions in Delaware have continued to break the backs of hard working individuals. Education is corrupt, as well as all factions of this government. Your current governor has family members collecting salaries and continuing the mediocrity of good government in this state. Carney will be no better. We need a complete break of the greed and non-accountability in this state by your GED governor and her minions. Delaware deserves a complete overhaul from stem to stern and let the unions shit their pants.
Sorry, I used the edit, but it didn’t catch it. Should read: interest of parents and students.
and continued mediocrity in this government. My comments were lost. Oh well, just fuggetaboutit