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.