(The following is my opinion on the state of play of this race.)
Mike Matthews from DWA liveblogged the last debate from the Widener Law School that I also attended with one of my neighbors. I took a lot of notes from that debate, mainly to be able to recount here what happened – the differences on issues and direction for the County that I expected to be discussed. As I kept looking over these notes (and in trying to recover from a bad head cold), it seemed awfully clear that issues and direction was certainly no where to be found in this debate. And, for at least one candidate, issues and future direction were not even on the agenda for the debate.
Taking this debate plus the WHYY debate together, it seems clear to me that this entire campaign is just personal for Tom Gordon. He doesn’t want to answer any questions about the direction he wants the County to go in, he doesn’t want to answer any questions about how he will fund and accommodate the promises he seems to have made to his supporters, and he doesn’t want to answer any questions about any of his past behavior or connections. And Gordon certainly doesn’t answer – not in public anyway – any questions put to him by the press about what he wants to do for the County.
What Gordon does appear to want to do is get some revenge or payback on Chris Coons. Personally. And he does this in Karl Rove/Lee Atwater style – he just makes whatever accusations or insinuations he wants, knowing full well that that no one besides Coons himself will ask him to back up what is said. To be fair, both Allan Loudell and his WDEL counterpart worked to redirect Gordon on a couple of occasions to focus on the questions being asked. Gordon, however, used each question to just launch off new attacks on Coons, often demonstrating to me that there were real gaps in his knowledge (like the difference between surplus and reserves). Any information that Gordon had about the current state of the County government seems to come from some unnamed County workers or insiders(who Gordon spends a great deal of time surveying) who are impossible to fact check, accompanied by the occasional insinuation of some latent current administration scandals that the listener could discover if only that listener could had Gordon’s access to the whisperers. And doesn’t that seem awfully convenient? That for the last four years folks with inside info on County issues would have never spoken on the QT to the WNJ — just to Tom Gordon.
I think that someone who wants a second chance at public office after a very public disgrace that made it to the courts would want to return to that office full of positive vision for the future, with a clear direction for the County that provides broad assurances that not only have past painful lessons have been learned, but that avoiding these spectacular management errors are key to the current vision. You’d also think that someone whose engagement with the Federal prosecutors was brought to an end by only the luck of drawing a lazy judge would come back before voters with some humility. Gordon’s campaign strategy is not about governing the County, it is about destroying Chris Coons, which is an utterly tone deaf strategy for a candidate who desperately needs to restore his credibility among the voters. (Speaking of which, why was Gordon campaigning with Paul Clark in Wilmington on Friday and Sunday? I wonder what his supporters think about that.) Unfortunately, his campaign is an appeal to his loyal and aggrieved compatriots, the kind of campaign like those routinely run by Marion Barry back in the day. And we all know how credible and effective Mr. Barry was when he came back from political exile. New Castle County voters should spare themselves the political pain and ridicule of living with this walking and talking conspiracy machine – tell Mr. Gordon to back up his charges or come back to office when he can. Given the challenges of leading the County in the next 4 years, it makes no sense to trust in someone whose only demonstrated rationale for governing is revenge.