Sam Waltz of the public relations firm Waltz & Associates starts off his fellation of Charles Lamont du Pont Copeland in the Delaware Today thusly:
When Republicans go to the polls in November and review the ballot, they won’t find the name of the man many GOP leaders figure to be their biggest giant-killer. Charlie Copeland, 49, is sitting this one out. Taking his time. Picking his spot. Taking care of business.
Pardon me a moment….
I guess ‘lil Charlie was feeling a ‘lil left out, like the Delaware political world was beginning to forget him. You see, Former Senator Charlie Copeland left elective office in 2008, retiring from his 4th Senate District Seat in Chateau Country and Hockessin so that he could run for Lt. Governor. In November 2008, he was crushed into little pieces by then Insurance Commissioner, and now Lt. Governor Matt Denn, 61% to 39%. He garnered 149,222 votes in that race. Charlie started his political career in 2002 when he primaried freshman Republican Senator Dallas Winslow. Charlie won, but surely, he was not killing a Giant in doing so. Charlie had the family name and connections of the du Pont and all the money in the world to win it. He won election in the fall over a no name Democrat and then was unopposed in 2004 for reelection. And that is the extent of Charlie’s electoral Giant Killing career.
His career is over now, no matter how much a bullsh*t PR piece in the Delaware Today wishes it not to be so. But let’s unpack this truly inspired fantasy, shall we?
Copeland, a scion of DuPont Co. founders and, of course, du Pont family wealth, has gravitated toward politics the way his ancestors gravitated toward explosives and chemistry.
Oh, those ancestors gravitated towards politics too. I suppose Waltz forgets Governor Pete du Pont? Let us all be thankful that Charlie did not gravitate towards explosives and chemistry.
“When I grew up, we didn’t talk sports at the dinner table, we talked politics,” says Copeland. “I remember Nixon resigning, and Mom crying, bemoaning chaos in the Republic.”
My family through a raucous celebration when Nixon resigned, although we were quite disappointed that he was not impeached first. Seriously, your Mom cried over Nixon? This one anecdote screams a lot about how different the Copeland family was, and is, from normal America.
It took nearly three decades for the Copeland family passion for politics to translate to action, but for Charlie Copeland, the results have been nothing short of remarkable.
I’m sorry, but again…
Remarkable? Now, I have described to you the electoral history of Charles Copeland. I found nothing really remarkable about it. Let’s see what Steve does with the same information:
Becoming involved in GOP politics in 2000 on the campaign front, Copeland first ran for the Delaware senate in a post-reapportionment election in 2002, then was re-elected to a four-year term in the state senate in 2004, where he quickly moved into leadership.
He only quickly moved into the leadership of the Senate Republicans because at the time the Senate Republicans only had 5 members, if I recall. Currently, they only have 7. It’s not like he rose to power over 200 members because he was just that good.
In what in hindsight appeared the quixotic “tilting at windmills,” Copeland in 2008 joined the Republican ticket as its candidate for lieutenant governor, facing the headwinds of a historic Democratic ticket headed by Barack Obama and Copeland’s Greenville neighbors, Joe Biden and Jack Markell.
The first absolutely true and accurate paragraph in the whole piece. I too had no idea why Charlie ran in 2008. Everyone knew it was going to be a Democratic landslide up and down the ballot. I thought, and said loudly at the time, that Charlie should have stayed in the Senate and become the official opposition to Governor Markell, and then run against him in either 2012 or later on in 2016. So I guess Charlie has regrets now. Such is life…
Copeland earned his MBA at Duke University before returning to Delaware for another family business, Associates Graphics International, now a $10 million printing company that was launched by his father. The company is thriving, and Copeland late last year completed the acquisition of the state’s best-known “Democrat-owned” printing firm, Farley Printing Co.
So Charlie has a rich family, and jobs just fell into his lap. Much like Mitt Romney. What a tortured existence our “remarkable” one percenters have.
[Copeland’s way] is not the infamous “Delaware way,” not the “let’s go along and get along.”
Gather the fainting couches.
He raised eyebrows in 2010 when he helped orchestrate campaigns against three powerful incumbent Democrats in the Senate—Nancy Cook, Patricia Blevins, and David Sokola—and managed to help unseat the powerful Cook, who had served in Dover since before Copeland was old enough to drive.
I will defer to others to comment on how influential Charlie Copeland was in orchestrating challenges to Cook, Blevins and Sokola. Cook was going down no matter the existence or influence of ‘lil Charlie, but I’ll give him that one. The challenges to Blevins and Sokola? Blevins destroyed the electoral juggernaut known as Fred Cullis, 61% to 39%. Meanwhile, rookie candidate Louis Saindon was sent packing by Senator Sokola by an equal margin, 61% to 39%. Is that what Waltz finds remarkable? That both Copeland-picked candidates lost in landslides by equal margins?
And now we turn to the straight out batshit crazy part of the piece:
But he really raised eyebrows in early 2012, when he successfully led opposition in the Republican Party to the re-election of Priscilla Rakestraw to the Republican National Committee. She had been its longest-serving member nationally. Rakestraw stepped down in her campaign for re-election, and the party chose Ellen Barrosse, founder of the pro-life group Rose and a Prayer and an anchor of the party’s religious right.
Again, I will defer to others on how influential Charlie was, and in the absence of contrary information we will put the retirement of Rackstraw on Charlie’s “remarkable” political resume of upending the Delaware Way. In so doing, Charlie made the Delaware Republican Party more socially conservative that it has ever been. Yet Waltz then goes on to say this:
Copeland is anything but a part of the religious right of the party. Today he would be known by political observers over the age of 40 as a “Rockefeller Republican,” someone who is center-right, rejecting far-right policies, and is culturally liberal. Add to that a progressive view on social issues, a suspicion of big government and a Calvinist ethic.
Wait… what the frack?
Charlie Copeland is not a member of the religious right? He is not a social conservative? Since when? You just got done telling us that Charlie is solely responsible for the “remarkable” replacement of Rackstraw with the vehemently anti-choice Barrosse, and then you say he is a progressive?
On what basis? He’s not pro-choice. He’s not pro-union. If I recall correctly he opposed the Civil Union Bill and is opposed to marriage equality. He opposed the Anti-Discrimination Bill. As for rejecting far-right policies, far from it. This is a person who has lauded Paul Ryan’s budget, a budget that ends Medicare. He has flip flopped on being for strong environmental regulations (being for it when he was running and against it in 2009 when he could criticize Markell for the Valero closing due to overregulation). This is a person who embraced the Tea Party so pathetically that even Christine O’Donnell thought it an amateur move.
As for criminal sentencing reform, again I will defer to others more knowledgeable, but for now I will give him that. But…
“I’ve just been blessed to be in the right position through birth, through serendipity, whatever, to do some of these things,” he says. But Copeland’s thoughts and passion return easily to politics.
Ok, you have been blessed. Since you and others of the 1% have been so blessed, Charlie, will you support a measely 4% increase in taxes on those, like yourself, who make over $250,000 so that we can preserve the social safety net for those who aren’t so blessed and so we can start to bring down our deficit?
Charlie, if you’re answer is no, then you are no fracking Progressive. And I know your answer is no, since you have praised the Ryan Budget and favor ending the New Deal. So all this talk about being a progressive Republican (and the last Republican to call himself that was Tyler Nixon when he ran for Lt. Governor in 2004), is just Charlie trying reinvent himself for the third time by my count as he prepares to run for Governor in 2016. He knows the tea party is toxic and he knows he will have to distance himself from O’Donnell et al. If only he had such courage in 2009 and 2010.