Brenda Mayrack, a lawyer who is well-connected within the Democratic Party from her previous work as an operative, is ready to go with a campaign against the last Republican standing statewide. […] Mayrack knows state politics from the inside. She got started after graduating from the University of Delaware, where she arrived in 1996 by way of growing up in Wisconsin and Texas with a burning desire to go east. She worked on John Carney’s campaign for lieutenant governor in 2000 and then went to Democratic state headquarters as the executive director for the 2002 election cycle.
Mayrack went west again to get a joint degree in law and public affairs at the University of Wisconsin and then returned here to work at Morris Nichols Arsht & Tunnell, one of the top Delaware law firms. She left there earlier this year to set up a solo practice focused on auditing with corporate clients that are under review by the state for unclaimed property.
It might have been fated for Mayrack to come to Delaware. She was born on December 7, Delaware Day, and she plans to make her candidacy official by social media next week on her 36th birthday.
“This is an important office with an important job to do, particularly as our state continues to face revenue pressures. Tom Wagner has had over 20 years to do the job, and I think it can be done better,” Mayrack said.
“The public trust has been eroded. People want to know what we’re doing about state credit card use, and they want to know the first time there’s an issue, it’s stopped right there.”
State Auditor Tom Wagner has been in office since 1988. He barely won reelection last time, in a year favoring Republicans (2010), against Richard Korn, a man that people were not rushing to vote for even before he was indicted on child pornography charges. A credible candidate beats him this time. Mayrack seems to have both the party backing, knowledge and auditing experience to be that credible candidate.
She has already received some high praise from Nancy Willing:
Mayrack is a Democrat even a curmudgeon like me can love. As I recall, Ms. Mayrack was the single bright light on the podium at the Democratic Party Convention. I kept wishing we were voting her in as Chairman because she was doing the yeoman’s work in keeping the meeting running smoothly.
Ms. Mayrack was featured in the News Journal earlier this month:
Brenda Mayrack of Wilmington had lobbied Delaware lawmakers earlier this year on gun control legislation, and noticed an inefficiency in the way votes were unofficially counted in the halls. The primary method, she said, was paper and pen.
On Sunday night, Mayrack and her team detailed their businessplan for WhipCount, a mobile app that allows lobbyists to communicate about where each lawmaker stands on a particular piece of legislation – yes, leans yes, undecided, not sure, leans no and no.
WhipCount won the local version of the Global Startup Battle, a 54-hour challenge for entrepreneurs to build business plans using small teams of business people, Web developers and visual designers.
She sounds like an innovator, who could modernize the Auditor’s office while at the same time pursuing actual audits like an inspector general should. I look forward to meeting Ms. Mayrack soon.
Now, as for the Treasurer. The oldest addage in politics is you can’t beat something with nothing, though the Republicans have really tried to test it out over the last five years. Right now, the conventional wisdom is Treasurer Flowers is in trouble and ripe for defeat at the hands of a GOP candidate. That has the Democratic establishment talking behind the scenes to Celia Cohen that they will be primarying Flowers with someone. But who?