This is the first Cattle Call I’ve written for the Wilmington Mayor’s race, even though there has been a fair amount of public positioning and “listening” going on among potential candidates. My work has taken up way too much of my time over the past several months, but it is well past time to start thinking about the folks who say they are running and who are “thinking” of running. What is interesting right now, is that so very many candidates are declaring and are circling around declaring for what would be Mayor Dennis Williams’ second term. This is a field that you would expect to see when a politician is term-limited out and the field is open, OR you would see this kind of field when the incumbent is widely seen as incredibly weak and mostly a failure. There’s been a rush of candidates declaring recently, so let’s take a look at the field so we can talk about this again come the New Year.
Mayor Dennis P. Williams — Incumbent Mayor of Wilmington
Mayor Williams is in and announced that he was running back in March. As you can see by this announcement (and other media appearances), Mayor Williams thinks he is doing a fine job dealing with public safety and overall getting the city to “turn a corner”. No idea what corner he thinks we’ve turned. but the city is well on pace to surpass the 2013 violent crime rate and no one know what he is doing to address that. It is fair to say that much of the business community doesn’t respect him or the job he’s done especially well, and I can count on one hand the people I hear supporting him. That would include Councilwoman Sherry Dorsey Walker, Rick Jensen, Ed Osborne and folks from the WFD. Not exactly ringing endorsements. Williams campaigned on knowing what to do about crime in the city and it turns out that he was clueless and not really able to come to grips with the multiple problems. He failed on his biggest campaign promise and isn’t working all that hard to turn that around, either. I hear a great deal of buyer’s remorse among Williams voters, so of course he is weak.
Kevin Kelley — Director of Management Services, DHSS
Kevin announced in early September that he would run again for Mayor. He’s been getting a fair amount of grassroots encouragement to run for almost two years to run, which is about when the Williams Buyers Remorse set in in earnest. Kevin was second in the 2012 Mayor primary, losing to Williams by about 1100 votes. Kevin is the main beneficiary of the city’s collective buyer’s remorse for their Williams votes and his challenge is going to be in keeping those votes and getting those votes out. I think that there will be enough dynamism in this field for folks to get out to vote *for* someone rather than just vote against Williams. Still, Kevin Kelley is still one of the genuine good guys and that is definitely recognized around the city.
Theo Gregory — Wilmington City Council President
Gregory announced in August that he had formed and exploratory committee for Mayor, then formally announced six weeks later after Kelley and Norm Griffiths announced. And after Hanifa Shabazz announced her run for City Council President. You gotta scratch your head over a candidate who is in largely because he was boxed into making a decision. And you gotta wonder about a candidate who is largely running on the entitlement of *his turn*. He claimed that he has proven to be a leader and that he could galvanize the city. I am not sure where that was, but I do know that there was a vast outpouring of support for the implementation of the WPSSC recommendations and he utterly failed to get that done. Utterly. Gregory and Williams will battle over the largest pool of reliable D voters in the city — Districts 1 and 2.
Norm Griffiths — former Wilmington City Council President
He’s in and people are wondering why. I’ve heard from folks who have talked with him that he feels that he has the time since he is retired from DuPont and can fund his own campaign. No one has heard from him since he left office, but more importantly, Griffiths was widely expected to run for Mayor in 2012 and declined. Frankly, I think his best shot was in 2012, but he also couldn’t summon up the energy to fight for Wilmington residents concerned about public safety then, either. Still, I think that Griffiths also fights for votes in 1 and 2 and will be more credible in neighborhoods west of 95 than Gregory will.
Eugene Young — Advocacy Director, Delaware Center for Justice
Eugene is a young man from Wilmington’s East Side who has spent his career in public service, including founding and running the Delaware Elite program. Eugene announced this month, with a hugely professional announcement (a nice press release, an intro video, and a website launch) controlled by the campaign (not forced by the media) and designed to capitalize on the groundwork his folks have been executing since the beginning of the year. He also started walking the neighborhoods on the day he announced. This promises to be a highly energetic and focused campaign effort by a young man (and a young-ish team) looking to change Wilmington’s tipping point to a positive one. He has alot of work to do to ask for votes all over the city, but he seems committed to spending the shoe leather to do that. I think that the campaign that he and his Team plan to run will upend the usual path to running for Mayor here, which should have some long term political consequences, not the least of which is energizing a group of young Wilmington professionals to weigh into a conversation about creating the city they want to live in.
Robert Marshall — Senator, Delaware Legislature
Senator Marshall announced last week, launching a campaign that is one cycle too late. He announced for 2012, then proceeded to simply not run. As most folks understand it, Marshall put out a poll to assess his position and found that in the field that included him, Bill Montgomery, Kevin Kelley and Dennis Williams, Marshall came in last — after Montgomery, interestingly. It sounds as though he wants to run on the minimum wage effort — which was good — but it is hard to bypass the fact that Marshall has been largely invisible on the city’s big issues (invisible, period). That will include both Public Safety and Education issues that have been central to the political discussion here. Frankly, I think that since he re-won his Senate seat by a squeaker, you’d think that he would have gotten the message and gotten visible. That largely hasn’t happened, so I can’t imagine how he imagines his path to winning from behind his cloak of invisibility. And if you are a Wilmingtonian — Marshall and McDowell put the stop on an effort by the Wilmington delegation to push the Williams Administration to adopt the WPSSC recommendations. Of course, opportunities for accountability need to be taken when they are available and Marshall couldn’t bring himself to support the people he wants to vote for him for Mayor.
Mike Purzycki — Executive Director, Riverfront Development Corporation
Purzycki has been making the rounds talking to many parties about possibly making a run for Mayor of Wilmington. He looks like he could be the candidate of Wilmington’s business community — it is just too bad that Wilmington’s business community largely doesn’t live in the city. Then, of course, he has the name recognition problem. And once he gets past that, he will have to convince folks that he will be the Mayor for all of Wilmington, not just the Riverfront and Downtown. My guess is that he is set to replay the Bill Montgomery story, but starting much further behind in the field. I hear that he will announce this week.
Darius Brown — Wilmington City Councilman, 3rd District
There are two stories of what Darius plans to do: one, he is running for Mayor; two, he is running for City Treasurer. But again, we are talking about one more City Councilperson with a thin resume (and some issues with constituent services, as I hear it) who will work harder at a promotion than in getting the job he was elected to done. Still, if he is running for Mayor, he’s another one who needs to be reminded that social media doesn’t substitute for doing the job you were elected to.
Maria Cabrera — Wilmington City Councilwoman
Maria has been talking about this and has had some minor encouragement to run. She’s worked for the city previously and run a small business or two — both efforts with some issues in their wake, issues likely to be brought up in a campaign. She’s been in the City Council since 2012, and like many in Wilmington’s City Council — has a very large and active public profile, but has little in terms of accomplishments in governing. She’s openly flirted with running as a Republican, which is why I have her listed as a purple candidate. I think that her real theory of winning right now is that since Hillary is likely to be the D candidate, it will be the year for women candidates so this is what she can capitalize on. Still without much of an actual resume, unlike Hillary. On FB recently, she posted this as to why she (and others) were almost two hours late to last Thursday’s Public Safety Meeting:
Four additional members joined the meeting at 6:45 PM. There were multiple events taking place where City Council members were active participants. The Hispanic Summit, 20th Anniversary Springfield College Wilmington Campus, Delaware African-American Historical Society to mention a few. It’s always a juggle. Although I didn’t hear anything convincing during the time that I was there!
This was a City Council Meeting of the Whole regarding Public Safety — supposedly providing an accountability moment for the City’s claims for implementing recommendations from the WPSSC (this is another post, oy) — and attending all of these visibility events was more important that the City’s safety. My bet is that she doesn’t run — she’ll have to give up her Council seat and I seriously doubt she wants to do the real work of running for Mayor.
Scott Spencer — Transportation Consultant
Do not know if he is running for anything this cycle. Have heard he is looking at running for Mayor and have also heard that he is looking to run for a city-wide City Council seat. I wouldn’t tell you that I heard any of that from people who would be credible on this.
Robert Bovell — Bailbondsman
Rumors abound that he might run for Mayor again, but this time as a Republican. No one knows. But given his last showing, I’m not sure he’d be much of a game changer.
Matthew Meyer — Teacher, Attorney, Former Member of the Diplomatic Corps
Not sure how I forgot Matthew, especially since I have spoken to him several times. He is an interesting and smart young guy, with some success in a few careers. Matthew has been making the rounds and exploring, but hasn’t officially (that I know of) declared. Much like Eugene Young, Matthew sees what is on the horizon for the city and gets that business as usual won’t cut it.
So what do you think? Who did I miss?