Sometimes voting is an exercise in prevention, as in preventing someone from gaining office; or rejection, in rejecting a failed incumbent. You are not necessarily voting for an alternative, but against a failure. Other times, and hopefully more often than not, you are voting for the best candidate for the job. And sometimes, you can do both. And Democrats can do both on September 13 in voting for Matthew Meyer, and against Tom Gordon, for County Executive.
And doing both is necessary to save our state and county Democratic Party. Delaware, right now, is a one party state. Especially in New Castle County, which is more Democratic than Sussex County is Republican. The danger of one party states, or one party counties, is that they tend to become corrupt and abusive. And that is when the one party of the one party state collapses, either through the weight of its own corruption, or because outside forces have become strong and popular enough to depose him.
Twice now, Tom Gordon is the leading indicator of that trend. You would have thought we would have learned our lesson the first time. He previously served two terms, from 1997 until 2004, until he was forced out during a federal corruption investigation during his second term. Gordon and his chief administrative officer, Sherry Freebery, were indicted and accused of engaging in a criminal enterprise that included using county police officers to campaign for candidates of their liking. Further, Freebery was accused of accepting a “loan” of more than $2 million from a county landowner who needed county approval for a golf course project. It was also alleged that the county settled a sexual harassment lawsuit to avoid public disclosure of a sex scandal that included intimate relations between Gordon and Freebery. Gordon and Freebery had been charged with racketeering, wire fraud and mail fraud.
In the end, however, the prosecutions failed to eradicate the cancer that was and is Gordon. Freebery admitted to lying on a bank loan, a felony, and Gordon pleaded guilty to two misdemeanors for failing to provide accurate tax information for two employees who performed political work on county time. And Gordon found his way back into county government by defeating an ethically challenged Paul Clark in 2012. County voters took a chance that Gordon had changed and learned his lesson. They took a chance that he would bring back the roaring 90’s without the corrupt taint.
They were wrong.
And now, under Gordon, the county is on the road to bankruptcy. The County’s cash reserves stand at $34 million, down from $54.7 million in 2013, a 38% reduction that Moody’s had warned would threaten the County’s credit rating. The General Fund’s cash reserves are being used to balance the budget. And what grand new service is being provided by the County Government to its taxpaying citizens as a result of this spending? Well, to quote Tom Gordon’s own Chief Finiancial Officer from 1997 to 2005, Ron Morris:
He has increased the number of people working in his executive office and increased salaries in his office. The county’s Risk Management office, for example, run by his re-election campaign treasurer, is millions of dollars over budget each year. County Financial Statements show claims payments liabilities grew 614% between 2010 and 2015, an astounding 120% average increase for each of five consecutive years.
And county employees regularly remind me the county taxpayers have not received any additional benefits, no better management of risk and no higher level of service in exchange for any of these additional liabilities and expenses.
In other words, Tom Gordon is repeating the same actions, the same pattern that got him indicted the last time. And after Gordon left office back in 2004, the tax payers were left to clean up his mess, his self indulgence, with higher taxes to pay his debts. Let’s not do that again.
Tom Gordon has already provided ample reason to remove him from power before we even get to the ugliness and allegations of abuses of power that is the David Grimaldi lawsuit.
Gordon is all about his ambition, his power and his self aggrandizement, leaving us to pay his tab. He is New Castle County’s own version of Donald Trump. His opponent in the Democratic Primary is his exact opposite.
A native and current resident of Wilmington, Matthew Meyer is a political novice, having never run for office before. But his resume is rather extraordinary, in the literal sense of that world. He is/was both a corporate attorney and a public school teacher. A volunteer in Africa and a small business owner. A charter school teacher and a Senior Economic Advisor with the U.S. State Department.
He graduated Brown University with a BA in 1994, and then went on to work as a fourth grade teacher in the District of Columbia Public School through Teach for America. He then went to Law School at the University of Michigan, graduating in 2002. Through a Skadden Fellowship, he went to work as a lawyer for Delaware’s Community Legal Aid Society. The Skadden Fellowship Foundation provides funding to graduating law students who wish to devote their professional lives to providing legal services to the poor (including the working poor), the elderly, the homeless and the disabled, as well as those deprived of their civil or human rights.
In 2004, he went to work as a Mergers & Acquisitions attorney for Simpson Thatcher in Washington, DC. He had that job until 2008, when he decided to start juggling multiple jobs and careers. He became a private equity financial advisor for Aquiline Capital. He co-founded and became the CEO of Econsandals Footwear, a footwear company in Nairobi, Kenya. Here is a CNN report on that company with an interview with a younger Matt Meyer:
In 2009, he because a Senior Economic Advisor with the U.S. State Department. In that role, he was embedded, or stationed, at the Forward Operating Base Marez near Mosul, Iraq. He chaired a committee of US generals, diplomats and USAID officials that designed, directed and managed over $30 million of US monetary assistance to create a safer Iraq. Upon his return to the States, he worked as a teacher at Wilmington’s Prestige Academy, and returned to the law with the Potomac Law Group. He also found time to start his second company, called VituMob, which runs a technology app that facilitates East African nations’ online purchasing of U.S. products. He also found time to advise the Markell Administration on fostering entrepreneurship.
I don’t know Matt personally. But from reviewing his career choices and his resume, I see a man dedicated to helping and serving people most in need. Inner city children. War torn Iraq. Poverty-stricken East Africa. The working poor and elderly in Delaware. He and his career choices always return to that central theme. As a Catholic, I look at what people do, not what they say, to know who they are. And Matthew Meyer is a good, unselfish man to wants to help others and not himself. He doesn’t say that. He does that.
What will he do for New Castle County? Well, for starters, he will help us Democrats to save us from ourselves through his Blueprint for a More Ethical New Castle County. His plan calls for ending nepotism by prohibiting an official 1) from using his or her authority to benefit relatives and extended family; 2) from using his or her authority to benefit a person with whom the official has a financial interest; 3) from participating in any
disciplinary action affecting a relative; and 4) from being in the direct line of supervision over a family member.
He will hire quality individuals who are experts in their field. This may sound self explanatory and obvious, but that is just an example of how far we have fallen. But Matt Meyer thinks that our land use policy should be shaped by the sharpest and most experienced land use professionals rather than by the biggest campaign donor. Our public safety policy should be shaped by the sharpest and most experienced public safety professionals rather than the girlfriend of the county executive.
His plan would return transparency to New Castle County government, by requiring detailed disclosure of all the county’s lobbying activities, which will include 1) extending state lobbying laws to the county; 2) requiring those with policy pending before the county and who meet with the County Executive to register with the Ethics Commission; and 3) requiring lobbyists to make their activities public record by periodically filing reports.
Meyer will make it easy again for the public to access and understand not only these lobbying disclosures, but also the county’s financial transactions. Previous administrations published a check book of the county expenses, a practice the second Gordon Administration stopped. Meyer would re-institute this policy, and make it permanent for all future Administrations. He will also seek to making the County Ethics Commission financially independent from those it seeks to investigate.
Meyer has other plans online, most notably on how to address the Heroin Epidemic, and I encourage you all to read them. But his ethics and transparency plans are what cause us to endorse him enthusiastically and without reservation. The Democratic Party, the party that believes government exists to serve and help people, must always be on guard to root out cancers that use their office to serve themselves. Tom Gordon is such a cancer. And Matt Meyer’s plans for renewed ethics and transparency in government are the cure.
We would encourage his election to office even without Tom Gordon as his opponent, because, through his actions in his career, Matthew Meyer has shown himself to be the type of person who should be in elective office.