That was the number of votes that separated Mike Purzycki and Eugene Young for Wilmington Mayor by the end of the night on Tuesday. The difference between Purzycki and Kevin Kelley was 415 votes. 12,578 votes for Mayor were cast. But at the end of the day, there were 2,734 votes cast for Eugene Young who made me proud to be a small part of his campaign everyday. Everyday. A quick reminder of where we started — a year or so back, as Eugene started talking with people to gather up support, the leadership of this city (and its pundits) told him that no one knew him, then that he needed to wait his turn for Mayor, then that he couldn’t raise any money. Eugene did, of course, overcome every bit of that and ignored the wait your turn crowd. With is smart and fiercely competitive management team, he ran a citywide campaign with more than 200 volunteers (91 volunteers showed up and volunteered on Tuesday. 91!) and ended up knocking on more than 50,000 Wilmington doors. He ran an honorable and progressive campaign and completely avoided the sideshows that were being run by the more establishment candidates. Eugene Young, his vision for the city and his crackerjack campaign team caught the attention of the News Journal who endorsed a genuine progressive for Mayor. It was a real heartbreaker to come up short by 234 votes.
Team Young included some of the sharpest and most experienced political organizers and strategists in Delaware (anywhere, really). They were young people too — young people who cut their teeth of the Obama and Markell campaigns, among other data-driven campaigns. That meant that I got to witness the first 21st century campaign run in Wilmington. This campaign was not run by the usual tactics — get out your base in whatever district you are strong in, get out your friends, get out your family and then get out whoever else you can get to support you. Eugene and his team ran a modern campaign, driven by data and modern organizing best practices fo fundraise, to canvass, to communicate, to develop policy and to GOTV. They set goals and measured themselves by those goals, they invested in assessing their progress and made clear-eyed adjustments in strategy based on that. Team Young collected volunteers as they went along — because not only was the energy of this team exciting, this campaign was just fun. Plenty of those volunteers were young people who were energized by Eugene’s message and vision but who hadn’t done much political work and there were plenty like me — certainly older, experienced with campaigns but also energized by the promise of Eugene’s vision. This isn’t just me, but I (and others) have heard by some major campaign veterans that this was the best campaign operation in the city and maybe the state. On Election Night, I heard Priscilla Rakestraw and Jim Baker dismiss the Young campaign for Mayor as a pipedream. This was before any votes came in. I hope that they are eating their words now — because this pipedream came within 234 votes of winning. And did that by focusing on the ENTIRE city and not the more republican part of it. This campaign should be a wakeup call to every potential Wilmington candidate in 2020 — because the rules have just changed.
It is important to take a good look at the election results that I embedded below (thanks to an Anonymous contributor). The map that the NJ presented showed that Williams won large parts of the city is incredibly misleading. While he definitely won parts of EDs, if you look at the totals won for the 1st and 2nd ED, Eugene won those districts. Right in Williams’ backyard. That’s incredibly promising. He came in first or second in all of the City Wards except for the 7th. And came in a damned respectable second in the 8th. That’s good news for those of us who think that we should have a more progressive City government.
Still — the good news of the night was that Dennis Williams will no longer be Mayor of Wilmington come January. 86% of the votes cast specifically were to choose leadership other than Williams. More good news is that his fearmongering campaign was a spectacular failure. Rolling out the usual Channel 28 talkers and the pastors who endorsed Williams in 2012 to endorse his clear failure in 2016 did not fool anybody. Self-styled Next Generation leadership that endorsed Williams (and Gordon for that matter) are now lamenting that the African American community doesn’t know how to stick together. I think that it is a sign that the African American community does know how to vote its own interests and does know how to judge people who are clearly not working for them. It is also a good sign that there is a line you can cross with constituents that will motivate them to look for other options. The other good news is that plenty of establishment types were sent home — Dennis Williams, Norm Griffiths, Theo Gregory. That means that there is a formula for transitioning to a newer generation of leadership here and we have to find folks who are interested in implementing that.
The bad news is that City Council is probably weaker than it was before. There’s probably other bad news, but we’ll save that for another day.
I had a great time working with Team Young. I wish I could have done more to help them. Eugene pulled together a group of disparate people to focus on changing this city. I’m hoping that we can find a way for this group to still work for long term political change in Wilmington. Because we still need a reset in the political landscape here in order to move the city forward. And the only people who will do this hard work is us.
Thank you, Eugene Young, for your leadership and your vision for progressive change. Thank you for showing me that my own hopes for Wilmington were not crazy. Thank you for including me in a small way on your journey.
Summary election results by ED:
Summary Election Results by City Ward: