Markell’s Final Report Card
Jack Markell sat down with the News Journal to review is eight years in charge. I guess I’m supposed to get all sentimental over his leaving, but that ain’t gonna happen. One thing that stuck out is Markell’s constant claim that we are doing better than our neighbors, Pennsylvania and New Jersey. This is comparable to your kid coming home with a report card filled with C’s. When you complain, they shout, “But my friend Johnny got all D’s.”
From a progressive viewpoint, I can only be disappointed by the mediocrity of Markell’s tenure, but I’m sure the Corporate-Clinton Democrats are quite content.
Social Issues
Markell was at least consistent to do everything half-assed, especially with social issues. First was gay marriage. Markell is running around these days touting his support of gay marriage, but it wasn’t always that way. As a matter of fact, all he could do was legalize civil unions starting in January 2012. Gay marriage became legal in Delaware in July 2013 only after it became apparent that it would become legal everywhere except in the Deep South. Compared to Delaware Republicans, Markell would seem to be blazing the trail here, but remember the First State was the 11th state to legalize same-sex marriage, not the 1st.
Another issue was the legalizing of marijuana. In typical Markell fashion, Delaware only approved medical marijuana back in 2011 but Markell suspended the program almost immediately. Then Markell decriminalized pot in 2015. As always, Markell approaches social issues first by checking the national weather and then by taking baby steps. Yes, Delaware seems to get to where we should be, but for such a small state we should be moving a lot faster.
Capital Punishment
One of the more disgusting aspects of Markell’s tenure was the reinstitutionalizing the death penalty. Since capital punishment was determined to be legal again in 1976, Delaware governors have executed 14 people from 1992 to 2005. If you are scoring at home that’s Castle 1, Carper 10, and Minner 3. Carper even has the distinction of hanging a man in 1996. After some legal wranglings, Markell was able to join the other governors by executing two people.
Here’s a description of Markell’s first execution. He must have been so proud.
When the execution began, Jackson started making a snoring sound, his lips sputtered and his breath began to quicken. Prison officials closed the curtain between the execution chamber and witnesses after about four minutes to check whether he was conscious, calling out twice, “Inmate Jackson, can you hear me?” There was no response.
When the curtain reopened a minute later, Jackson made no more movements or sounds. From start to finish, the execution took about 10 minutes.
The Delaware Supreme Court declared capital punishment unconstitutional effectively ending Markell’s killing spree at 2. Just a quick note to say the Delaware ranks 3rd in executions per capita since 1976. So we will always have that.
Murdertown
The general consensus is that the rash of shootings and murders in Wilmington is former Mayor Dennis Williams’ baby. But one has to remember that this all happened during Governor Markell’s tenure. Sure, the state Attorney General Matt Denn tried to help and was subsequently shut down by a petulant Williams. That all said the hundreds of people murdered in Wilmington occurred during Markell’s governorship. Markell owns part of this.
Education
It is impossible to sum up Markell’s Education failures in a few words or so. We could talk about his consistent parroting of common core, a blind faith in testing, a deep, dark love of charter schools, and when testing fails, more testing.
And for all the accolades, Markell’s tumultuous education reform agenda left a sour taste in the mouth of some educators who felt he allowed the state Department of Education to become too heavy handed.
“He’s been very committed to students and, in his own way, very passionate about schools and education,” said Delaware State Education Association President Frederika Jenner. “In the first half [of Markell’s tenure], things were pretty collaborative, pretty engaged, pretty productive and pretty respectful. But, unfortunately, the second half seemed to be much less so.”
As we all know, what have you done for me lately is what Markell’s educational policy will be remembered by and in this case rightly so. One of the great things about Clinton losing the general election is that there is no way that Markell can now become the Secretary of Education. Yes, DeVos will be horrible but at least she won’t be running the Department of Education with Markell’s “But I Stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night” skill set.
Economy
What a mess: Fisker, SevOne, Valero and the ever-vanishing AstraZeneca are just some of Markell’s economic failures. Markell governed as a typical MBAer making pedantic-uninspired-business-school decision — many tinged with a panache of self-centeredness. Markell never saw a big corporation he didn’t like, especially ones that didn’t exist. As Jason330 mentioned before Delaware should have a Vermont-style business model that focuses on small business rather than big companies who pit one state to another. Maybe John Carney can learn from this.
Final Grade
Markell gets a C for doing the minimal and, well, just for showing up.
Tags: Jack Markell
On the marijuana issue, Markell has publicly stated that full legalization would take place ‘over my dead body’. Kinda weird to see him fighting the drug wars of the Nixon era.
Plus, the way that Markell treated state workers is unconscionable. The diametric opposite of how he treated his wealthy Greenville cocktail party friends.
A ‘Democrat’ waging class warfare against Democratic constituencies. That’s the legacy of Jack Markell.
We can only hope that it sounds the death knell for the Third Way takeover of the Party, at least in Delaware.
I disagree strongly with the assessment of Governor Markell’s action on LGBT issues.
Jack Markell ALWAYS support bills and other actions the leadership of Delaware LGBT organizations requested of him.
When he ran in 2008 he was asked to pledge to support the long-stalled Non-Discrimination Bill, a Hospital Visitation Rights bill I wrote, and to issue an executive order adding Gender Identity to the existing protections in state government employment. He did all three.
A few years later he was asked to support a civil union bill ( the LGBT leadership was well aware that a marriage bill had no chance of passing in the legislature of 2010. We also believed marriage rights would have to come from Congress or the US Supreme Court. The civil union bill written by Mark Purpura gave all the rights of marriage the state could give. Jack Markell have that bill his full support.
When it looked like the US Supreme Court could grant marriage rights to same-sex couples, the LGBT leadership proposed a Delaware law so that IF the Court granted marriage rights, Delaware would be positioned to give equal protection in Delaware law to same-sex couples who marry. Governor Markell fought to persuade reluctant legislators needed to pass the bill…and he signed in just minutes after its final passage.
Criticism of him on this issue is wrong and unfair. He made promises asked of him and he delivered each and every time.
Uh, Mitch, what about everything else?
Apart from all the other reasons to support LGBT rights, it is also a pro-business issue. Making your state gay-friendly is part of the recipe for attracting newer and younger businesses and the creative types who work for them. And it doesn’t cost anything.
Whether someone came late to gay rights or not, that is a dumb criticism to make. A lot of people have evolved on gay rights in our lifetimes. It doesn’t matter how or when or why they got there.
El Som- I chose to respond to the area of criticism you raised where I had first-hand experience and where you were wrong.
Plus, he’s a despicable, mean spirited little man behind closed doors.
Mitch – I think what you mean to say is that’s the only one he’s wrong about. And from my seat maybe El Som’s position is too harsh in that one instance. And even then only just.
I applaud your continued efforts to sale the product. Democratic politics that even the old folks with sensitive tummies can digest. Some of us aren’t buying it anymore. If I have my druthers our numbers will grow. Maybe alert your crew.
On the economy, the day he took office we were losing hundreds of jobs a month. We lost GM and Chrysler the month before. We lost the Valero refinery, and the financial sector (our number one sector) was losing jobs by the thousands. By the Summer of his first year Delaware had an unemployment rate of nearly 9%. Delaware has gone from one of the worst job growth states in the region to the best in his term. To only take wages, which have mostly fallen because we have lost very high paid DuPont, GM, and Chrysler salaries, as a bar is either uninformed or purposely misleading. You don’t have to like everything he did, but I think he was a great steward of our state’s economy. To simply use the job numbers from SevOne and Fisker as a measure of all of his accomplishments on the economy is so short sighted.
So he was a great steward of “the economy.” That’s what we’re going with? The business of America is business. Like that? Sounds vaguely corporatist.
How do you think people get jobs? You think we all are supposed to work for DOE? Notice, my bar was job growth not corporate profits. How is that being a corporatist? You do know that our job numbers have an impact on real people. We all aren’t lucky enough to be a state employee.
Maybe you haven’t seen an unemployment office before Vanella, but fewer people is a good thing.
Gov Markell said on C-span “85% of Delaware’s budget is spent on education, incarceration and healthcare”. I believe Happy Harry distracted him from doing great things for our state. Kinder Morgan was recruited to take over the port of Wilmington a total disaster. Economic development and job growth sounded good but fell apart in the details. The U.S. Government had monitors on Corrections and our Psychiatric Center neglected for too long. Education, Gov Markell did make a serious effort to bring equal funding to education but he started too late to make a difference and he tried to bring an end to the death penalty. The poor guy misplaced too much faith in another man and got his reputation battered in the end. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/new-resource-new-study-Delaware-death-penalty-reveal-dramatic-racial-disparities
http://www.cornell.edu/video/the-death-penalty-in-Delaware
I’ve never criticized Markell on his gay rights stand. Never. Show me where I have.
Problem is, it’s pretty much the only thing he got right, IMHO.
Yeah, you should be damn lucky you aren’t a state employee. I’ve been working for the state his entire administration and my wages have fallen, in real terms, since I started. Now he want to make it even worse by not only hitting me, and my wife, with an absolutely devastating increase in health care costs by eliminating double state share but he wants to raise our taxes too. We aren’t some seven figure family. We aren’t even six. Yet we, and the people below us, are the ones he wants to crap on as he goes out the door. Don’t talk to me about job growth when the jobs are taking this shit from a ‘democrat.’ How many good job did Jack Markell create? What did he do to make sure those jobs paid a fair wage, especially compared to the enormous profits so many of the damn companies based in this state were making ? What did he do to make living in this area affordable to people making shit wages at shit jobs? Nothing. Jack Markell is a POS and I for one am happy to have him gone.
Lest we forget, there’s this from the News Journal:
Delaware’s top 1 percent claims all income growth
And what about those 5 jobs that are now open at Bloom Energy, that we are paying out the butt for?????
Missed that one nemski!
@Anono, I missed a lot. 😉
Be happy with the 6 plus percent you are getting from the top wage earners. It’s very easy to move residency next door to PA…
Puck with the assist. The verb utilized to describe what act the “wealthiest residents” are engaged in is especially well chosen, don’t you think?
It’s only fair to admit to some lingering admiration for your pragmatism, Bane, I mean with everything that’s happened and all. Another old adage comes to mind about how difficult it is to break bad habits.
” It’s very easy to move residency next door to PA…”
…where you will pay four to five times as much in property taxes.”
Fixed that for you.
“How do you think people get jobs?”
Not through government action. Unfortunately, politicians of both parties fall over each other offering money to corporations that promise “jobs,” which is something no company in a dynamic global economy can actually promise for any length of time.
If people demand the wrong things, politicians who deliver are stuck in a bind, aren’t they? Throwing money at long-shot companies has little chance of working, but what does any governor do in a steep recession with people demanding jobs? The right thing to do would be to ignore the public’s pleas, unless you’re an old-fashioned Keynesian and you borrow the free money to build stuff.
So if the question is “how does government create jobs?” the answer is “by fixing and building roads, bridges and sewers.” Too bad Markell never tried that.
El Som- just saw your post. My apologies. I read what Nemsky wrote and then didn’t respond immediately. By then my aging brain forgot he wrote it and not you.
Yeah, I was confused. Especially since my oldest daughter led the ‘Gay-Straight Alliance’ at her high school and since she broke into tears when we passed the Equal Marriage bill. Our entire family, including my youngest daughter, who is a political activist in Oregon, have pushed for equal rights for all, especially for the LGBT community, many of whom we count as lifelong friends, not to mention friends we’ve made along the way.
I just wish Markell had brought the same sense of standing up for what’s right and just to the rest of his administration.
Funny thing …you gays think your issues are the most compelling and significant towards the better welfare of the State. And the Blacks and Illegals think theirs are …..You’re all way wrong
Well @troutsnot- very appropriate name, we “Gays” are able to lobby for our issues, and the issues of other at the same time. You see we believe that equal rights extend to all races, all religions, nationalities. all economic groups, all genders, etc. We aren’t afraid of the demand for rights by others- we aren’t threatened by the ignorance of those who feel threatened by all they see around them that they do not understand. You see, we learn from those who are different than we. I am sure we have much to learn even from people like you.
Anonymous scum on the internet. How original. We’re not scared of you, by the way. You’re a coward and you’re ignorant.
Just so you state workers out there know it, I have worked in the private health sector in DE for the entire Markell administration and my wages have been negative despite raises. Also, health care premiums for employees in the healthcare sector went up every year as well. I calculate I make 1.44% less than I did When Ruth Ann was Gov.
” I am sure we have much to learn even from people like you.”
No, you don’t, Mitch. People like him are scared they might be gay.
Well, you got me beat. When I do the math, I’m down at least 3%, probably more.