Whatever you do, don’t acknowledge that liberal policies are popular with voters.
DOVER — Bolstered by an election that saw them gain seats in both chambers of the General Assembly and capture every statewide seat for the first time since the 1800s, Delaware Democrats are flexing their muscles.
Democratic lawmakers are making good on campaign promises and pushing a variety of initiatives important to their base. So far this year, legislators have introduced or pledged to introduce bills that would expand voting access, reform the criminal justice system, raise the age to buy tobacco products, create stricter gun control and legalize marijuana.
Predictably, Democrats and Republicans differ on how they view those efforts.
Some see this as a sign of the party’s more liberal wing (also known as the progressive contingent) getting a greater say in the party’s direction and shifting it to the left, while others view it simply as an attempt to pass legislation popular with the majority of Delawareans regardless of political affiliation.
Senate Majority Whip Bryan Townsend, D-Newark, rejected the description of the aforementioned measures as primarily Democratic ones.
“Voters want to see these kinds of policies, these kinds of laws. They want to see solutions,” he said.
“Voters are voting for people — on either side of the aisle — that actually want to use the tools of government to make peoples’ lives better, and that can look very different at different times depending on the issue, but if you have a party of no, a radical party on one side, voters have clearly shown at least in Delaware they don’t have much tolerance for that.”
House Speaker Pete Schwartzkopf, D-Rehoboth Beach, has a similar stance.
“The bottom line is whenever anybody’s in the majority they always run bills that are important to them, and we try not to go partisan any more than we have to or make anything a partisan vote,” he said.
