Don’t see any way one could interpret this otherwise:
May 20th, 2024Dear Commissioner, Albence,
I wanted to inform you that according to the Delaware Constitution, a candidate for Governor must have been an “inhabitant of this State” for the six years preceding the general election. I write to you today because, with great confidence and information, I believe that Collin O’Mara does not meet that requirement and is unqualified to run for Governor.
In Maryland tax property records, Mr. O’Mara and his wife, Krishanti Vignarajah, identified the property at 19623 Hoover Farm Drive, Laytonsville, MD 20882, as their “principal residence” as recently as this year. Under Maryland law, “Principal residence” is the dwelling where the individual or married couple regularly resides and is the location designated by the owner for the legal purposes of voting, obtaining a driver’s license, and filing income tax returns.
According to Delaware law, one’s domicile is one’s permanent home, based upon two factors: physical presence in an area combined with an intent to remain there permanently or indefinitely. (Del. Op. Atty. Gen. 83-I033 (Del.A.G.), 1983 WL 142666) A person has one and only one domicile at any time. (Mitchell v. Delaware State Tax Comm’r., Del. Super., 42 A.2d 19 (1945))
It is not sufficient to simply announce one’s domicile — claiming an intention to permanently reside in a given locale when such an intention is contrary to the objectively verifiable facts, further, where one votes is not legally dispositive of residency. (Del. Op. Atty. Gen. 83-I033 (Del.A.G.), 1983 WL 142666)
According to a May 7, 2024, Spotlight Delaware article, O’Mara says his family moved their primary residence from the Washington, DC area to Bear, Delaware, in 2022. (Yes, because his primary residence prior to 2022 was in Wilmington. But I digress.)
For much of the last six years, Mr. O’Mara’s spouse and children from his current marriage have resided in Laytonsville, Maryland, in the Washington, DC, area. Mr. O’Mara’s child from a prior marriage and his job are also in and have been in the Washington, DC, area, which is where his primary residence is under Maryland law.
Additionally, Mr. O’Mara’s wife, Krishanti Vignarajah, ran for Governor in the state of Maryland in 2018 and faced her own residency challenge, in which the Maryland Circuit Court included substantive allegations that she was a resident of Washington, DC. She claimed residency in Maryland with an intent to remain there, including a signed affidavit where Krishanti swore she intended to raise their children in Maryland.
Furthermore, in 2019, 2022, and again last year in 2023, Mr. O’Mara and his wife, Mrs. Vignarajah, were named a “Maryland Power Couple” by Maryland Matters, a leading news site about Maryland Government and politics.
Finally, Mr. O’Mara and his wife’s shopping to find a state to run in mocks the Delaware State Constitution’s residency requirement and calls into question their loyalty to doing right by our state’s residents, which is the very reason there is a Constitutional provision requiring in-state residency for the chief executive office of our state government in the first place.
I would like to reserve the right to amend this challenge as additional facts and laws become available.
Thank you for your timely attention to this urgent matter.
Suncerely,
Tamarra Morris
Now, just who is this Tamarra Morris, you may ask:
NEW CASTLE – Tamarra Morris, the economic development director for New Castle County, retired earlier this month.
Her departure opens the chief economic development role for Delaware’s most populous county as it is tasked with protecting businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic while also seeking to attract new employers.
Morris told Delaware Business Times on Thursday that she and her husband were retiring to Costa Rica, a plan they had hoped to start this past summer before the pandemic scuttled it.
County Executive Matt Meyer said he was sad to learn of Morris’ decision to retire and credited her with “transforming” the way that companies looked at doing business in the county.
Morris has helmed the county office since January 2017 as she joined the then-nascent Meyer administration after he pulled off an upset win over incumbent Executive Tom Gordon in the 2016 election. She took over the role from Marcus Henry, who had held it for four years under Gordon but moved over to head the county’s Department of Community Services under Meyer.
It was Morris’ first public position after previously serving as new business development, sales, and marketing director for the real estate management firm Greystar. Upon taking office, she said one of the first major tasks was changing New Castle County’s reputation of moving too slowly in development.
Now, I’m sure that the Meyer campaign will deny any link with this. I’m sure they’ll be able to claim that this merely came from a private citizen which, likely, will prove to be the case once one has taken care to ensure plausible deniability.
But this just looks like Meyer trying for a two-fer: Lamely appearing to question O’Mara’s eligibility to run while planting the carpetbagger seed in the minds of voters.
It’s worked for me, but perhaps not in the sense the Meyer campaign would wish. I was planning to vote for Matt in the primary against BHL. I was leaning towards Matt even when O’Mara entered the race because I just didn’t know enough about him and didn’t know if he could effectively gear up a campaign.
I now know more about Collin, we all know more about the Meyer campaign as evidenced by this. I still don’t know whether O’Mara can gin up an effective statewide apparatus.
But I’m now voting for O’Mara because the other choices are more of the same and a little less more of the same.O’Mara promises to work for genuine change, and I believe him.