You all know Dr. Frank Burns. He almost defeated Mike Ramone in 2022 and likely hastened Ramone’s decision to abandon his home turf for Sussex County. And a race for Governor. Burns is a true progressive, twice endorsed by WFP, who has helped to train other progressive candidates for office. He gives back.
His campaign opponent is The Other Mike Smith, who recently arrived in Delaware from (take your pick) Alabama and/or Illinois, got a job working for Pete and Val, and was gifted money for a not-for-profit start-up by Mumsy and Daddy. Or somebody. Got $175K from somebody in 2022 despite not yet having lived in the state for even a year. His tax forms don’t say from who (or is it whom), but, if he is being lawful, it must be from his family. Paid himself over $46K while he was allegedly working for the General Assembly. Oh, check out this so-called ‘not-for-profit’ and tell me what it does other than serve as a photo op for ‘The Other Mike Smith’. Or, um ‘did’. Gave out some leaf-blowers and LED bulbs. Allegedly. Hasn’t been updated since September of 2023. Doesn’t look like it exists. (Hmmm, wonder if Smith has applied for an Opioid Slush Fund grant–you know,to teach addicts to operate leaf blowers–or something.) BTW, the alleged location of this not-for-profit is/was Lewes, which, far as I can tell, isn’t in RD 21. Here is how he describes himself:
Michael Smith is an energy economist who has worked in think tanks, consulting firms and political campaigns. He was driven to use that experience to facilitate the installation of clean energy infrastructure across Delaware. Michael founded Powering Our Future to do exactly that, and now serves as our Executive Director.
He bills himself as a ‘founder of a founder of an environmental non-profit’ on his lit, which sounds great–until/unless you realize there’s no there there. Here’s his bio. Check out his ‘brush with greatness’ attempt to imply that he’s been endorsed by several members of the Philadelphia Eagles. I know smarm when I see it. I just saw it.
Frank Burns, OTOH, is a real leader. Check out this bio:
Dr. Burns established the first diagnostic molecular pathology laboratory at the MCP/Hahnemann (Now Drexel) medical school and latter directed the molecular Pathology and onco-cytogentics laboratories at Thomas Jefferson Medical school. He continued research on the underlying mechanisms of disease while developing and putting into use nucleic acid-based tests for patient diagnosis. He was one of the founding members of the Association for Molecular Pathology and co-authored the first set of guidelines for teaching nucleic acid-based diagnostics to medical residents in pathology programs. His laboratory was first in the Delaware Valley to offer HIV viral load testing for patients not in research programs at a time when the early detection of treatment failure provided by this method was critical to keeping patients alive.
An opportunity to actually prevent disease, rather than diagnose and guide its treatment beckoned and Dr. Burns joined Qualicon, a small biotech company in Wilmington, developing DNA based methods to screen the food supply for pathogens. DuPont, one of the partners in the Qualicon business, took over the company. Dr. Burns developed, patented, and DuPont commercialized several improved diagnostic methods for pathogen detection in food production. Several of these methods were adopted world-wide by industry and government food safety regulators agencies alike.
Could you imagine how much good someone with Burns’ background could do in Dover?
Smith is young, has ‘ants in his pants’ to get elected, so, from that perspective, he’s formidable. With Mike Ramone having vacated the premises, the district will likely flip. Registration figures are 8187 D; 4823 R; and 5904 I. Here is the district map for this Pike Creek/Newark-area district.
There is one more reason to support Frank Burns–Burns has pledged to push for progressive leadership in the Democratic Caucus. Smith owes his job to the current Speaker.