Delaware Political Weekly: Week Ending December 18, 2025

We start with the inevitable announcement that ‘The Other Mike Smith’ is running for yet another office.  This time, State Treasurer.  You may recall that, in 2024, His PAL Val Longhurst granted him leave from his legislative job to primary Frank Burns in RD 21, a Newark-area district.  Burns had come oh-so-close to defeating Mike Ramone in 2022, and was poised to finish the job in 2024, but Ramone beat him to the punch by retiring and moving downstate, only to subsequently challenge Matt Meyer for governor.

Smith and Longhurst had other ideas. For Longhurst, the idea of having one of her go-fers in the House was infinitely preferable to having a progressive in the seat.  ‘Sadly’, Val never realized that her seat was in jeopardy until it was too late.

Here is the piece I wrote about the Burns-Smith primary in 2024:

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 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 (they just happened to attend the University of Alabama at the same time he allegedly did).  I know smarm when I see it.  I just saw it. ( More smarm–on his new site, he has his picture taken with several elected officials, implying that he has their endorsement.  It was, of course, not an endorsement photo.  Sleazy.)

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.

That’s the body of the piece. Of perhaps even more worth are the comments, which lay out just what an unethical cipher this Mike Smith is.  Yes, click on the link.

Here is his apparently one and only tax filing for his so-called non-profit.  For 2022.  You will see $175,000 in ‘Contributions, gifts, grants, and similar amounts received’.  Nowhere on the form does it state from whom he received those funds.  You will see that he compensated himself $46,800 while ostensibly working at the same time for the House.

Just because it’s his one and only tax filing doesn’t mean that ProPublica hasn’t kept track of his side-hustle.  What they found raises, um, questions:

This organization is not listed in the IRS’s most recent list of tax exempt organizations, but we have data associated with this Employer Identification Number.

Interesting, in that you will note that Powering Our Future, Inc. proclaims itself as being ‘Tax-exempt since Aug. 2022’.  Is it, or isn’t it?

Anyway, in 2024, it claimed to have received no revenue, and claimed $24,516 in expenses, $19,200 of which went to Mike Smith for ‘compensation’.  How much for leaf-blowers and LED’s?

In 2023, it claimed to have received $5036 in revenue, and incurred $50,127 in expenses, $28,800 of which went to Mike Smith for ‘compensation’.

I don’t hold myself out as a tax expert nor an expert on tax-exempt organizations.  But the organization claims to be tax-exempt but they are not on the IRS’ current data base of tax-exempt organizations.

I have an idea–Mike, I know you’re out there reading this, could you fill us in on this organization that you’ve touted on your lit, including your current on-line profile?  It should be easy–I mean, you’re running for State Treasurer.

That’s not to me even the main reason why this guy doesn’t belong anywhere near elective office.  The guy is skeezy.  He stalked Burns’ campaign events in 2024–parking what he thought was a safe distance away to observe, but got observed.  Paid staff to literally lie to voters and misrepresent Burns’ positions.  He’s a kid with money who is in a hurry to get elected to something/anything. He claims to have already raised $80K for this campaign.  Can’t wait to see where that money came from, if it came in at all.  I’m guessing a big loan, but we’ll have to see.

Hey, we don’t even really know where he’s from, where he attended school and/or if he graduated. Did he come from wealth, or were his parents poor?  Is his real name Michael Smith?  I don’t know.  He has provided scant details, unusual for a political bio. All I know is that he almost lied his way into the General Assembly.  So unless it’s verified, I can’t take anything he says at face value.  Why does the name George Santos come to mind?

BTW, that makes two ‘Democrats’ running for State Treasurer who I can’t vote for.

Remember that Ted Lauzen guy who Brian Selander is drooling over? Well, yes there is Treasurer cred in the family.  Christopher Lauzen, Ted’s dad, is the Treasurer of Kane County, Illinois. Oh, he’s also served in elective office as a Republican since 1992.  He, too, like his son, attended Duke as an undergraduate.

In other words, Brian, even Jack Markell was more of a Democrat than Ted Lauzen is.

Time to see who’s behind Door #3.

That’s all I’ve got this week.  What’d I miss, and whaddayathink?