Pick Your Poison: The Delaware Treasurer’s Democratic Primary: Rethugs vs. AI:
The upcoming Democratic primary election for state treasurer has broken funding records this month, with campaign spending likely to top $1 million on two candidates in the historically overlooked race.
And some of the money backing leading candidates Ted Lauzen and Michael A. Smith has come from curious sources: Republicans and artificial intelligence-backed donors, respectively.
Michael Smith:
About 80% of Smith’s individual donations came from out-of-state residents, compared with about 20% in Lauzen’s campaign. Those donors include employees at Anthropic, the company behind the artificial intelligence system Claude, and other artificial intelligence safety researchers from across the country.
Smith pointed to connections he made during his time with College Democrats of America to explain some of the out-of-state donations. He said he has also been involved in Effective Altruism, a social movement followed by many AI industry workers that aims to find the most efficient ways to solve global problems.
Effective Altruism came under scrutiny in 2022 after the arrest of Sam Bankman-Fried, the former CEO of the crypto exchange FTX, who was heavily involved in the movement. It has since rebounded, though, as many AI company employees have begun to join the movement and donate millions of dollars to charities and political campaigns.
Spotlight Delaware tried to contact many of Smith’s out-of-state donors who had donated the legal maximum limit to his campaign, but only one responded on the record.
Jeff Kaufman, a Massachusetts-based former Google employee and an active member of Effective Altruism forums, said he does not know Smith personally. Several people, however, told him to donate to Smith because he is “good on AI policy.”
Ted Lauzen:
Lauzen said his family decided to pull from their savings for the campaign because he believes it is an important position. He quoted Martin Luther King Jr., saying he believes in the “fierce urgency of now” to do the right thing right away.
“When our family is going to do something, we’re going to do it all in,” he said.
Smith also said he thinks Lauzen is “masquerading as a Democrat” because his father is a Republican politician in Illinois, and he has donated to Republican candidates in the past.
Lauzen said while he grew up in a Republican family, he became an independent in 2017 and registered as a Democrat two years ago. He said his values have changed with age.
He has previously donated to several Republican candidates, including Simpler, the former Republican treasurer, but has donated to more Democratic candidates.
Lauzen also has received donations from several prominent Republicans in this campaign, including former Republican Party Chairman Terry Strine and former State Rep. John Burris (R-Milford).
The First State Service PAC, which has received the majority of its $225,000 worth of donations thus far from two members of the Schell family, paid for several advertisements for Lauzen earlier this week, according to Google Ads Library.
Though the spending on those ads has only totaled $700 so far, it is unclear how much the developer-backed PAC plans to spend on Lauzen in the coming weeks.
Lauzen said he was not aware of the PAC or the advertisements, but that he knew members of the Schell family had donated individually to his campaign and was happy to gain their support.
Stating the obvious conclusion: Neither of these guys are Democrats in any sense of the word. Both are looking to jump-start their political careers. I can’t vote for either.
The META Settlement Deserves–A Golf Clap?:
The star witness in the US government’s landmark trial against Meta believes that a multibillion-dollar settlement reached on Wednesday does not go far enough to stop the social media giant’s harms to young users.
“The limitations that are in the agreement are the equivalent of saying: ‘Well you can smoke as many cigarettes as you can in two hours a day,’” said whistleblower and ex-Facebook employee Arturo Béjar. “It doesn’t make the cigarettes any safer.”
Dozens of states had sued Meta, alleging that it designed addictive products that led to mental health problems for young people such as disordered eating, depression and suicide. The states and the company reached a wide-ranging settlement agreement on Wednesday that will force Meta to make major changes to its platform, including putting strict limits on how much time teens are able to spend on apps like Instagram and Facebook.
While state attorneys general touted the settlement as a victory and Meta called on other platforms to institute similar policies, Béjar argues the settlement lacks independent oversight and does not necessarily make Meta’s platforms safer for young people.
Béjar says algorithmic design choices that make Facebook and Instagram addictive and harmful remain unchanged by the agreement and its time limits. He had hoped the agreement would have done more to address how social networks’ algorithms steer young users toward content, as well as instituted independent auditing and quantifiable obligations for reducing harm.
Kennedy Blames Biden For Measles Outbreak, Claims That Measles Deaths In Pa. Are Fabricated:
The HHS secretary also said that when he spoke to Shapiro on Tuesday, the governor told him, “‘Well, we’ve seen this big drop in vaccination rates in the state from 97 to 92.3.’ He admitted on the phone that it all happened during the Biden administration. Since I’ve been in office, since President Trump’s been in office, there’s been a one-10th of 1% diminishment. We are actually restoring faith in the public health agency, so people will take our advice, and our advice is that people should get the measles vaccination.”
Right, the guy who has publicly called into question the need for measles vaccinations is blameless. Trump put a guy who is insane in charge of public health. Who could have ever anticipated that this would happen? For RFK Jr., it was just another lie:
Newly obtained documents indicate that the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, lied during two congressional hearings last year, telling lawmakers who held the key to his confirmation that a 2019 visit to Samoa had “nothing to do with vaccines”.
Letters obtained by the Guardian and the Associated Press contradict that testimony. In one he wrote to the Samoan prime minister before the trip, Kennedy explicitly said he wanted to study the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine in the Pacific island nation. In it, he used the words vaccine or vaccination eight times.
“I am writing this letter to you in the hope that we might be helpful to the people of your great nation,” he wrote, adding that he believed the deaths of two children there after an MMR vaccine could have resulted from manufacturing issues.
“I would propose my team conduct detailed health informatics assessment in Samoa of what happened with your MMR vaccines,” Kennedy wrote.
Kennedy’s Samoa visit – just months before a measles outbreak swept through the island, killing 83 people – has become one of the most controversial events in his career. At the time, he was leading a nonprofit known for its anti-vaccine activism. The visit was seen by critics as having emboldened anti-vaccine activists in Samoa.
He’s now used the same playbook here. With alarmingly similar results.
What do you want to talk about?
I am casting my vote for Mike Miller. Yes, I’ve known him since his 2002 race where he famously put up beautiful 4×8 signs on the highways that were perfect except for displaying the wrong election date. If he is elected, he will do little to no damage to the state. The other 2 dudes and their naked ambition as well as their friends terrify me!
I interviewed Miller once, and he’s totally out of bounds for me. Not a person I’d want to encourage in any way.
The one who will do the least damage is Mike Ramone, because he’ll be a thorn in the side of the MAGA Republicans.
I think he would be hilarious but I get it. Ramone is certainly a break glass option as well.
I think of it as my protest against Vichy Democrats. The Democrat will win, but I want him to have as big a deficit vs. other Democrats as possible.
Relative to Ted Lauzen’s coming from a Republican family, most everyone would agree that retiring State Treasurer Coleen Davis has done a good job. What most people do not know is that Coleen’s father was Sussex County Republican chair when I was Democratic chair (2013-17). No one raised that issue when she ran for her first term in 2018. The state treasurer invests over 7 billion dollars of taxpayer’s dollars and has the responsibility of maintaining Delaware’s AAA bond rating. When determining the best candidate for an open seat, what matters more than what they say they will do if elected, is what they have accomplished in their lives. Mike Miller is someone who runs for office; loses badly; disappears and the resurfaces a few years later to run for another office-and loses again. The fact that he has failed to file his campaign finance report should inform everyone that he is not a serious candidate.
Michael Smith is heavily supported by a dark out-of-state PAC that is pouring millions into supporting Smith. What is interesting is that the two mailings they have put out raises one issue-fighting Donald Trump! How is a state treasure going to do that?
Ted Lauzen was a combat helicopter pilot in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was an Olympian. He is a successful investment advisor and treasurer of the Delaware YMCA. The choice is clear.
Of course, people DID raise the issue about Colleen’s dad. You know that, but choose to dismiss it.
Lauzen’s dad has spent something like 33 years in Rethug politics in Illinois, both as an elected official and as a Party official.
Ted Lauzen materializes seemingly out of nowhere here in Delaware with a shitload of Rethug money behind him.
Perhaps, you, Mitch Crane, can explain the Democratic rush to embrace this ‘convert’ to the Democratic Party. Me? I don’t trust him any more than I trust Michael Smith. Or, your breathless endorsement.
When Mitch says that Lauzen “is an Olympian,” I wondered if perhaps Ted came from Olympia, Wash.
I don’t believe that Lauzen competed in the Olympic Games.
An endorsement from Mitch Crane pretty much seals it: This guy is bad news. Being better than The Other Mike Smith and Micheal Miller is about the lowest bar imaginable.
It shouldn’t be an elected position, period.
Ahhh Mitch, I missed your glowing endorsement. Your guy and Smith are just showing their naked ambition to advance their own brands. Let’s elect Mike Miller and see how fast political will builds to eliminate the office. Sadly one of the 2 Yahoos will win and another Delaware way entitlement ticket will be punched. Finally, keep Bill Carrol’s name out of your mouth!
The candidates in the Treasurer’s race, and those in some legislative races (notably the Dems in the 12th RD) are making noises about how significant campaign contributions are coming from out-of-state donors, with those on the short end of the donation stick saying these contributions are somehow bad.
OTOH, let’s keep in mind that about one-third of the state’s revenue comes from out-of-state sources, primarily corporation fees. I have yet to hear anyone in state government complain about how much we rely on this revenue stream.
Maybe I’m making an apples to oranges comparison, but if Delaware can’t run without revenues from out of state, it’s understandable that some candidates are going to need to tap this source to run a successful campaign.
Not judging whether such outside influence is good or bad (and I’m no fan of corporate contributions no matter their state of origin), just that there seems to be a bit of hypocrisy when politicians in a state that needs outside revenue streams to function complain when their opponents tap that same source to run their campaigns.
Agreed. But there are degrees of outside revenue.
That Mike Smith report is quite the eye-opener.
A bleepload of money, almost all of it from out-of-state.
“Vote Mike Miller! He won’t screw it up too bad!”
Slogan of ’26!
The story is how much money is being spent on an office of no importance. Chip Flowers tried to expand the powers of the office and you see what happened to him.
Ever since Jack Markell used the office as a launching pad, some people – let’s call them idiots – have thought they could do the same thing. Let’s help prove them wrong.
Jack was launch to prominence number 2. We have all heard the narrative. “I was at Dewey Beach and I heard on the radio that there was no candidate for Treasurer, so I drove to Dover” Tom Carper 1976. The office is virtually toothless and a money suck. A candidate who ran on the platform of eliminating the office would have my vote.
I got a topic for today’s (the 28th’s) open thread. This morning I got served by Youtube a just stunning report from MSNBC about an investigation by a local CBS News affiliate. It turns out the State of Florida stole $10M of monies from a legal settlement for poor kids health care and funneled it to Governor Desantises’ family non profit. That non profit then funneled the $10M to the Republican Party of Florida and related PAC’s.
And the story implicates every major Republican in the state. Including their current Senator and Senate candidate. Who at the time was Attorney General. Normally her office would have handled the legal settlement. But when she saw the money was going to be stolen, she intentionally moved the lawsuit settlement out of her office and into the states Department of Health. So her fingerprints wouldn’t be on it. Because she knew it was a corrupt deal.
Just an amazing story.
That is an amazing story. Didn’t just benefit his family, it was DeSantis’ wife.
Y’know, corruption is so rampant that stuff like this hardly makes a ripple any more.
Here’s a version of the story:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/aug/27/florida-grand-jury-desantis-administration-misappropriated-funds-medicaid
Of course, the Grand Jury declined to indict.
I’d like to see some evidence of Lauzen’s success as an investment advisor, e.g., performance of his clients against a benchmark. It worries me that his main argument for his candidacy is that he’s some kind of an investment whiz, but we’re just supposed to take his word for it.
Unrelatedly, I think it’s a little disingenuous to describe yourself in 2026 as a “World Cup” athlete, but apparently mean some kind of world cup in modern pentathlon, not soccer.
I’m not a Lauzen hater—I even think he’s the most appealing candidate of the 3 running in the primary. But I’m not sure I want to vote for any of them.
I think you mean Lauzen is the least unappealing, sort of the way that Mussolini wasn’t as bad as Hitler or Stalin.
I consider that the main reason to stop him now, before he Carpers his way into a lifetime sinecure.
Plus, I’m not convinced that we want a self-styled ‘investment whiz’ as Treasurer.
Don’t want him gambling with state investment dollars.
IIRC from the Flowers fiasco, the office lacks the power to do that. He hasn’t announced any Flowers-like ambition to do so, but he’s a bit savvier than Chip, so maybe he plans to introduce that after he’s elected.
Not an endorsement either way, but having a finance day job and reviewing the records—Lauzen’s company actually invests more conservatively than the market. I’d be more worried about losing out on potential returns than gambling away the farm—though this could be for good reasons such as a clientele with an older median age or just lower risk tolerance for whatever reason.