Tag Archives: DE-AL

A Team Of Moderates

The News Journal decides what is and isn’t news. Chris Coons’s 3 county announcement – not news. Michelle Rollins appearing at a Republican event – news. Apparently appearances by Chris Coons or John Carney at Democratic events does not qualify as news either. Not only has the NJ covered two appearances by Rollins at Republican candidate forums, they’ve also declared her a moderate before she’s ever taken one vote in Congress.

Moderate Republican Michele Rollins made one of her first campaign stops for the U.S. House race deep in conservative territory Thursday.

That’s the very first sentence of last Thursday’s article on Michelle Rollins’s appearance in front of a candidate forum hosted by the 9/12 Patriots.

Rollins, 64, already has taken heat for her abortion-rights position, a spot on the board of Wilmington Trust, which accepted TARP funds from the federal government, and a one-time donation to Vice President Joe Biden’scampaign.

So, what positions make you a moderate, in the News Journal‘s eyes?

Opening with a speech about how she decided to enter politics because she was unhappy with health care reform, Rollins railed on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and told the crowd she wants to go to Washington to help dismantle Democrats’ overreaching spending.

A moderate, according to the NJ, is someone who hates health care reform, makes fun of Nancy Pelosi and doesn’t like Democrats. Oh, and she gives lip service to supporting abortion rights for women. The bar is set awful low to be considered a Republican moderate these days. I guess the NJ has decided that Rollins and Castle are a team – a team of moderates.

So, why is the News Journal giving so much coverage to Michelle Rollins and not Glenn Urquhart, Kevin Wade or Rose Izzo? Scott Spencer appeared before the 9/12 Patriot group – why not him? Where is the coverage of John Carney or Chris Coons?

If the News Journal decides they’d like to cover the Democratic candidates, a list of events can be found here.

The News Journal Admits Delaware Liberal Is Correct

The News Journal has obviously been poking around DL again. They wrote an article about DD’s post on Michelle Rollins “Millionaire Michelle Rollins Takes Bonus From Wilmington Trust TARP Funds.” The News Journal represents this as a partisan attack but also admits that the post is accurate.

The numbers being tossed around at DelawareLiberal are accurate. In 2008, according to the bank’s proxy statement, Rollins had a total compensation of $20,470. In 2009 — even as the bank was holding $330 million in government TARP money — her compensation soared to $92,991.

The jump in compensation took her from the third-highest-paid director in 2008 to No. 1 in 2009. The critics fail to note, however, that Rollins wasn’t the only director to see more — compensation levels were raised across the board for 2009.

Still, it seems perfect fodder for a political season — and something that has prompted one anonymous DelawareLiberal blogger to vow they would close out their Wilmington Trust account, ASAP.

This statement – The critics fail to note, however, that Rollins wasn’t the only director to see more — compensation levels were raised across the board for 2009 – does not absolve Rollins in this matter. It sounds like what Wilmington Trust did is take the TARP money and then reward themselves for doing such a bad job managing other people’s money. The fact that Wilmington Trust has not repaid the TARP money shows WT needed the money to function.

If the Republicans nominate Michelle Rollins for the DE-AL seat, just remember that Republicans have taken TARP off the table as an issue (even though TARP happened under Bush). Michelle Rollins loves her TARP money.

Michelle Rollins Speaks

Thanks to commenter John Manifold for pointing us to this post at Delaware Grapevine. Sussex County Republicans celebrated a belated Lincoln Day event and Michelle Rollins was one of the featured speakers. She sounds like she’s going to run:

“Four score and seven days ago, I awoke with a dread that said I can throw my shoe at the TV, but Nancy Pelosi does not go away,” Rollins said.

“It is time for those of us who believe in our American system to put aside our wonderful lives and say, the American system is too important to us to sit back and hope that someone fixes it.

“I’m not here to announce tonight, but I’m here to tell you I’m very close in the process to making that decision, because we cannot allow our grandchildren to be deprived of the lives and opportunities we had growing up as children in America.”

From Cohen’s reporting, it sounds like Republicans are already doing a touchdown dance and Mike Castle is measuring the curtains for his new Senate office. Neil Newhouse, the pollster for Scott Brown and perhaps for Michelle Rollins, was the event’s featured speaker.

“This is the single best year for the Republicans since 1994. If you ever wanted to run for office as a Republican, this is the year,” Newhouse said — with one caveat. “Scott Brown’s election was an early wakeup call for the Democrats. This is why it’s not 1994 all over again.”

Apparently Republicans are calling the Brown victory the “Teddy Turnaround.” This more than anything makes me want to make sure that neither Mike Castle nor Michelle Rollins go to Washington, D.C. next year.

John Carney Chosen For DCCC’s Red To Blue Program

Former Lt. Gov John Carney has been chosen in the first group of “Red to Blue” candidates by the DCCC. This is good news for John Carney, because that means his race is being placed in high priority by the Democratic party.

Chairman Van Hollen joined DCCC Vice Chair Bruce Braley (IA) and Red to Blue co-chairs Allyson Schwartz (PA), Patrick Murphy (PA), and Donna Edwards (MD) to announce the first 13 candidates who qualified for the Red to Blue:

Ami Bera (CA-03)
Paula Brooks (OH-12)
John Callahan (PA-15)
John Carney (DE-AL)
Suzan DelBene (WA-08)
Lori Edwards (FL-12)
Raj Goyle (KS-04)
Roy Herron (TN-08)
Bryan Lentz (PA-07)
Rob Miller (SC-02)
Steve Pougnet (CA-45)
Dan Seals (IL-10)
Tom White (NE-02)

The Red to Blue program highlights top Democratic campaigns across the country, and offers them financial, communications, grassroots, and strategic support. The program will introduce Democratic supporters to new, competitive candidates in order to help expand the fundraising base for these campaigns. The very successful fundraising effort helped raise more than $26 million for Red to Blue candidates last cycle.

Psst! Your Shallow Bench is Showing

Potential Republican Congressional candidate, Anthony Wedo dropped out of the race Friday.  I believe that this leaves only Fred Cullis, the guy who had a half dozen people (mostly family and volunteers) at his announcement.  They really have no one.

I asked Charlie Copeland if he was running and he was pretty clear that he wasn’t, but who else is there?

I don’t feel sorry for them one bit.

PPP: Carney Win Almost Guaranteed

While PPP polled the Delaware U.S. Senate race, they also polled the open U.S. House seat. Carney holds a commanding lead, and has somewhat low name recognition:

Former Lieutenant Governor John Carney leads announced Republican candidate Fred Cullis by an overwhelming 47-24 margin and holds a solid 44-32 lead against better known potential Republican candidate Charlie Copeland.

None of the candidates, including Carney, are particularly well known. Despite his campaign for Governor last year and tenure in statewide office 54% of voters have no opinion about Carney. Among those who do 27% view him favorably and 18% unfavorably. Copeland is a blank slate to 66% of voters and Cullis is to 87%.

I’d like to add here that despite all the talk of the “unbeatable” Mike Castle, the much more unknown John Carney gets the same level of support as the much better known Mike Castle. PPP goes on to add:

In what’s shaping up as a tough year for Democrats nationally, the Delaware House seat is as close to a sure thing as they have when it comes to pick up opportunities.

John Carney is probably the happiest man in Delaware today.

First Looks at Fred Cullis, DE-AL Candidate

From WDEL — Mr. Cullis is a Hockessin republican that no one has heard of apparently. From WDEL’s video — he was not happy with Castle’s vote on cap and trade, but he is making the “independent voice” noises which bears alot of watching. Traditionally, this “independent” claim by repubs means that they are a stalking horse for the usual failed policies and programs — just trying to disguise the level of lockstep he’ll get to. He has a website, with some position papers taking these basic positions:

  1. Energy — cap and trade has to be defeated because it is “unproven” and makes alot of claims and statements that simply are not true. He is a fan of nuclear energy and of drill baby drill.
  2. Federal Spending — Its all bad! Really! And Congress isn’t reading bills! Lots of exclamation points do not adequately mask the fact that here is one more repub without a basic grasp of either economics or the current state of economic play. This is a freeze spending guy. But no real solutions offered and no discussion of what Americans will live without in terms of services if he could somehow get the Congress to stop spending. Really!
  3. Health Care Reform — if you saw the BoehnerCare document — already roundly rejected by Congress — you’ve seen this very weak tea before.
  4. Immigration — more of the usual fear and loathing, but this time with a dis against Ronald Reagan’s amnesty program. But while there is the usual immigrants are the bane of our existence rhetoric, he proposes Not One Thing to address the immediate issues with immigration — as in what to do with the people already here. In this Cullis seems quite content to do the usual repub bait and switch here — lots of fear and loathing and law enforcement re: closing borders; but he is not going to disturb the business interests who badly need those immigrants to continue working here.

So the short story is — so far you are not talking about a “New Ideas” kinda guy (which are pretty much extinct in the GOP anyway) or even one who has been able to demonstrate (via these position papers anyway) a real grasp of either policy or issues. He’s got a year though to work this out, so we’ll keep a good look out.

Because It’s Irresponsible Not To…

We’ve spent a lot of time discussing the Castle/Biden race but what about the other big race in Delaware – the U.S. House race. More specifically – who is the shallow bench going to sacrifice run against John Carney? Let’s examine the bench. First, here are the elected Republican officials:

State Auditor Tom Wagner
Senator Joe Booth
Senator Cathy Cloutier
Senator Liane Sorenson
Senator Dori Connor
Senator Colin Bonini
Senator F. Gary Simpson
Representative Don Blakey
Representative George Carey
Representative Richard “Dick” Cathcart
Representative Gerald Hocker
Representative Deborah Hudson
Representative Ruth Briggs King
Representative Thomas Kovach
Representative Greg Lavelle
Representative Biff Lee
Representative Nick Manolakos
Representative Joe Miro
Representative William Oberle
Representative Bobby Outten
Representative Mike Ramone
Representative Danny Short
Representative Pam Thornburg
Representative David Wilson

Recent officeholders:
Charlie Copeland
Others?

Perennial candidates:
Mike Protack
Christine O’Donnell

Others mentioned:
Colm Connolly

Who among this group do you think will take the plunge? Who’s ruled out? Who’s missing?

Down With Tyranny Evaluates John Carney

…with help from Progressive Democrats of Delaware and Delaware Liberal contributors.  The writer here also runs the Blue Progressive PAC and was looking for some input from the locals on John Carney’s progressive cred.  You can see the full blog post over at Down With Tyranny here.  The key evaluation comes from Rebecca, I think:

John is a solid Democrat with solid Democratic values. Having said that, he’s also a pragmatist. He won’t let perfection get in the way of progress. He got pretty beaten up at the last Progressive Dems for Delaware meeting and he never did disavow the Blue Dogs– at least that’s what I heard. His reply was along the lines of what I said above. He’s willing to take incremental steps forward if that’s all he can realistically get. John will never be like Rep. Grayson from Florida, but he is solid on his progressive values, and he knows how to work legislation. On the other hand, his campaign style is very centrist. I guess he feels safe there.

DWT also gets to something pretty key about John Carney’s current presentation to the world — neither his website or his Facebook page are really set up to tell you much about him or his positions yet. Maybe it is early, but once Castle announces, I would hope that someone around him would remind him that he is defacto on the national stage. I really hope that this data gets beyond the boilerplate soon.