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To break this down succinctly, the 147th General Assembly has two months of life left to it. (Quick, sci-fi fans, what movie is that paraphrased line from?). At the beginning of this session, all the way back on January 3, 2013, Delaware Liberal and the Progressive Dems began keeping track of our how legislators voted on legislation of interests to Progressives. Come inside to see our Vote Tracking Charts. Not included in the charts below are four bills that were just released yesterday concerning strengthening Delaware's FOIA statute. And I got a little excited when I saw the emailed press release come across my inbox, until I opened up the press release and saw the subtite: "Four bills sponsored by Reps. Atkins... " I actually felt a physical drop, sitting there at my computer. Because how good can an Open Government bill be if it is sponsored by John Atkins? I read further and discovered that this was a package of bills sponsored by four very different legislators, some of which are good, some of which are meh, and some of which will roll your eyes.

It has taken some time for Copeland's plan to emerge, but with each passing day the contours of his plan to rebuild the DEGOP as an actual political party capable of mounting statewide races comes into focus.

In our second post in our informative series on Delaware politics, we shall tackle the Delaware House of Representatives. Yesterday, we discussed the Delaware Senate, and over the coming weeks and months, we will profile each Representative and Senator and their respective districts. Come inside to check our interactive maps, where you can zoom in to see the fine details of each RD. And we will review the potentially competitive districts. The question is can the GOP pick up the 7 seats they need to win back the majority? The short answer is no, the GOP cannot pick up the 7 seats they need, and that is because there are only 5 potentially competitive Democratic seats, while there are 7 potentially competitive Republican seats that they will have to defend as well. That said, there is opportunity for both parties to pick off incumbents.

We have gotten several comments recently from newcomers to Delaware asking us to explain who the cast of characters that is Delaware politics. So here is a first post in a series of posts giving every one of our readers an overview of the upcoming elections in the Delaware Senate. And then we will review the elections in the House. And then we will profile each and every Senator and Representative in our General Assembly. Each profile will include demographic information about each Senator or Representative, and information about their respective districts. To aid us in this series will be the graphics and tools of Stephen Wolf and his team at Daily Kos Elections. They have put together a Google Spreadsheet that shows us a map of all the Senate districts in Delaware, and colors them according to how they voted in the 2012 election and which party represents these districts today. This is is a great tool for a political junkie. What jumped out at me is that there are basically only 6 competitive Senate districts, and only one of them is ripe for a Republican takeover. Come inside to play with the interactive maps and charts!