Governor’s Debate — Wilmington Neighborhood Issues

6 Comments

The latest Democratic Governor’s debate was held this morning at the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Wilmington. It was hosted by the Interfaith Coalition Building Blocks for Wilmington. The ICCBW is an ambitious group of ministers and other stakeholders who are looking to develop and implement strategies to work with at-risk kids and get them on a path away from the streets. Their current focus is Wilmington’s West Center City. The debate was moderated by John Watson who I gather is a host on WILM.

There was a good crew of both Markell and Carney people outside of the venue with many signs and literature. My guess is that the Carney crowd outnumbered the Markell crowd here. The same inside, I think that there was a Carney edge in the room, but both sides made a decent amount of noise after answers. Mike Protack was wandering around and I thought that this was one of the debates that would include him, but I was mistaken.

Governor’s Debate: Health Care

21 Comments

The Health Care debate between Jack Markell and John Carney started abit late on Friday morning — a good thing, since I was running really late. The auditorium was pretty much full (but not as many folks as at the Education debate), and this crowd was abit more sedate.

The News Journal has written this event up, so I won’t go over all of that ground, but it was interesting to me that Markell was abit more aggressive in this round. He started right out noting that Carney had served on health-care related commissions and task forces for almost a decade, but coverage of Delawareans continues to deteriorate, and costs continue to spiral upward. Markell set up his theme — that the health care situation in DE needed to be dealt with quickly and decisively, and that the era of incremental changes on the way to a larger goal was no longer a functional approach. Carney, then, spent the rest of the debate trying to tell the audience that his plan was not incremental steps — but he couldn’t avoid the step-by-step narrative that he’d already set up. In my opinion, Markell ended up looking like the guy ready to take some political risks to get to long-term solutions, and Carney was extending the work of his commissions and committees. Carney had the advantage, I think, of having many of his colleagues from some of these commissions and committees in the room.

The First Debate: Education

19 Comments

Attendees of the debate tonight between Democratic gubernatorial Jack Markell and John Carney on Education pretty much filled the lower space of the Grand and there were some folks who ventured up to the (cordoned off) area upstairs. Markell supporters were very visible – ranging from the kids outside with signs and cheers (having some fun with folks going into the building, I might add) to a fair number of attendees wearing their Markell pins. If I am judging reaction to applause lines correctly, though, there were plenty of Carney supporters in the house.

It was a very civilized event – the candidates certainly were friendly and gracious to each other. The format was very focused (I really liked this), the moderators kept it all moving (and the candidates themselves were good about sticking to the rules) and the audience was polite and engaged. This was the first time that I’ve seen either of these candidates in person and both did well in this format – although I kept getting the impression that Markell might have been happier moving around on the stage.