In Part 4 of our Markell Interview, we ask Jack about his plans to review State government from top to bottom. We also ask him about how he would work with John Carney, Matt Denn and even Charlie Copeland.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQIKhezN75Q[/youtube]
Even though Tom Carper’s Minister of Communications, Bette Phelan, probably hates my guts, and even though I, likewise, hold her boss in utter contempt, and even though I’m barely a member of the press, allowing all of that – it is her job her job to respond to me right?
Even if I wasn’t writing as a journalists, I’m still a constituent aren’t I?
Attempt #1
Bette_Phelan@carper.senate.gov
Bette,
Will you comment on the recent disclosure that Tom Carper stopped John Carney from running against Mike Castle? I realize that it would probably be impolitic for you to come right out and say “Yes, Senator Carper told Carney not to run against Castle,” but perhaps you can shed some light on why Carper encouraged Jack Markell to run against Mike Castle, but failed to encourage John Carney to do so.
That would be a great help to me and of great interest to my readership.
Thanks,
Jason Scott
DelawareLiberal.net
Attempt #2
Bette_Phelan@carper.senate.gov
Bette –
I realize that you are probably in the weeds trying to get President Bush’s Wall Street Insider Bail Out bill passed prior to recess, but I should hope that you’d want take a few seconds to disabuse me of notion that Senator Carper worked to help Mike Castle retain his seat by discouraging John Carney from running against him.
As I mentioned, it is an issue that is of great interest to my 15 readers so any statement from your office would be most appreciated.
Yours,
Jason
I have been, and continue to be, an undecided voter on the Markell/Carney decision. It may at times seem that I am an unabashed Carney supporter, but that is only due to the contrast with others in the blogosphere. I have a number of friends in both campaigns. I have been trying hard to give counter arguments to the Markell supporters, but alas, I am not particularly good at the debunking thing.
Delawonk, a Carney supporter, is new on the scene here. He has in the past been associated with Carney’s campaign, but I do not know his involvement now. He has provided the first inkling of a countervailing force to the Jack-backers.
Jason, Mike Matthews, Dominique and many others are convinced that Jack is their man. Often going to the point of bashing Carney as a stooge and incompetent. Carney people often point to Markell as being of the Greenville crowd. Perhaps both sides are being unfair.
I have spoken to someone with a close relationship to Carney about the dynamic that they are in danger of being swept up in. It is the Clinton/Obama dynamic. One side promotes their experience in getting things done, the other as the agent of change. I have literally been warning them of the danger of this for months. Carney has worked hard to curry favor with some “progressives” in the state, but has had little to show for it. He has ended up being the Hillary Clinton of this race.
The one thing that he had going for him is that he could parlay his connections and savvy into getting BWW and Delmarva to agree to terms. This is an excellent example of progressive goals being met with hard-nosed back room politics. And guess what? The deal wouldn’t have gotten done without it.
Then a week later, Carney blew that political capital on the awful eminent domain issue. I plan on doing some stories on E.D. in the next few weeks (hint, I’ve got a new mechanic in Wilmington), but the right stand seems to be in support of property rights. The fact that he was standing next to Tom Gordon’s right hand man when we talked about it didn’t help things either.
I am saddened by the tone that this election has taken. It is pitting the progressive Dems against the traditional base. I suppose that is how it was always going to be, but we have to watch where we go with it. Bashing the unions and the city of Wilmington (Carney’s Strongholds) isn’t going to get us anywhere but hurt. These are constituencies that we need to work with and work toward common goals. John Kowalko, God bless him, is a perfect example. He is a perfect bridge from unions to progressives.
If I took anything out of the Obama/Clinton bruhaha, it is that we don’t need to burn those bridges. If we had respectfully disagreed with each others’ stands, we might be looking at Obama (or Hillary) up by 15% across the board. So take a deep breath, relax. Either way, we are going to get a better Governor than what we have had for 8 years. And that Governor will be a Democrat.
A little birdie shot me a note about a post that Allan Loudell has up on his blog. He is basically begging for an interview with Carney about the eminent domain bill. Could it be that I can get 15 minutes with Carney about the bill during a recess on the last day of the session and the most influential reporter in Delaware can’t get a call back? Something is amiss…
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.
FYI — two other (that I know of) gubernatorial debates are scheduled for this month:
April 12 — forum is sponsored by DSEA from 9AM til 10:30AM at the Dover Downs Convention Center. You have to go to the DSEA’s website to register for this. All three declared candidates for Governor will be at this one.
April 22 — sponsored by the Delaware Nature Society. There is a reception that starts at 6PM and the forum starts at 7PM. This one is on Earth Day and focuses on Environmental Issues. You also need to register for this one at the Society’s webpage, plus this one has a $10 registration fee. There is also a place on their website to submit questions to be asked of the candidates. All three declared candidates for Governor will be at this event, too.
If you are interested in a chance to see and hear these candidates up close and personal, I encourage you to attend these. I’ve been to two of them so far and they’ve been instructive. Let us know if you are planning to go!
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. Continue reading
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.
This is the first debate of the primary season between Lt. Governor John C. Carney, Jr. and State Treasurer Jack A. Markell.
When: Thursday, March 20, 2008
Where: The Baby Grand
818 N. Market Street Wilmington, Delaware
Time: Doors open at 6, everyone must be seated by 6:45
Registration is required for this event. Seats are first-come, first-served.
To register and get more information, visit www.rodelfoundationde.org before 12:00 Noon, Tuesday, March 18.
A neighbor of mine sent this to me, and I expect that I am not the only person who needs some lead time to plan to go to stuff like this, so I am posting it now.
No idea if these campaigns are making arrangements for live blogging of these events, but they certainly should.
Who is going?
I thought I would try and bring this thread back to liberalgeeks’ orignal point with another example of John Carney’s hard work to try and get this sucker done.
Wind power firm offers partnership with Del Tech.
liberalgeek – if I didn’t know better, I’d say Carney reads your posts.
I was thinking the same thing as I drove home last night listening to WDEL. It is getting to the point that McDowell, Copeland and Adams cannot hide. Let’s hope that we can flush them out on this issue or else at the next election cycle.
Oh, and Hi John, thanks for the interview on Super Tuesday.
As if there had been any doubt, Jack Markell called Democratic Party leaders today to let them know he plans to run for governor.
The News Journal, Delaware Grapevine and Alan Loudell of WDEL all have the story. Celia quotes John Carney as not saying that a primary would be a disaster:
“It will be an energetic campaign. At the end of the day, the people decide, and they usually get it right.”
Naturally, TommyWonk has the rundown.
(The poll had a bug that allowed people to vote multiple times from the same IP. I’ll put up a new one next thursday.)