Tag Archives: local Dems

Josh Schoenberg is Raking It In

A month ago, Josh Schoenberg threw his hat in the ring to challenge Republican House incumbent Greg Lavelle.  In that short period of time, Josh has had exactly zero fundraisers.  Instead, he has been calling people and asking for their support by day, and knocking on doors by night.  Today, he posted his 30-Day campaign finance report showing a whopping $19,000 in financial support.  That is more than $500 per day for a local house race.

It also bears noting that Josh is getting married this weekend.  If I may suggest a gift, you can click here and donate to Josh.

Take that, Greg Lavelle!

Volunteer Opportunity This Sunday

If you have been just dying to get out there to meet the Democratic candidates and do something to help get them elected, I have an opportunity for you.

The 9th District Democratic committee is sponsoring an event on Sunday, October 3rd starting at noon at 200 Cleaver Farm Rd.  There will be a small rally to give everyone a chance to see the Democratic candidates all the way up and down the ticket.  The following candidates are expected to speak (I promise they’ll keep it short and sweet):

  • Chris Coons
  • John Carney
  • Beau Biden
  • Chip Flowers
  • Richard Korn
  • Trinidad Navarro
  • Ciro Poppiti
  • Bruce Ennis
  • Quinn Johnson
  • Rebecca Walker
  • Bill Powers

At 1PM, we will do the work that will get these candidates elected.  We will be canvassing the Middletown area preparing to get out the vote. And we should have you home in time to watch the Eagles beat the Redskins.

This is an excellent opportunity to see the stars of the Delaware Democratic Party and give them a hand in making Delaware a better place.

For more information or to RSVP, call either 9th District Chair,  Stephanie Hansen at (302) 376-9033 or the 9th District Treasurer, Dave Woodside at (302) 834-4421.

Ugly in the 9th

I live in the 9th RD which makes up about half of Middletown and some of Bear and Delaware City.  When Dick Cathcart announced his retirement all hell broke loose.

On the Democratic side, Rick Griffiths was the endorsed candidate for the ticket.  He was gearing up his campaign for a hard slog against Cathcart when Dick announced his retirement.  Rebecca Walker (who had actually endorsed Griffiths as a member of the 9th Committee) jumped into the race that she had already unsuccessfully run twice before.  She has some advantages, since she only had to dust off the signs in her garage and already had some ties to traditional Democratic constituencies.  She quickly gained some endorsements from a few unions and groups.

In the few months since then, Walker has been increasingly daring in her claims.  While all of the local Democratic leaders have been officially uncommitted to either of the candidates, Walker has claimed to have won the endorsements of many of them.  Of course, she did win those endorsements in 2008, not 2010.  In her latest lit piece, she has a picture of herself with Senator Bruce Ennis.  However, Ennis has not endorsed her (nor has he officially endorsed Griffiths), but Ennis has given money to the Griffiths campaign.

Griffiths has been hesitant to strike back.  He has quietly walked the neighborhoods of his district knocking on doors, shaking hands and asking for votes.  In their only joint appearance (at the Blackbird Democratic Club meeting 2 weeks ago) both got up to speak and Walker was reportedly outclassed.  During that meeting, several local politicians stepped up to talk about a project that Griffiths had been heavily involved in with the county.

But here’s the thing, the Democratic contest is the relatively clean race.  John Marino and Tony Mirto on the Republican side have been battling on a lower level.  Marino is the Cathcart-selected candidate and the local committee has endorsed him.  Mirto is a newcomer/outsider that has been going for the jugular.

On Saturday, I got a lit piece from him with the question, “Convicted Criminal or Proven Hero?”  The piece is complete with a copy of the docket showing a conviction for reckless driving by John Marino.  And on a side note, who calls themselves a hero?  Seriously?

Among the assertions on the mailer was that Marino (besides being a convicted criminal) is a carpetbagger, a guy fired under mysterious circumstances and unendorsed by the Republican party.  Mirto, on the other hand, is a hero because he “provided security to Air Force One”.  He claims to be a military hero, but there is no evidence that he ever served in combat, so I’m not sure how exactly he earned his hero status.

As for carpetbagger and unendorsed status, I can’t confirm Mirto’s claim that he has lived in Delaware most of his life, but it appears that he hasn’t lived in Middletown as long as Marino.  And as I said, he was endorsed by the only Republican party committee that does endorsements.

If nothing else, these contests have produced a lot of heat in the local area and will be an interesting sideshow to the Castle/O’Donnell sideshow.

PDD Announces Primary Endorsements

The Progressive Democrats for Delaware have announced their slate of endorsed candidates for the September 14th primary.  There are some surprises:

Richard Korn – Auditor
Rep. Helene Keeley – State Rep. – 3rd District
James Maravelias – State Rep. – 27th District

For the State Treasurer race they have deemed both candidates (Velda Jones-Potter and Chip Flowers) are worthy of endorsement.

They also believe that Kay Wilde Gallogly and Ed Osienski are progressives, but have no preference.

Any of these primary winners automatically become endorsed for the general election.  The general election endorsements are as follows:

Chris Coons – U. S. Senate
Chris Counihan – State Senate – 5th District
Senator Karen Peterson – State Senate – 9th District
Senator Bruce Ennis – State Senate – 14th District
Rep. Gerald Brady – State Senate – 4th District
Debra Heffernan – State Rep. – 6th District
Rep. Bryon Short – State Rep. – 7th District
Rep. James (JJ) Johnson – State Rep. – 16th District
Rep. Terry Schooley – State Rep. – 23rd District
Rep. John Kowalko – State Rep. – 25th District
Jim Westhoff – State Rep. – 35th District
Renee Taschner – NCC Council – 3rd District
Lisa Diller – NCC Councilperson – 5th District
Mike Kozikowski  – Recorder of Deeds

Personally, I am surprised that they are taking Maravelias over incumbent Democrat, Earl Jaques.  I guess that Earl’s conservative social stances (and the consequent votes against the union-backed casinos) have lost him some support from the left.

Fundraiser Tonight in Townsend

If you are anywhere near Townsend this evening, swing by the Blackbird Community Center at 6PM to help support Rick Griffiths, the endorsed Democratic candidate to replace Dick Cathcart in the 9th district.  The cost is $20 per person and includes pizza, sodas and desserts.  There will be a few Democratic candidates in attendance and it will be a good time to shake hands and make friends.

9th District Democratic Candidates Abound

Last night the 9th district Dems met with the potential candidates to run against John Marino to replace Dick Cathcart.  Rick Griffiths is the endorsed candidate and has been ramping up his campaign for months.  Yesterday, Rebecca Walker filed to primary Rick.  Walker has faced off against Cathcart twice in the past and had yielded to Rick earlier in the year.  But given Cathcart’s retirement she felt that she had to give it one more try.

On Monday, I expect Clerk of the Peace Ken Boulden to file to run.  An experienced campaigner with a lot of charisma and a deep bench of past supporters, Boulden will be a formidable challenger.  A fourth potential candidate decided that he would not run after hearing Boulden speak to the group and talk about how much money he expected to spend.

Middletown will be an interesting place this summer.

Vote Saturday

Man, this snuck up up on me.  On Saturday is the special election to replace Diana McWilliams (who is moving to New Mexico) in the 6th RD.  Democrat Mike Migliore is facing off against Republican Tom Kovach.  Migliore is a lawyer in Wilmington and is a former aide to Joe Biden.

If you live in the 6th Representative District, get out and vote.  If you know someone there, call them and tell them to vote.

Land of a Thousand Handshakes

Last night, my 7 year old daughter was spending the night at a friends home, so we had the 11 year old son to entertain.  I saw that there was a Middletown v. Sallies football game down at Middletown so we set our sights on it.

I had to get some money, so I stopped at Wawa in Middletown.  Who was standing outside the Wawa shaking hands with customers?  Charlie Copeland.  The guy seems to have caught a cold, and to be honest, he didn’t look good.  I asked him about it and he just said that he only had 3 days to go.  Hope he makes it…

Money in hand, we went over to Tequila’s for a little Mexican food, parking in front of Joanne Christian’s business with a prominent Copeland sign on the door.  About an hour later, bellies were full and I had started to wonder if the football game would be a good place to see some of the local candidates.  I wondered if I would recognize any of them.

After erroneously driving through the parking lot of Middletown High (who’da thunk they don’t play football at the high school), we wound up at the middle school to see the game.  We were a few minutes late, so they were singing the national anthem as we approached.  This got me past the Martha Sturdevant contingent.

I had just begun to cross a large field, approaching the stadium, when I heard a deep voice greeting people behind me.  He seemed to be trying to garner votes by admitting that he was a Sallies grad at a Middletown game.  Then I knew where I knew the voice from.  It was John Brady.  He is one of the last statewide candidates that I hadn’t actually met.  I introduced myself to him as my wife and sone went on ahead.

Brady immediately recognized DelawareLiberal and introduced me to a friend that was a long-time reader.  We talked for about 5 minutes, during which I asked why he left the Democratic Party.  The answer was not surprising, it basically seals the deal on the Delaware politician that will get the lifetime douchebag award.  I bid John and our reader a fond farewell and jogged over to catch up to my wife.

“just give me some money.” She said.

“Why?  We’re going in now.”

“There are a dozen more politicians between here and the door.  We’ll meet you inside.”  I love that woman.

She was exaggerating a little bit, though.  Really it was Matt Denn and the still sick, Copeland.  I did spend some time talking to Matt, who was very happy with the cash raised through DelawareLiberals call for funds last week.  He was standing with Quin Johnson, who is running against Sturdevant.  I didn’t have the heart to give Quin a hard time for his misprint in the Middletown Transcript touting his support of “Pubic Education” but he seemed nice enough.  I had met his wife at the NCC meeting 2 weeks ago.

Finally, Charlie was the last guy to go.  I gave him a hard time for stalking me.  If he was there when I left, I was going to call the cops on him.

Oh, and Middletown opened a can of whoop-ass on Sallies.  It was a very good night.

Mike Katz for Senate in SD 4: The Interview

This interview was conducted by me, nemski, Pandora and Stella Bluez at Stoney’s up on 202 (best fish and chips this side of the pond!) on Tuesday 14 October. Dr. Mike Katz was great to talk with — he was focused and engaged and you can tell he really cares about trying to accomplish something in Dover. He is looking to take advantage of this change year to lend his considerable expertise in the health care business to work with the Legislature and Jack Markell in the next few years as health care issues and reforms move to the forefront of the legislative agenda.

A word about this interview — we were in Stoney’s and once we got ready to start they fired up the music. So this interview sounds like we were all at a great party somewhere. I’ve cleaned it up as best as I can and you can hear all of the questions and especially Dr. Katz’s answers. There’s just background music and voices. I hope it is not too distracting.

So have a listen and take some time to look over Dr. Katz’s website. He is definitely looking for volunteers to help him do lit drops and to work the polls on November 4. Contact his campaign at info@katz4senate.com to signup.

Listen Here:
Part I
Part II
Part III

Want a Chance to Weigh In on the 2008 Platform?

The DNC wants to hear from you, then.
Over the next week or so, meetings are being held all over the US to provide Democrats the opportunity to weigh in on what you think is important to include in the 2008 Party Platform. The final document is, of course, voted on at the convention in August.

One meeting was on the 19th in Dover.

But there is another Dover meeting for the 21st of July.

And finally the big meeting appears to be the one at DE Dems HQ on the 22nd of July.

RSVP to one of these and have your say.

And remember to come back and tell us what happened!

SEU Oversight Board Authority Expired

There was some question around here last week about whether or not the SEU was acting within the law that created them. There was an allegation that their term had expired per statute. Here is the pertinent part of the law:

There is hereby created the SEU Oversight Board which shall, from passage of this Act until January 31, 2008, consist of all members of the Sustainable Energy Utility Task Force (“Task Force”) appointed pursuant to Senate Concurrent Resolution 45 from the 143rd General Assembly and Senate Concurrent Resolution 6 from the 144th General Assembly. By December 31, 2007 the Task Force shall recommend to the General Assembly the composition of the Board to serve after January 31, 2008.

So according to this, their term expired on January 31st, three and a half months ago. I spoke to an assistant to Senator McDowell and confirmed that, indeed, the authority was not renewed. On the recommendation of counsel, they have continued to operate as if they were still a legal entity. This may explain why they were unable to answer whether of not they were a public body in their last meeting. According to my source, they are continuing to meet in order to solicit input on how to structure the permanent SEU oversight board.

I contacted Tyler Nixon for comment (note to self, never ask a lawyer for a comment without specifying a maximum number of words). Mr. Nixon’s full comment is below the fold.

Senator Harris McDowell, and any other person knowingly and/or wilfully disregarding Del C. 29 Sec. 8059(e)(1), is unlawfully operating a rogue quasi-agency by purporting to hold meetings and make decisions dispositive of the Sustainable Energy Utility’s future, months after the former SEU Oversight Board’s authority expired. Continue reading →