Why Should Delaware Care?
Delaware’s governor manages state agencies, has the power to veto proposed laws, and sets the tone for how state government spends money each year. Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long’s critics argue that mismanagement on her campaign means she’s not up to the task of governor.
Delaware Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long says her husband, Dana Long, did not take more money from her campaign bank account than he put into it.
An audit report, commissioned by Delaware’s election department, says he did.
Late on Thursday, state election regulators released a bruising report, which examined Hall-Long’s campaign bank records from 2016 to 2023 to conclude that her husband withdrew through a series of transactions nearly $300,000 from her candidate committees’ accounts.
The total exceeded the amount he gave to her campaigns by about $33,000, according to the report — indicating that Dana Long withdrew money into his personal account that had been donated for Hall-Long’s political campaign.
Hall-Long currently is a leading candidate in the race to become the Democratic nominee for Delaware governor. Her opponents in the Sept. 10 primary election will be New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer and Collin O’Mara, Delaware’s former chief environmental regulator.
Over the years, Dana Long – who had served as Hall-Long campaign treasurer – frequently used his personal credit card to pay campaign expenses, even when his wife’s political account had plenty of money, the report stated.
Then, he would periodically transfer cash back into his own private bank account. He did so without the aid of spreadsheets to track his payments, the report stated.
The report’s author – retired FBI investigator Jeffrey Lampinski – further stated that none of the payments to Dana Long were listed in Hall-Long’s campaign finance reports “even though required by Delaware law.”
As treasurer, such reporting tasks were Dana Long’s responsibility.
Lampinski also noted that Dana Long’s use of his credit card awarded him with substantial perks at hotels and on flights, finding that “nearly all campaign-related charges were made to rewards cards.”
When Lampinski questioned Dana Long about the travel benefits, he “disputed the notion that earning points was a primary driver behind the couple’s credit card use,” the report said.
In all, Thursday’s release of the audit report amounts to the latest – and most detailed – critique of Hall-Long’s and her husband’s management of hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations that her campaign has received over the past decade.
The controversy began in September after several staffers on Hall-Long’s then-fledgling gubernatorial campaign resigned after learning that her previous candidate committee had made several large and unreported cash transfers to Dana Long.
In the subsequent months, Hall-Long hired a small Dover accounting firm to conduct a review of her finances. By November, she released to the election department a string of amended campaign finance filings going back to 2016.
Since then, her opponents and members of the media repeatedly called on Hall-Long to release the accountant’s review, which Hall-Long claimed had only discovered reporting errors that were subsequently corrected in her amended campaign finance reports.
But Lampinski’s report indicates the problems ran deeper.
Opponents call for inquiries
By the end of the day on Friday, fallout from his report included a call from O’Mara for Delaware’s attorney general to appoint an independent counsel to probe further into the controversy, according to a WHYY report.
Meyer has been even more critical. On Friday, he posted on Facebook claiming Hall-Long had been “lying to Delawareans for nearly a decade and breaking the law and trying to cover it up.”
Later in the day, Meyer’s team released a statement that they said came from Delaware’s former-Democratic Party Chairman Erik Raser-Schramm, calling on party leaders to rescind their endorsement of Hall-Long for governor.
On Monday, Meyer held a press conference in which he called on U.S. prosecutors to open an investigation into what he said were violations of federal law on the part of Hall-Long’s campaign.
Asked by a reporter there about the laws he believed Hall-Long had broken, Meyer — who holds a law degree — did not have an immediate response. Instead, he said “we believe there are federal laws that are implicated, We have a list that we can get to you.”
Meyer’s campaign did not ultimately provide the list.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney in the District of Delaware declined to comment.
For her part, Hall-Long has denied the Lampinski report’s central finding, and on Friday she released statements to several media outlets, saying “our family has loaned the campaign more money than we have been reimbursed.”
On Sunday, she went on DETV — a public access channel that is the only media outlet to which Hall-Long has personally spoken to in the past few months as critical reporting has emerged — with a string of defenses and assertions. During the interview with Kerwin Gaines, Hall-Long highlighted that Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings said she would not bring criminal charges against her campaign.
She also claimed, without providing evidence or details, that the Lampinski report contained “misrepresentations, misnomers and inaccuracies.”
20K written to himself
Over the years, money flowed back and forth at sporadic intervals between Hall-Long’s campaign and her husband’s bank account, according to the report.
And, on both sides of the transactions appear to have been Dana Long.
During the high-profile election year of 2016, he fronted his wife’s campaign for lieutenant governor nearly $100,000, according to the report.
The campaign then returned nearly $63,000. Included in that amount was a $20,000 check Dana Long wrote from the campaign to himself, according to the report.
When recording the transaction in public campaign finance records, Dana Long described the money as going to a Washington D.C.-based political consultancy company, called Buying Time LLC.
When Lampinski asked about the apparent misstatement, Dana Long “had no answer for why he reported the payee as Buying Time LLC,” the report stated.
“He said nothing. When I asked him why he didn’t accurately report the payee as Dana Long, he asked for private time with his counsel,” Lampinski said in the report.
During Hall-Long’s next election in 2020, Dana Long again covered roughly $35,000 in campaign expenses. That same year, he withdrew from the campaign’s accounts more than $84,000.
The following year, he again withdrew from the campaign more money that he paid in expenses.
By 2022, Dana Long reduced his debt to the campaign by transferring $60,000 to it.
Then, last year, he again withdrew more money from the campaign than he paid in expenses, according to the report.
Hall-Long reported in her amended campaign finance reports that her candidate committee owed her and her husband $112,471.90 in loans in 2023. Lampinski said he can’t find the evidence to support their claim.
“I cannot account for the difference in their public reporting and my findings,” he said in his report.
Read Hall-Long’s full statement to Spotlight Delaware:
In the Fall of 2023, I voluntarily disclosed discrepancies with previous campaign finance reports. I have been cooperating with the Department of Elections on a confidential process to amend previous campaign finance reports.
Since that disclosure, as I have always done, I will address any bookkeeping discrepancies head on. As the letter from the Elections Commissioner states, none of this will be referred to the Attorney General. Contrary to the Lampinski preliminary report, our family has loaned the campaign more money than we have been reimbursed and we have forgiven that remaining loan balance.
Voters want a Governor who will champion their problems like funding strong public education, protecting reproductive freedom, increasing access to affordable healthcare, and fighting to improve the quality of life for working families. If I am elected Governor, I will work tirelessly every single day to do just that.
I’m proud of the growing support that I have received along with the full endorsements of Governor John Carney, members of the State House & State Senate, the Delaware AFL-CIO, the Delaware State Education Association, and most recently the Democratic State Party of Delaware.”
Editor’s Note: This story originally characterized Hall-Long’s coverage on DETV as “favorable.” It should have reported that DETV has been the favored outlet for Hall-Long’s rare campaign interviews. We regret the error.
