Why Should Delaware Care?
Gubernatorial candidates today need well more than $1 million to run a successful campaign in Delaware. And, the individuals and organizations who contribute to campaigns can reveal how the winning candidate will ultimately manage the state’s bureaucracy and how he or she will set the tone for how the state government spends money each year.
A Delaware political action committee that claims to not support any candidate raised more than $200,000 in previous years from several high-profile donors, including a friend to Joe Biden, a solar executive in Boston, a DuPont heir, and a developer whose warehouse plans helped to spark New Castle County’s biggest political controversy last year.
In recent weeks, the group has used its hefty war chest to run a TV ad that lauds what it calls the health care plan of New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer – a candidate for Delaware governor.
It also recently sent political mailers to various Delaware voters attacking Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long – one of Meyer’s two opponents in the governor’s race – claiming she is “wrong on public safety.”
Despite the advocacy, a spokesman for the group – which is called the Change Can’t Wait PAC – said it does not “expressly support or oppose any candidate.”
When pressed on the messaging in the advertisements, the spokesman – Washington D.C.-based consultant Julian Mulvey – said Change Can’t Wait is “following established Delaware law and practice, so assigning us to a candidate is incorrect.”
State election law allows so-called issue-only political action committees to run ads that mention candidates so long as they don’t explicitly tell viewers to vote for a specific person.
While the ads from Change Can’t Wait appear to be in compliance with the law, its own staff members have previously said that the group does support a candidate.
In 2022, a representative for Change Can’t Wait said in a filing to the Delaware Department of Elections that “our candidate does not have a primary in this cycle.”
Last week, the group’s former treasurer acknowledged to Spotlight Delaware that Change Can’t Wait formed in 2021 to support Meyer.
During a press conference last month, Meyer said he’s aware of Change Can’t Wait. Asked if the group supports him, Meyer said “you’ll have to ask them.”
Mulvey said Change Can’t Wait has communicated with Meyer’s campaign staff, but only “for the purpose of fact-checking before producing our communication.”
In all, the group’s advocacy is among the latest political maneuvering of the 2024 gubernatorial campaign made by outside political groups, which are legally barred from coordinating with candidates’ campaigns.
Sam Hoff, a professor emeritus in history, political science and philosophy at Delaware State University, said such third-party political groups have proliferated in the state, in part, because of its proximity to larger cities in the Mid-Atlantic region.
“We can’t really think in terms of Delaware as a small state,” he said. “We’re part of a megalopolis region in which these PACs don’t stop at the border.”
Since the start of summer, a union-affiliated PAC from New Jersey has backed Hall-Long’s campaign, and environmental PACs from the Washington D.C.-area have come out to support Collin O’Mara – Delaware’s former chief environmental regulator and the third Democratic candidate for governor.
Finally, a PAC funded by executives at a New York translations company in recent weeks has begun spending what it previously pledged will be $1 million to oppose Hall-Long.
The donors revealed
Change Can’t Wait did not report its campaign spending within 48 hours of buying its recent political ads, as other groups, called third-party advertisers, must do.
Spotlight Delaware was not able to determine whether issue-only PACs are required under Delaware law to do so. Officials from the Delaware Department of Elections did not respond to requests to comment sent during the previous week.
Mulvey said his group is required to file an updated list of its donors before a deadline that falls 30 days before an election.
That deadline is next week.
Still, finance reports from past years show that Change Can’t Wait has been fueled by several politically influential donors – many who have separately contributed directly to Meyer’s campaign.
Last year, the group received its largest single contribution – at $25,000 – from a “John Hyanski,” according to the PAC’s filing with the Department of Elections. The listing is an apparent misspelling in the records of John Hynansky, a prominent Delaware businessman and close friend of the Bidens. The report lists the address of the $25,000 contribution at a Wilmington office associated with Hynansky’s businesses.
The contribution adds to $1,200 Hynansky donated to Meyer’s campaign in 2021, according to campaign reports.
Hynansky did not reply to requests to comment for this story.
Change Can’t Wait can’t also received a total of $24,500 through a string of donations in 2022 and 2023 from the president of ECA Solar, a Massachusetts-based renewable energy company.
In March, ECA Solar sold two solar farms in southern Delaware to a company owned by the global investment firm, Brookfield. At the time, Delaware Business Now reported that ECA Solar had become “one of the largest solar developers in Delaware.”
Two donors have given $15,000 to Change Can’t Wait. Those were Gerret Copeland, a philanthropist and heir of the du Pont family wealth, and Stonelock Properties, a New Jersey real estate company that owns four apartment complexes in Newark.
Behind those donations were five contributions totaling $10,000 each. They came from a Newport engineering executive, a banker who lives at the Delaware beaches, a New Castle private jet company, and two more property management companies.
A developer behind a mega-warehouse plan near Middletown, called the Jamison Corner Commerce Center, gave $5,000 to Change Can’t Wait, while one of his companies contributed another $5,000.
The proposed half-million square-foot warehouse is one of three in the Middletown area that last year sparked a politically-tinged backlash among largely suburban residents.
