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.
This story was produced and reported together with Delaware Online/The News Journal as part of a partnership with Spotlight Delaware.
The race to become Delaware’s Democratic nominee for governor has grown increasingly bitter, fueled in large part by outside political groups that have raised millions of dollars from developers, unions, and a single New York company with a longtime grudge against Delaware.
Campaign finance reports filed last week with the state show those donors have supplied most of the $3 million that was collectively raised by third-party political action committees.
In recent weeks, those PACs have purchased a bevy of TV ads and political mailers that directly or indirectly supported their chosen Democratic candidates for governor.
The ads followed an audacious piece of politicking earlier this summer when a PAC affiliated with a building trades union hired a small airplane to circle the Delaware beaches with a political banner in tow.
In all, the hefty sums spent on political advertising are giving powerful people with narrow interests outsized influence in Delaware’s race for governor.
“In the context of where the candidates are choosing to put their funds, that’s obviously having an impact on the total amount spent,” said Delaware State University political science professor Samuel Hoff. “It’s never cheap for these TV commercials and getting folks to produce them, let alone the cost of running them.”
The outside PAC money also piles on top of nearly $4 million raised by the campaigns of the three Democratic candidates for governor themselves, setting the stage for this year’s contest to rival the 2008 governor’s race as the most expensive in Delaware history.
Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long, New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer and former state environmental secretary Collin O’Mara are vying for the Democratic ticket next month.
State House Rep. Mike Ramone, Lewes resident Jerrold Price and Bridgeville resident Bobby Williamson seek the GOP line in the gubernatorial race.
The recently filed campaign finance reports further indicate that outside messaging from the PACs is likely to escalate in the final weeks before Delaware’s Sept. 10 primary. Two groups that have run ads attacking Hall-Long reported that they still hold hundreds of thousands of dollars in reserve.
Meanwhile, one PAC supporting Hall-Long and others supporting O’Mara are funded by large nationwide organizations with relatively deep pockets that could be employed as the race draws nearer to the primary election date.
Between crowded primary races and the rise of more “one issue PACs,” this year’s gubernatorial race certainly has had “more money pumped into the primary than is usual,” which will likely rival the 2008 governor’s race, Hoff said.
“I really think what happens over the next couple of weeks is certainly going to be important,” he said. “From everything we have in front of us now, it’s close in both areas, but particularly (among the Democrats), and we’ll have to see how it shakes out.”
$1 million outside influence
Leading all donors to Delaware PACs is Phil Shawe, the CEO of a New York translations company called TransPerfect, who in recent months gave $1 million to a PAC that has been attacking Hall-Long with TV ads and political mailers.
The spending is the latest in nearly a decade of Shawe’s high-dollar critiques of Delaware institutions that followed a decision in 2015 by the state’s Chancery Court to order his company be auctioned off.
Those affiliated with the PAC, called Citizens for a New Delaware Way, say it is opposing Hall-Long because she failed to respond to their outreach sent to all the Democratic candidates.
Chris Coffey, campaign manager for the PAC, said while O’Mara and Meyer responded and engaged with the group, Hall-Long did not.
“She made it really easy for us by blowing us off, by not believing in transparency, by not participating in our process, by not being willing to speak with us,” Coffey said.
Coffey said the group’s focus is on transparency and advocating for good government, mostly through the courts, but also with police, like calling for police-worn body cameras. It also is pushing for cameras in Delaware courts and for judges to be selected at random.
Coffey has led similar efforts in Delaware in past years, also funded by Shawe.
In a statement, Hall-Long’s campaign did not speak to the claims made by Coffey, instead asserting that Shawe’s company actually seeks to “dismantle Delaware’s corporate franchise” – the state’s lucrative system that serves as the legal domicile of well over a million companies.
Such a dismantling would lead to higher taxes “on middle class families either by raising personal income taxes or instituting a sales tax in Delaware,” the campaign claimed.
Though it indirectly benefits Meyer and O’Mara’s candidacies, Shawe’s PAC has not said outright that it supports either campaign.
While each Democratic candidate has benefited from third-party spending, Meyer has enjoyed the biggest boost because of the indirect support of this PAC and one other that doesn’t explicitly endorse his campaign.
Another PAC, called Change Can’t Wait, also has significant financial backing in Delaware’s governor’s race, recently running a TV ad that lauds Meyer’s health care plan and sent political mailers claiming Hall-Long is “wrong on public safety.”
The Change Can’t Wait PAC raised more than $1.1 million in recent years with the help of sizable contributions from out-of-state and local developers, some of whom have, or have had business before New Castle County.
The group’s two biggest contributions – totaling $100,000 each – came from Philip Reese, a Wilmington-area retired banker who a decade ago chaired Delaware’s public employee pension system, and from an entity called 847 Cranbrook, LLC.
Among other activities, 847 Cranbrook, LLC is associated with a downstate proposal to build houses, commercial space and a hotel, called the Bridgeville Town Center.
The leading PAC supporting Hall-Long represents the political arm of the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association – an organization that Hall-Long previously co-chaired. It has pledged to spend $1 million in support of Hall-Long’s pursuit of the governor seat.
Some of the ad spending the association has done was helped by a $475,000 contribution from the People for a Healthy Delaware PAC, which supports candidates “committed to a healthy Delaware” and raised $447,000 this year through sizable donations from labor unions.
Three labor groups donated $100,000 each to the PAC: Growing Economic Opportunities, New Jersey’s State Laborers PAC, and Laborers Political League of DE.
Early on, Hall-Long earned the support of Delaware’s largest labor unions. Since early in the summer, the Delaware Building Trades has been flying banners over the state’s beaches this year in support of the lieutenant governor’s run.
Organizing the spending is James Maravelias, the powerful president of the Delaware AFL-CIO, who said he has hired planes to fly over the beaches during most weekend days when the skies are not restricted by President Joe Biden’s presence.
He said his advocacy for Hall-Long’s campaign originates from his antipathy for Meyer, arguing that New Castle County took several steps under Meyer’s leadership that he said hurt union workers, including altering the government’s “responsible contracting” standards, weakening union apprenticeship mandates, and carrying out fewer inspections of developments sites
Maravelias said he asked Meyer last year to rescind those changes. And, in response, Meyer said “I have no appetite to reverse that,” Maravelias recounted.
In an emailed response, Meyer’s campaign asserted that Maravelias has engaged in “irrational behavior towards Matt instead of helping hard-working Delawareans.”
The statement also claimed that Maravelias in past meetings with Meyer was disrespectful and went on “expletive-laced tirades.”
“Matt has been an ally of labor during his time as County Executive,” the campaign’s statement said.
Environmental groups throw support to O’Mara
Two environmental PACs have also pledged financial support in Delaware’s gubernatorial race, throwing their support behind O’Mara, the CEO of the National Wildlife Federation and past Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control secretary.
“Collin is a proven progressive,” said Jocelyn Steinberg, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council Action Votes and independent expenditure director of the NRDC Action Fund. “It’s not a secret agenda. We want clean energy jobs in Delaware. We want to move forward in protecting our air and water.”
Steinberg said O’Mara is already pursuing clean jobs for Delaware in his recent position as chief advocate for the Mid-Atlantic Clean Hydrogen Hub, a consortium of politically powerful companies in the region that seek to remake Delaware into a hub of hydrogen production.
The regional hydrogen initiative, which won a $750 million federal award last year, has also drawn criticism from local environmentalists who have argued that using wind and solar power to produce hydrogen fuel is an inefficient use of those renewable energies. O’Mara contends that a small portion of renewable energy should be reserved to produce hydrogen fuels in order to make heavy industries that can only operate on liquid fuels more green.
The NRDC Action Votes group launched an ad in support of O’Mara as Delaware governor, and additional spending is in the works, Steinberg said.
The federal PAC donated $100,000 on Aug. 1 for the first ad buy, and another $100,000 will be committed for additional advertising and campaign material supporting O’Mara, she said.
The group is part of a coalition of environmental advocacy groups supporting O’Mara’s run for governor, and joins another federal PAC, the League of Conservation Voters, in boosting the former environmental secretary’s campaign.
O’Mara also earned the Working Families Party endorsement in Delaware back in April.
Big money in Democratic candidates’ campaigns
The money being thrown around within third-party groups nearly overshadows the contributions raised and spent among the candidates, if it wasn’t for Meyer’s campaign coffers dwarfing his opponents.
According to the latest campaign finance reports filed with the Delaware Department of Elections, Meyer’s war chest surpasses both Democratic candidates, as well as the Republican challengers, with nearly $1.6 million on hand.
While all three Democrats loaned significant money to their campaigns, Meyer raised the most this reporting cycle with $825,721 in donations. Meyer spent $925,229 during the same period, campaign finance reports show.
While Hall-Long raised $531,500 since Jan. 1, building on a $687,348 campaign balance from the end of 2023, just over $1 million was spent this cycle, leaving the lieutenant governor’s war chest at $218,511.
Hall-Long’s campaign has grappled with finance issues since the longtime politician announced her run for Delaware governor last year. Those issues have only mounted in recent weeks after a scathing audit said the reporting of her campaign finances was “incomplete, inconsistent, and often inaccurate.”
O’Mara raised the least among the Democratic candidates during this period, collecting $101,687 in donations. But his spending was far less than his opponents at $54,370, leaving O’Mara’s campaign with $917,528 cash on hand.
The money raised among Democratic candidates far surpasses that of the three Republican candidates.
Ramone was the only GOP candidate to raise money this year, collecting $76,276 in donations from when he officially announced his run for governor in early May to Aug. 12.
By comparison, Price – a former New York City police officer who announced his run for governor in December – did not collect any donations this year but loaned his campaign $7,706 to cover campaign-related expenses. This is on top of a $5,000 loan he gave his campaign to start in December.
Williamson, who was the last to file his candidacy in early July, raised just shy of $900 through 12 contributions to his campaign during the latest reporting period. Williamson reported receiving $1,335 in in-kind contributions, while also loaning $8,602 to his campaign to cover expenses.
