Why Should Delaware Care?
A pair of contentious special elections earlier this year sparked criticism about the electoral process lacking transparency and giving an advantage to candidates with more connections within a political party. Two lawmakers have proposed reforming Delaware’s special elections, hoping to bring more power to voters in the process.
After a year of heated intraparty special election contests within Delaware’s General Assembly, possible reforms could be on the horizon.
Last week, Rep. Mara Gorman (D-Newark) announced a bipartisan bill that would require primary elections as a part of the special election process for filling vacant seats in the legislature.
Co-sponsored by State Sen. Eric Buckson (R-South Dover), the proposal would strip local political party committee members’ authority to select a special election candidate, and instead allowing voters to select their party’s candidate through a primary election.
The bill comes after a year that saw three high-profile special elections, including the contentious races to fill U.S. Rep. Sarah McBride and Lt. Gov. Kyle Evans Gay’s respective State Senate seats in February, which saw candidates dropping out over a lack of transparency in the special election nomination process, and Democratic Party leaders rebuffing Gov. Matt Meyer’s call for the party to hold a special election primary.
Another special election took place in August, following State Rep. Stell Parker Selby’s (D-Milton) resignation, which came after months of outcry and speculation over Parker Selby’s absence from the legislature, and a stroke she suffered from earlier in the year.
While Gorman acknowledged the controversy over special elections in the state over the past year, she said the bill is intended to encourage the democratic process across all elections, including special elections, rather than respond to any specific previous special election circumstance.
“Under our current law, the way that people are selected to be candidates for special elections is basically done behind closed doors by party volunteers,” she told Spotlight Delaware. “I don’t think that’s a very democratic process.”
Buckson similarly said the process of selecting candidates for special elections is a challenge he has seen “transcend politics or parties” for a number of years in Delaware.
In the bill, the state Election Commissioner would issue a “writ of election” within five days of the seat being vacated. From there, each party would have 35 to 40 days after the “writ of election” was issued to hold a primary election, and another 35 to 40 days after the primary for the general election to take place.
The timeline would be adjusted to line up with the regularly scheduled September primary and November general election, if the vacancy occurs after May 15 in a general election year, Gorman said.
Under the current process, the special election must be held 30 to 35 days after a writ of election is issued. That truncated timeline requires local party committees to select a candidate.
The addition of the primary step would extend the special election process b about a month, meaning that a seat in the General Assembly would be left open that much longer. Gorman, however, said she believes the delay is worth it to give voters more of a chance to decide who will represent them.
“People might feel there’s a little more finality when the voters have chosen who the candidate is,” she added.
When asked if they anticipate pushback from local party leaders over their authority to select special election candidates being removed, both Gorman and Buckson said there might be some pushback from party leaders, but the more important thing is giving power back to voters.
Evelyn Brady, chair of the Delaware Democratic Party, said the party supports the legislation as a way of “strengthening our democratic process” and putting the responsibility for selecting nominees where it should be – with the voters.
While Meyer has expressed support for special election primaries in the past, his office did not respond to Spotlight Delaware’s request for comment about the proposed bill on Monday.
Gorman said she first filed a similar bill in the early spring this past year, but ended up cleaning up some of the language and joining forces with Buckson, who was working on a similar bill of his own, to complete the updated legislation this month.
A year of special elections
A prominent example of controversy over local party leaders’ selection of special election candidates came in November 2024, when McBride and Evans Gay vacated their Wilmington-area State Senate seats to assume their respective roles as a U.S. representative and lieutenant governor.
Nine candidates threw their names in for McBride’s seat, while four candidates sought Evans Gay’s position.
Disagreement broke out among the candidates over the local party’s selection process, as candidates who were considered “outsiders” said they were pressured by party leaders to bow out, and were told inaccurate information about steps in the nomination process.
One candidate to replace McBride, Melissa Froemming, told Spotlight Delaware at the time that she withdrew her name from consideration because she found that the nomination process “excludes voters, limits transparency, and frankly, also fails to reflect the inclusive values professed by the Democratic Party.”
In response to the nomination process hullabaloo, then-Governor-elect Meyer wrote a letter to then-Democratic Party Chair Betsy Maron, urging the party to hold a primary ahead of the special general election.
“The process would require our candidates to organize, persuade, and get out the vote in order to earn the Democratic nomination,” Meyer wrote to Maron.
Maron responded to Meyer’s letter that she could not support Meyer’s proposal, “at this time.”
Ultimately, two candidates support by centrist Democrats, Dan Cruce (D-Wilmington) and Ray Seigfried (D-North Brandywine), received the local party committee’s nominations and went on to win the special general elections in February.
Most recently, Parker Selby’s resignation in June prompted a tight special election race between Democrat Alonna Berry and Republican Nikki Miller for the Lewes and Milton-area seat.
The 20th District Democratic Committee held a candidate forum, open to any registered Democrat, before the local party committee took a vote and selected Berry as their candidate.
While Berry narrowly defeated Miller by just more than 100 votes in the early August special election, Miller and Ruby Schaeffer, a Democrat who also sought the special election nomination, have already filed to challenge Berry again in the November 2026 election.
Maggie Reynolds is a Report for America corps member and Spotlight Delaware reporter who covers rural communities in Delaware. Your donation to match our Report for America grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://spotlightdelaware.org/support/.
