Why Should Delaware Care?
Two union leaders within the Delaware Building Trades Council are running for seats on the New Castle County Council. The moves signal an escalation in a dispute that has divided local officials, mobilized union members and drawn attention to the shifting balance of political power in Delaware.
The Delaware Building Trades Council, a once-dominant political force at the state level, is asserting itself into the electoral politics of New Castle County with two of its local leaders announcing last month they will run for seats on the County Council.
The announcements follow an aggressive campaign by the labor group in recent months to push the county to embrace a nationwide boom in the development of the data centers that power the rapidly growing artificial intelligence industry.
Led by its outspoken, and often indelicate, president James Maravelias, the Delaware Building Trades emerged last fall as the most vocal supporter of a proposal to build an energy-hungry data center near Delaware City, while also opposing a county ordinance that would levy new regulations onto the broader industry.
What followed were weeks of hostile debates within the New Castle County Council, with union members often packing the council’s chambers during meetings. During one widely reported episode, Councilman Timothy Sheldon – a former member of the Delaware Building Trades – flashed a middle finger at data center critic Councilman Kevin Caneco before walking out of a meeting.
By early December, the sponsor of the proposed data center regulations – New Castle County Councilman Dave Carter – called for a pause to his ordinance in order to offer the county a “cooling off period.”
Days later, Maravelias announced on the Delaware Building Trades Facebook page that Chris Muntz, a business manager for a plumbers and pipefitters union, would challenge Carter for his spot on the New Castle County Council.
Muntz’s union is a part of the Delaware Building Trades Council.
In his social media post, Maravelias stated in his brash manner, ”We have been taken as fools and disrespected long enough.”
He also said there may be more trade union-backed candidates to come.
The previous week, Maravelias similarly announced on Facebook that Curtis Linton, a rising star within the Delaware Building Trades coalition, would vie for a seat currently held by outgoing New Castle County Councilman Penrose Hollins. In the post, Maravelias encouraged members of the Building Trades to support Linton by sending him a maximum individual campaign contribution of $600 before the end of the year.
“A good showing in December will ward off challengers,” Maravelias said in the post.
Linton – who told Spotlight Delaware that he is not necessarily a staunch supporter of data centers – currently faces another political newcomer for the seat in Jason Hoover, a web designer and engineer from Wilmington.
The outgoing Hollins also said he expects several other candidates to enter the race to replace him, including one he supports but declined to name.
Another industrial revolution?
Beyond the data center question, the outcome of the two county council races could indicate how much political power remains with the Building Trades and with Maravelias, a polarizing figure who has openly clashed with elected officials, most notably with Gov. Matt Meyer.
The outcome of Muntz’s race in particular could also clarify the current state of Delaware’s political alliances, with trade unions and business groups seemingly converging on one side, and environmentalists and consumer groups – who largely oppose data center growth – on the other.
In an interview with Spotlight Delaware, Muntz said his campaign is centered on the creation of good-paying jobs, particularly for Delaware’s unionized workforce.
“It’s not just about this data center,” he said of his candidacy. “It’s about any project that’s going to lead to 1 hour of work for my members.”
Asked about a potential for artificial intelligence to take jobs away from swaths of the economy, Muntz said growth of the industry is inevitable. Because of that, he said, Delaware policy-makers should work to secure near-term economic benefits by ensuring that data centers are built in the state, and not in Maryland or Pennsylvania.
“We’re not stopping this,” Muntz said of the growth of data centers and artificial intelligence. “I mean, this is another industrial revolution.”
While he announced his campaign for council last month, Muntz said he intends to officially file as a candidate this month.
When asked about Muntz’s campaign, Carter said he is confident that his record as a councilman, and his relationships within his community, will lead to his re-election over a candidate who he described as a “newcomer that wants to put more data centers and more logistic centers in our district.”
Carter also noted that the recent debate over data centers is not the first time he has squared off with Maravelias and his labor organization.
Among their past political fights was one a decade ago over another data center that had been planned for the University of Delaware’s STAR Campus. That proposal, in Newark, similarly sparked a controversy across the county, even prompting the Delaware Building Trades to deploy a inflatable, car-sized rat at a Wilmington Labor Day parade.
Ultimately, the project was defeated following opposition from residents and environmental groups, including from Carter’s Delaware Audubon Society, where he then served as president.
Flash forward a decade, Carter said he met Muntz last month during a community meeting in Middletown. Echoing the previous decade’s controversy, the meeting turned testy between residents who opposed data center development and union members who supported it.
In particular, Carter said, one union member approached him and began yelling, “until finally library security came and took him out.”
“I just stood there and let him yell in my face and kept saying, ‘I’m sorry, you’re going to have to leave. I’m sorry you’re going to have to leave,’” Carter said.
Asked about the meeting, Muntz said the heated interaction has been overblown. He said the union member speaking with Carter was interrupted by others in the crowd, just “when he was trying to get his point across.”
“I don’t think he was given a fair shake from the councilman on,” he said. “And the next thing you know, that’s what escalated everything.”
Will the Building Trades regain their punch?
Whatever the outcome in the races next year, they will follow a difficult period for the Delaware Building Trades at the state level, punctuated by feuds between Maravelias and the governor over the past two years.
The dynamic contrasts with past years when politicians in Dover often capitulated when trade unions flexed their political power.
Among their more notable past victories, the Building Trades defeated a push to make Delaware a right-to-work state. They expanded a state program that required private contractors to pay employees a minimum wage for taxpayer-funded projects. And they even ensured that big projects carried out by the state and its partners would draw workers from local union halls.
Backing it all was a culture in the state that supported trade union labor, as well as a base of union members who voted generally as a bloc, and campaign money that flowed in from out of state.
In 2018, Democrats won a series of contested elections – as part of a famous “blue wave” in Delaware – supported by dollars from the Building Trades and its affiliated unions in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York.
By 2024, the Delaware Building Trades was spending its political money again – but this time to support Meyer’s opponent in Delaware’s gubernatorial primary, then-Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long.
The political advocacy took the form of social media posts, mailers and even one rally in Wilmington where Linton called Meyer a “lying piece of shit” who was “trying to take away [unionized] livelihoods.”
The inflatable rat that had made an appearance ten years earlier also reappeared during the 2024 campaign, but this time with Meyer’s face on it.
Asked about the attacks then, a spokesman for then-candidate Meyer said his boss was an ally of trade union labor. He also claimed that Meyer’s previous meetings with Maravelias too often involved the union leader going on “expletive-laced tirades.”
Ultimately, Hall-Long’s loss in the primary represented a body blow to the trade union’s influence. Making matters worse, then-Speaker of the House Valerie Longhurst – another ally of the Delaware Building Trades – also lost in her primary to an upstart challenger who had been supported by the Delaware Working Families Party.
While Maravelias appeared to have little influence over the governor during the subsequent year, Linton appeared to rebuild a relationship with Meyer.
Last year, he told Spotlight Delaware that comments made during the heat of the campaign were not personal, arguing that politicians regularly attack each other, then shake hands afterward.
“I have to work with whoever’s in charge to put my people to work,” he said last spring.
Speaking again with Spotlight Delaware last month, Linton described his political platform as one that includes advocacy for labor, but also goes beyond traditional union issues to advocating for improved education.
Asked if he supported the Delaware City data center project, Linton pivoted, saying that any energy or water-usage consequences from it that impacts the community will also impact his members.
“If my members are making $2,000 a week on a data center project, but if their electric bill shoots to $800 a month, do you think my members will be happy with that?” he asked.
Linton also declined to publicly say whether he supports Carter’s proposal to more tightly regulate the data center industry, saying that he needed first to speak with Carter.
Carter’s proposed regulations include requirements for data centers to install buffer zones to keep them away from residential areas, and to use energy-efficient backup generators, among other rules.
Linton’s opponent, Hoover, said he is focusing his campaign on policies that could incentivize more dense, walkable residential development in the county. When asked about the data center controversy, he said he supports Carter’s proposed regulations.
“I want to make sure that the policies we’re supporting have a gaze far enough out to see the full implications,” he said.
‘Certain people have just pissed us off‘
Also speaking with Spotlight Delaware was Maravelias, who acknowledged that his influence in Delaware politics is not as strong as it once was. He also noted that the dynamic exists at the county level.
Maravelias then described how the Delaware Building Trades’ rekindled efforts on the county council came about because that government is the body that has been responsible for approving many of the state’s biggest building projects in recent years.
Plus, he said, the state government faces an unpredictable budget season, which could limit the number of taxpayer-funded construction projects that would employ his members in the future.
“It just so happens that anybody that wants to do [build] anything, so happens to be doing it in New Castle County,” Maravelias said. “New Castle County is where it is at.”
He further said his targeting of Carter is not simply about the councilman’s support for stricter data center regulation, but his decision to propose them without speaking first with the Building Trades.
“Certain people have just pissed us off,” Maravelias said of Carter and of Councilman Kevin Caneco, the other data center critic.
Maravelias also pushed back against critics of the proposed Delaware City data center, saying that concerns the facility would siphon up too much electricity in a region that already faces an energy supply crunch are overstated. The electricity demand will be tempered, he said, because the project will be built in stages, over many years, giving Delaware time to bring power plants online.
Finally, Maravelias noted that the data center controversy in Delaware could draw the attention of the Delaware Building Trades parent organization – the North America’s Building Trades Unions.
If that occurs, Muntz and Linton could benefit from significant national campaign contributions, he said.
“When the general presidents in Washington see a $8 billion project,” he said, referencing the estimated cost of the Delaware City data center. “They’re going to say, ‘What do you need?’”