‘Beyond the Headlines’ podcast: Campaign finance ahead of 2026 Delaware midterm elections

Deputy Editor Karl Baker joins “Beyond the Headlines” to mark the beginning of 2026 election season with a discussion about money – specifically how Delaware’s political parties finance their operations.

Two of Karl’s recent articles have taken on the topic through a bipartisan lens: “Longtime court critic quietly funds PAC controlled by House Speaker,” and “Delaware’s GOP projects strength after months of turmoil.” In the podcast, Karl discusses what these two developments say about the state of money in Delaware politics and shares how he tracks these trends. 

The podcast was hosted by Director of Community Engagement David Stradley.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

I’m going to start off with two things that you are famous for at Spotlight Delaware. The first is in our editorial meetings – you like to grill our reporters about their nut grafs. Can you share with our listeners what a “nut graf” is, and then give us the nut grafs for these two articles that you wrote? 

Sure. A nut graf is the paragraph within a story, usually up high – sometimes it’s the first line in the story, sometimes not – that encompasses all of the important themes for the story itself. 

So the nut graf for the story about the House Speaker’s PAC is, effectively, that this company and the company’s CEO, who has waged this campaign in Delaware for a decade now – really assailing the state’s court system and judiciary, specifically – gave some money to a new PAC controlled by the House Speaker. It kind of marks how the CEO, his name is Phil Shawe, has shifted his approach from sponsoring these protests and bringing in celebrities to criticize the courts to one where he is getting more directly political and supporting candidates. 

And the GOP story?

It’s a story about how there had been financial turmoil, confusion and disarray with the state GOP’s finances, particularly after the party’s longtime contracted accountant resigned in January. Now the party says they’ve been able to right the ship and are employing a new fundraising strategy. And they say they’re ready for the launch of the 2026 campaign. 

The other thing you are famous for at Spotlight Delaware is that you are considered our in-house expert in campaign finance, and particularly the institutional knowledge of campaign finance in Delaware.

How did you become interested in campaign finance, and why do you think it’s so important to watch carefully in Delaware? 

How did I become interested? I think just over the years you see how interests align behind candidates, and they align behind candidates through donations to their campaigns.

That can tell you where those companies or other interests think those candidates stand on issues, and that will then tell you potentially where those candidates may sit on certain issues. 

With both of these articles you wrote, why report on them now? 

Well, it’s the beginning of campaign season. It’s a little early, but we’re going to have a stretch where we see lots of fundraising initially, and then lots of spending of that money over the summer.

So it’s good to remind people that this is coming. Also, for the first story about the Speaker’s PAC, we had the year-end state campaign finance reports that came in in January. And then for that particular story, it was an amended report that came in in February that tipped us off. That’s the “why now” of that story. 

For the story about the state GOP, we had done one in December. I’ve been following the subsequent developments in their fundraising since then. I determined that the things that had happened particularly since the new year, it was now time for the new story because it was significant enough that the public should know.

When those campaign finance reports come out, what is your process like? What are you looking for? 

So, there are the reports that are filed with the state, and then there are reports that are filed with the federal government through the Federal Elections Commission.

For the state, at the start of the year in January, there’s going to be a lot of year-end reports filed. And so I just kind of look through every day to see which reports are filed on that day. I like to see how much money they raised for the period, how much money they spent, how much money they’re left with.

The money they’re left with is a good indicator of their war chest, as they call it, for the coming campaign. And then maybe most importantly, who made the donations.

Let’s go into this article about the Democratic finances. For anybody who has not read your article, or who has not been following Delaware politics for the last decade, can you tell us a little bit about Phil Shawe, the first funder of Delaware House Speaker Melissa Minor-Brown’s Back on Track PAC?

He has a company called TransPerfect that, according to all the reports, makes a lot of money. Forbes did a feature story of Shawe last year, they called him a billionaire. I think they reported that TransPerfect revenues in recent years were nearing a billion dollars. It’s a company that makes money, and therefore Shawe, as the primary owner, makes a lot of money, too.

In 2015, his company was in a high-profile Delaware court case. He and his ex-fiancee were the co-founders of the company and they weren’t getting along. The reports are that boardroom fights at the company were acrimonious, apparently forging on violent, according to reports.

The judge ultimately said, “You guys can’t get along. There’s nothing I could do other than just sell the company off for the good of the employees and the good of your customers.”

Shawe launched this campaign to criticize not only the judge’s order, but also the subsequent custodianship of the company. Shawe saw that as an affront. He saw that as stripping his company away from him, and it effectively was. 

Shawe’s ex-fiancee agreed to sell him her half of the company, so he got his company back. Still, he continued his campaign. He brought in celebrities. Al Sharpton came frequently to Delaware to speak out against the state’s courts, particularly its lack of diversity.

It was this all-encompassing campaign to tell everybody how bad that Shawe thought the Delaware courts were.

Now, this was all done as an outsider campaign until 2024, or really 2023, before the [Delaware] gubernatorial campaign when things shifted. The TransPerfect public relations organization approached, as far as I understand, the leading candidates for governor and said, “Hey, we want to help you guys. Would you help us?’

At the time, I think they were arguing for what they call wheel spin, an arbitrary appointment of judges in cases. That’s what they wanted. And ultimately they threw their support both directly and indirectly behind Matt Meyer – indirectly in the sense that they spent a lot of money attacking his chief opponent, Lieutenant Governor Bethany Hall-Long.

Ultimately, their spending of over a million dollars in that campaign helped propel Matt Meyer to be the governor, which he is now. So that happened. 

And then last year, they announced, “We’re going to do something similar, maybe not as much money, but in the legislative races.” And now we know at least some of what they’re doing.

You quote Shawe’s spokesperson in your article as saying, “We look forward to working with members of the state legislature to build a more equitable and transparent justice system for both individual Delawareans and companies domiciled there.” 

I read that and think, “A more equitable and transparent justice system?” That sounds like a noble aim. For folks who are suspicious of campaign donations, what’s behind that quote? Is there more there? 

It sounds nice. Transparency is good. 

Frankly, I don’t know. And that’s kind of the story. We know that they wanted wheel spin, right? The random selection of judges on cases. But beyond that, I’m not exactly sure what that means policy wise. 

Now, I would say to readers of any publication, when a story says a statement, especially an emailed statement, especially from a spokesman, you should just generally have a higher degree of skepticism of that statement. 

The reporter is not able to have a back and forth when it’s an emailed statement. You’re not able to prod the person making the statement and say, “Hey, what about this? What about that?” There’s these logical holes in your statement.

That should just be understood with any emailed statement from a spokesperson. 

Is it true? Maybe. What does transparency mean for them? I’m not really sure. Cameras in courtrooms, maybe? I don’t know.

You also quote Speaker of the House Melissa Minor-Brown as saying Shawe’s support “doesn’t mean that I’m for sale, or bought and sold.”

Of course that’s the suspicion for any Delawarean about large campaign contributions: how is this going to impact the representative? 

Are those suspicions justified? Has there ever been a documented instance in Delaware of “Donor X makes this large donation. Politician Y then takes this step to implement policy preferred by donor X.” Or is this just our conspiracy minds at work? 

A couple things. I would start by saying, I think that suspicion is reasonable to have. 

To the question of does this mean that, you know, is she bought and sold? I guess that’s her language. I don’t know. Who knows? Probably not, but that’s not really the question. 

I think the question is, the importance of the news, is that this organization that has narrow interests – or any company or organization that has special interests – is aligning behind this candidate whose interests are broad to her district and, as Speaker, to the entire state. So that’s interesting that the special interest group is supporting this particular candidate. 

Now to your question, is there an example? There’s lots of examples of big contributors giving to a candidate who wins and then forms policy that is in the interest of that donor. The question is, was that candidate, was that politician, did they already believe those things and were they supported by that special interest because the donor knew that they believe those things? Or, I think what your question might be, did they switch their opinions? 

I don’t immediately have any examples in the past in Delaware of a politician changing on something immediately after getting a donation.

If I’m a typical small individual who makes a donation to a political campaign, I’m doing that because I believe in that politician. I think that they’re going to implement policies that I agree with. Ideally you would think a special interest would be functioning in the same way, 

Mostly I think that is how it works. They see somebody that they like and they give money to them. 

Now, their interests might be different from yours. You’re an individual, right? They’re “special interests,” whether it’s a company, a union, or any other interest group. But if they donate to a candidate, it’s because they think that candidate is good for them.

If you donate to a candidate, I imagine you think that candidate is good for you and maybe good for the state. So in a sense, it’s not different. The difference is where their interests lie. 

One thing you pointed out was this press release that Shawe’s advocacy group put out celebrating a new Delaware court policy that he was in favor of, and Minor-Brown provided a quote for that press release.

Is that standard practice, a politician providing a quote for an advocacy group’s press release? 

No, it was fairly unusual and particularly unusual with TransPerfect.

And more than that, I think it was four months before that, TransPerfect had announced after their successful support of Matt Meyer, that they were going to support legislative races. At the time, in that previous announcement, we didn’t know which candidates they were going to support. We could guess, but we didn’t know specifically. 

But then four months later, they put out this press release about this change in the court rules and the speaker is quoted there. That told me, “Oh, okay, that’s a strong indication of somebody that they will likely support in the next election or that person’s allies.”

So did seeing that quote in that press release, when you were looking at these campaign finance reports, were you then looking for anything connecting Shawe and Minor-Brown? 

I mean, I was looking at them all. But yes, I mean, when I saw that, I guess I looked for it.

When you’re looking at campaign finance reports, you’re going to look at the most powerful elected officials first. So, if it’s a governor’s race, you’re going to look at those running for governor. You’re also going to look at, with particular interest, those who are donating to the speaker of the house.

So let’s switch to the GOP. Your article on the current state of Delaware Republican Party finances follows up on reporting you did in December highlighting several financial and personnel challenges in the party. Party chair Gene Truono did not comment for your December article, but gave you two lengthy interviews for this article.

Did you have a sense that he was going to be more willing to talk to you as things were looking better for the state GOP? Why do you think he gave you more information for this article? 

I think that’s probably part of it. It’s easier to talk publicly to a reporter when things look a little bit better.

At the time, I’m not sure if they exactly knew what was going on. He has told me since, he told me during those lengthy interviews, that they weren’t really able to be in a lot of communication with their accountant at the time. So they may not really have had good answers.

I think part of it also is, and this is just me putting myself in his head and speculating, but he might’ve seen that it’s actually better for us when we talk to a reporter. 

Broadly, beyond just this story, I think it is better for folks to talk to reporters, even on a story that’s gonna be scrutinizing. Unless they think they’re going to get sued over something. If their comments might be used in a lawsuit, then maybe don’t talk to a reporter. But short of that, I think it’s generally better. 

Your reporting states that the Delaware GOP federal bank account as of February was $19,000 and that they had a similar amount for their state account.

Help the listeners out. Does that amount of money signal that the GOP is ready to field competitive candidates to take on Senator Coons and Representative McBride in national races, and then also try to chip away at Democratic majorities in the state. Is that a healthy amount of money to help them accomplish their aims? 

On its own? If they didn’t raise any more money, then no. But, it shows that they’ve started  raising a little bit of money. And then also what they’re telling me is this is the start of their new fundraising initiative, that they say will go well beyond their current cash on hand.

You are always looking for signs of what’s going to happen in the future, indicators about what’s going to happen in the future. And I think it is an indicator that things might be turning. The ship is slowly steering the other direction,

Will you be looking at the next campaign finance reports to see if that ship is heading in the right direction still? 

Yes. And, I think with the next campaign finance reports, I’m going to look closely at the donors themselves. Are there any big individual donors or groups, not just people but other groups or companies or anything like that. 

In that article about the GOP, you detail some turmoil in the business relationships with their former accountant and also in Truono “unappointing” GOP Executive Director Nick Miles.

How do you write about these issues – and I guess this goes for the Minor-Brown article as well – how do you write those in a way that doesn’t just seem like total political insider intrigue, but makes clear to everyday Delawareans how this impacts them? 

When you report, you get a whole lot of stuff. You just get a lot of notes, a lot of stuff together, and then you have to synthesize that all and try to just figure out how am I going to write this in a way that takes a hundred pages of notes and puts it into a two-page story.

But to answer your question directly, the most important nuggets from your notes, the most important to the public, to the reader, goes at the top of the story. And that is an editorial decision you have to make. And then you try to make it flow and try to make it interesting, so they’ll read to the bottom. 

I made the decision, for example, to put the information about Nick Miles no longer being with the party, or at least no longer being the executive director, at the very bottom of the story. I think it’s interesting, I think it follows up on what we reported in December, but it wasn’t central to this new story.

I thought it should go on the record and have the public know about it, but I made a decision – let’s put it at the bottom. I imagine a whole lot of people who read the story didn’t actually get that far down to even read it. So maybe they’re listening now and they learned.

And that political insider stuff still relates to – I mean, you talk about that over 200,000 Delawareans are registered with the GOP – that insider political stuff still impacts how those folks see their party.

Yes, it impacts how their party operates, especially in the current moment. There is within the GOP, I think, still this tension, maybe it’s resolving, maybe not, between the traditional GOP folks – the Chamber of Commerce type of folks – and the new MAGA coalition.

And so to see who is in leadership in their party can give the members of the party, and just the public generally, an idea of which of those camps the party is more following or is it a mixture.

And then the second part of it too is, you also have a whole lot of people who donate to the party and a lot of them aren’t super wealthy. A lot of them are just kind of regular people. So there is a level of accountability journalism that’s involved there just to tell people this is how they’re spending your money.

The original plan was to publish both of these articles the same day. That didn’t quite happen. But when you and Jake, our editor in chief, were planning the reporting cadence in our newsletter, why did you want these reports to land close to the same time? 

They were coming around the same time anyway. We were thinking, oh, might as well run them on the same day.

In part because I think it demonstrates to the readers that we go after power bases wherever they lie. The plan was to show that, and frankly a little bit of a public relations for Spotlight Delaware showing people that we’re scrutinizing the Republicans and we’re also scrutinizing maybe the second most powerful Democrat.

Big picture final question here. You’ve said that both of these articles really kind of marked the launch of campaign season. What are the big themes that you are looking for now that this campaign season is starting off, with finance and otherwise? 

So starting with the Democrats  in Dover, you have I think three camps that have emerged, if not more. 

You have the establishment Democrats. They may bristle at that description, but I’m just going to call them that for lack of a better term. You have the more leftist Democrats, the progressive Democrats. And then you have the governor’s office. You have Governor Matt Meyer.

Who aligns with who and who supports who is still a little squishy. But I think as this campaign moves forward, when we look at additional campaign finance reports, when we look at what people are saying, it’ll give us more clarity about what that means for who’s going to support who.

As the election moves forward, the campaigns move forward, I’m going to keep an eye to see whether the governor involves himself in any of these local legislative elections.He probably won’t, but I’d be curious to see if he does.

And then for the Republican side, it seems like we always state that this is a super important election for everybody, but this one will be for them. They can either win a few seats which could then maybe eliminate the Democrats super majority, at least in one of the House. There’s different kinds of super majorities in Delaware. Or they can lose a couple seats and the Democrats super majority could increase to allow them to pass constitutional amendments without any Republican votes. 

So they could either move into a little bit more relevance, because they’re on the fringes now. Or they can move farther into the periphery and become somewhat of an afterthought in Delaware politics. 

So that’s what these elections might tell us – first primary then in general.

Thank you for keeping us up to date on campaign finance. As you’ve noted, there’s going to be plenty more to talk about as we head towards November.

Thanks, David. Appreciate it.