Why Should Delaware Care?
With 20% of the Republicans in the Delaware General Assembly retiring this fall, the party’s demographics could see a shake-up after the November election. As younger and more diverse candidates are seeking the open seats, Republican leaders say they hope to sustain a conservative coalition in Dover that is more varied in age, gender and race.
The decisions of four long-serving Republican lawmakers to not seek reelection to the Delaware legislature will clear the way this fall for a leadership change in each of their districts.
The retirements also are likely to shift the demographics of the General Assembly’s Republican caucus toward a younger and more diverse coalition.
Rep. Ron Gray (R-Selbyville) became the latest in a string of departing GOP lawmakers earlier this month, joining Reps. Rich Collins (R-Millsboro), Charles Postles (R-Milford North, Frederica) and State Sen. Dave Lawson (R-Marydel). All four retiring legislators have served in the General Assembly for at least a decade.
At least one Democrat and one Republican — and in one particularly crowded race to succeed Collins, three Republicans — have tossed their hats into the ring for each seat, setting the stage for a series of contested elections this fall.
All of the new candidates are younger than the retiring incumbents, and a number of them are women, spurring a possible shakeup within the legislature’s Republican caucuses — which have historically skewed white, male, and older.
While there is a possibility that one or more of the open seats could flip to Democratic control, Sam Hoff, a retired political science professor at Delaware State University, said he forecasts all four will remain Republican strongholds.
Currently, just four of the 20 elected Republicans inside Legislative Hall are under the age of 50. All of them are white, and all of them, with the exception of Valerie Jones-Giltner (R-Georgetown), are male.
Delaware Republican leaders say they welcome a shift to a more diverse group of elected officials from their party, but their primary focus is on putting forth candidates who are good representations of conservative values, regardless of their age, gender or race.
“We don’t follow a prescribed method of who should fit for what seats and who should run,” Delaware Republican Party Chair Gene Truono told Spotlight Delaware. “Organically, things happen based on people’s merit and the necessary skillset.”
While party leaders say they hope a more diverse pool of candidates will provide electoral success and expand the GOP’s voter reach in the state, it remains to be seen whether this year’s trend will mark a sustained change in the party.
A glance at the field
While some retiring Republican lawmakers have endorsed a new candidate to replace them, other races are shaping up to become a more messy fight, with multiple candidates vying to represent the GOP in the November election.
Postles, 76, whose district covers northern Milford and the towns of Frederica, Houston, Bowers and Magnolia, was the first Republican to share his decision to retire in late November 2025.
Since his announcement, three candidates have entered the race for Postles’ seat: Joshua Pennington, a Democrat, and Matt Bucher and Morgan Hudson, both Republicans.
Postles said he is pleased to see that there is both a man and a woman running in his district, and that both candidates are younger than him. He said he does not plan to throw his support behind either one before the primary in September. Hudson previously ran against Postles for the North Milford-area seat in 2016, when Postles was first elected.
Collins, 76, also announced in late November that he would not seek reelection, setting up a messy primary race between three Republican candidates John Atkins, Doug Conaway and Jacki Slonin. Democrat Ryan Stuckey has also filed to replace Collins in representing the Millsboro-area seat.
Questions about Atkins’ candidacy, who has a controversial past as a former state representative and multiple arrests for domestic violence, have created a split among some Sussex County Republicans.
Atkins has garnered endorsements from Sussex County Council members and other local politicians in the Millsboro area, while Collins has staunchly thrown his support behind Conaway. Collins told Spotlight Delaware he would ask anyone who is supporting Atkins in this election “what they think of the Eric Swalwell situation,” referring to the recent Democratic California Congressman who resigned following accusations of sexual assault.
In campaign finance reports filed at the end of 2025, Conaway received donations from a number of prominent Republican lawmakers, including Postles, Gray, House Minority Leader Tim Dukes (R-Laurel) and Rep. Mike Smith (R-Pike Creek). Atkins has not had to file a campaign finance report, since he officially entered the race in early April.
When Lawson, 80, announced his impending retirement in January, he immediately endorsed Emily Thompson to take his place. Lawson said he has been doing “a lot of political things” with Thompson over the past couple of months to prepare her for office should she win in November.
Nisha Lodhavia, a Democrat, has also entered the race for Lawson’s seat, which covers the majority of western Kent County, including Felton, Marydel and Harrington.
Similar to Lawson, Gray, 70, threw his support behind Carlie Carey, a former Fenwick Island restaurant owner, after announcing he would not seek reelection this month.
Gray told Spotlight Delaware he hoped to find a small-business owner to run for his seat — which includes Fenwick, Selbyville and South Bethany — so Carey is the ideal candidate.
Maureen Madden, a Democrat, has also been campaigning for Gray’s position since last summer.
Truono, the state Republican Party chair, said he feels “confident” all four open seats will stay in Republican hands, but the party still needs to work hard to bring awareness of the new candidates to as many voters as possible.
Hoff, the political scientist, said he also believes the demographics of the districts all appear to still lean Republican this year. But the two Kent County districts – Postles’ and Lawson’s – might start to shift toward a Democratic majority in the near future, he said.
Hoff attributed this to a growing population of people of color in Kent County, who he said are more likely to vote for the Democratic Party unless the Republicans are able to diversify some of the candidates they put up for election.
Looking ahead
The incoming slate of Republican candidates represents a substantially more diverse coalition than the GOP currently has in the General Assembly.
Many party leaders said the wider range of candidates could help the GOP gain more traction in Delaware moving forward. But at the same time, leaders say their primary focus is on finding candidates with conservative values, rather than ones who check a specific demographic box.
Lawson, who will be 80 years old when his term ends, said a major part of his decision to retire was about making room for more young blood in the party, and helping the party “get more in line with the public” in terms of age, gender and racial representation.
For example, Lawson told Spotlight Delaware, he “doesn’t really know what a bitcoin is,” and a younger representative in the district would likely be better able to tackle pressing technology and financial issues.
Ruth Briggs King, a former Republican state representative who ran for lieutenant governor in 2024, said she has been pushing for more diverse Republican candidates for a while. She often finds, though, that younger candidates or women have work and other scheduling limitations that make it challenging for them to seek office.
“I’ve talked to several young women over the years, and they will tell me, ‘I can’t [run for office], I will wait until my children are older,’” Briggs King told Spotlight Delaware.
Briggs King added that she is pleased to see younger Republican women like Thompson and Carey stepping up to run this election cycle. She hopes it will break down the barriers for more candidates who aren’t just men closing in on retirement age.
Truono and Dan Willis, the Delaware Republican Party vice chair, said both state leadership and the county GOP committees are diverse: Truono is openly gay, Willis is young and Hispanic, and state party secretary Brandon Brice is Black, they said. They believe the House and Senate Republican caucuses will soon catch up in terms of diversity, as their message continues to resonate with more voters.
Willis added that his goal is finding candidates “of character,” and if those candidates also come from a background that is not as traditionally associated with the Republican Party, that is a bonus.
“We’re championing this big tent concept to say, if you believe in conservative values, we want you,” Brice said. “I think you’re going to see a very different GOP now than you may have seen in the past.”
Transparency Notice:
Brandon Brice serves on Spotlight Delaware’s Advisory Council. Advisors have no role in the editorial decision-making of Spotlight Delaware. For more information, see our Ethics Policies page.
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/.
