Spotlight Delaware reporter Nick Stonesifer recently spoke with Ray Seigfried and Shay Frisby, who are seeking the Democratic nomination for Senate District 5 in Delaware in the Sept. 15, 2026, primary election.
Seigfried is a first-term incumbent who will be looking to defend his seat from Frisby, a progressive challenger backed by the Working Families Party.
Readers can find condensed versions of the candidates’ answers below, while the accompanying podcasts feature unedited excerpts from our conversations.
Sen. Ray Seigfried
What is something that people should know that isn’t on your campaign page?
I am very active in the healthcare area, and, I believe very strongly in the concept of healthcare and community involvement.
I have always been that way, and I went and received my master’s degree from Antioch University, and they have a motto that stuck with me all these years, “Be ashamed of yourself unless you’ve done some progress for humanity.”
That really matched my moral compass.
Why should Delawareans reelect you?
I think all of us come to office with a particular expertise and, for me, it’s certainly healthcare. I’ve spent my entire career in healthcare, whether as senior vice president at ChristianaCare or full-time professor teaching health policy, looking at health policy all over the world.
And I think that what I’ve been able to do is certainly through two bills: Senate Bill 1, which has to deal with hospital costs and primary care, and Senate Substitute 1 for Senate Joint Resolution 7, which has to deal with pharmaceutical costs.
I think the other issue is, as chairman of the Corrections Committee, I bring to that committee a sense of my learning from being a board member on the Wilmington HOPE Commission, an organization to break recidivism for people coming out of jail.
You were a former hospital executive, but you haven’t been afraid to call out behavior that you’ve deemed “disgraceful.” Some of the bills that you were a primary sponsor on have taken aim at high costs and healthcare worker shortages.
What work is left to be done on that front, and how would you plan to circumvent, fierce resistance from healthcare entities like hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, or insurance?
So let’s take SB 1 as, as an example. So SB 1 is, as I said, on the floor is just a beginning, it’s not an end, and we’re really gonna have to keep monitoring behavior and practice billing from hospitals on this. We’re gonna have to keep an eye on primary care. You know, the amount of money being spent, which should eventually reach 11.5%. I am going to be really interested in continuing my evaluation of the outcomes, that bill brings to bear.
The other resolution, as you may know, looks at the State Employee Benefit Committee, which has codified authority to negotiate and recommend benefits, including pharmaceuticals as well as the health insurance program.
It covers 138,000 lives. Pharmacy costs alone exceed a half a billion dollars. That’s a lot of taxpayers’ money that we need to be on top of in every possible way.
You’ve been outspoken about the role of pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) in the state health insurance plan. How might you seek to address the issue of PBMs at a legislative level?
It really starts with some of the recommendations that I provided in my resolution. Now, I know that when this resolution got approved, the committee already had a mandate based on their timing of getting the bid out.
But a lot of these recommendations are short-term, but more so long-term considerations to position the state in order to do that very thing. So challenging the PBMs in terms of looking at some of their data, I think that that’s very, very important.
A PBM should be issuing a copy of their pricing – and it doesn’t have to be to the world, it could be just to the committee – so the committee understands the rock-bottom lowest price for each of the drugs.
Right now, we have no idea. So that’s something that we need to challenge with the PBMs. We need to know the contracts and agreements that the PBM has with the manufacturing companies.
This is a race between kind of the establishment Delaware Democrats and a Working Families Party-endorsed candidate.
Looking at recent campaign finance reports for your candidate committee, it shows that you’ve accepted donations from some corporate law firms, hospital lobbying groups, insurance companies, as well as some prominent state lobbyists. While it’s not a life-changing amount of money, they still represent a connection to the Democratic establishment.
How would you hope to differentiate yourself from the establishment as momentum on the left flank of the party is kind of growing nationally.
First of all, go back to the campaign finance laws. Unlike on a national level, where a PAC can issue hundreds of thousands of dollars or whatever, here in Delaware for state senate, state representative, we’re looking at, a contribution limit of $600 for any individual, any PAC, or any organization.
I would challenge that if any individual running for office is going to be totally influenced by a $600 contribution, I think they should think again, about running
When we talk about some of the PAC support that I have, whether it’s law firms or education or solar energy, or whatever, I’m quite proud of those organizations.
As Americans grow tired of the role of special interest in politics, what would you say to constituents who might be concerned about your accepting of those donations?
I think they have to look at what special interest truly means.
You would have to look at the amount and the causes. Better quality education, unions that are fighting for the right for contracts, etc. I don’t see how these PACs are in contrary to representing our district.
This district is important, and you have to run a campaign effectively. I’d love to see public financing. I think that would be terrific.
When you were first nominated for the special election primary, there were questions about the nomination process, which some within the party had called a kind of “insider dealing.” How would you respond to those criticisms.
Well, first of all, we really didn’t have any choice.
This was the rules of the party. So at that point, you had to follow the rules of the party. So that’s it.
Would you support changes to those rules?
I think that would be a good step forward. Yes.
One of the bigger bills, early on in your tenure was Senate Bill 21, a bill that some considered to be a capitulation to Elon Musk and billionaires as he slammed the Delaware corporate franchise and was hoping to pull other companies out of the state with it.
As a relatively new senator and someone who was really focused on healthcare at the time, why did you join onto the bill, and do you have any comments on the claim that it was a capitulation?
Well, it wasn’t.
And decade after decade after decade, it has really functioned very, very well for businesses, and it has, whether we like it or not, materialized as the second-largest revenue source for the state of Delaware.
The money that comes in from that bill funds our fire companies, our schools, our healthcare, and all of the other services that the state government provides.
I think you have to look at Senate Bill 21 as a protector of that program, because now we have Texas and other states that are now trying to destroy this whole idea.
And if they’re successful, I have no idea where we’re going to make up $2 billion in revenue.
Shay Frisby
What’s something that people can’t find on your campaign page?
I started out in my community as a block captain. I was a civic association member. I have worked formally as a board member of the Claymont Renaissance Development Corporation. I am currently a member of my Seventh District RD, which is the representative district, and I am also an active member of our Claymont Coalition for Environmental Justice.
I have a background in early childhood education, administration of justice and leadership, and I’ve done some organizing around collective bargaining rights.
Why do you believe Delawareans should elect you?
I believe that Delawareans should elect an individual who believes that any time decisions are made on behalf of Delawareans, that they should have a voice at the table.
I believe the community that I serve has been articulating how important it is for them to be heard. Our district asked me to run, so, I will show up. I have always showed up in my community.
If you were elected, what would be some of your first priorities?
So I think my priorities are focusing on working wages for working families.
We are living in a time when families are really struggling. You have high costs in food, energy, housing, taxes.
Universal childcare is one of the other things that I’m fighting for and then also universal healthcare. Working as a supervisor within the Division of Social Services, our state has about one-third of individuals who are on Medicaid. And there’s a lot of changes that are going to be affecting our Medicaid and Medicare programs that are trickling down from the federal government, and those are going to become substantial.
This election is very much establishment versus progressive party politics. You’re a political newcomer who also has an endorsement from the Working Families Party of Delaware. What would you say to voters who may view its platform as too progressive?
My platform is progressive in the sense of wanting to make sure that Delawareans are supported and that there’s a voice at the table for them when decisions are made.
This isn’t a new journey for me. I’ve consistently fought for the childcare industry or for workers that have been feeling like they’ve been left behind.
I don’t see that as being overly progressive. I don’t see it as being overly progressive to care that our families and children are able to receive what they need in school to be able to just to have the resources necessary, to have the funding that teachers need so that they can do their job, and they can have the support to continue to care or to continue servicing children in school.
I don’t think it’s too progressive to also be aware that we have families who are accessing state benefits who actually work in state government.
There’s people on the other side of that who are impacted by those decisions, and they need also to have a voice. They need to also be considered when there are decisions being made.
Critics of progressive policy have often said, it’s often difficult or too costly to implement programs. Some of your platform looks as though it would require investment from the state, between universal childcare and universal healthcare. What specific plans do you have to fund those programs, and how would you, get it into the budget?
I don’t think any amount of money is too much to invest in our youth.
When it comes to childcare, we’re subjected to these market rate studies that have long been known to not really determine the true cost of care.
And we have to pay attention to these types of studies because when they are completed, these are the studies that are used to determine how purchase of care rates are set. We need to address what’s broken in those systems to realize that how we’re going to get beyond them. And so I guess the plan would be looking at what we’ve done and taking that and coming up with some ways around it.
We need to look at other states. New Mexico just implemented universal childcare.
How did they do it? What programs did they use? What resources did they use? What type of funding streams did they use? What can we do to bring some of that here to maybe implement some of those services here?
