Delaware House District 36 Primary Conversations: Bryan Shupe & Patrick Smith

I think my campaign represents everything that I’ve continued to run on.

But I think it’s a little bit different this year because I have really increased the presence of social media and allowing people to see behind the closed doors in Dover of what goes on, not only when a bill is introduced, but on a daily basis.

I’ve done that through my social media presence on Mr. 302. So allowing them to see what the daily process is, how bills are formed, what individuals on both sides of the aisle are thinking about different bills and how they work through the process. A lot of people have reached out to me and said they really appreciate seeing bills from the level of just an idea going through the committees, going on the House floor, and then being signed into law. What that actually takes. Who are the proponents and opponents of the law so they can get involved themselves.

One of the ways that I reach out is social media, but in doing that, people reach out to me in person, when they see me in my small businesses or on the street.

They also come up to Legislative Hall. They reach out to me by email, by text, all the traditional ways as well.

But social media has been that outlet for me to share exactly when people should get involved. And it’s a much earlier stage than people really think, that they should be contacting their representatives.

My legislative priority really is to reduce the financial burden that has been placed on individuals within our communities. The prices of electricity, but also groceries and gas, continue to rise.

And a lot of the majority party continue to blame the federal government, but there are so many things that we can do here at the state level in order to decrease spending and increases on our side here in the state of Delaware.

The first is spending. In the last six years, there has been an increase of spending by the majority party of 42% percent, while only seeing a 22% increase of taxpayer money coming in the door. So it’s reckless spending; it’s unsustainable. I know as a small business owner, I can’t spend more than is coming in the door because I won’t be able to survive.

Another thing is we need to lower personal property taxes for individuals and personal income taxes for individuals, because when people have more of their own money to spend, then they will spend it in their local economy.

And I think a lot of people are waking up to see that without those spending limits and without that reduction for individuals’ taxes, that we’re not gonna make it out of this.

There are many places that can be cut.

The first thing is that there are hundreds of positions within the state of Delaware that haven’t been filled for almost a decade that continue to be paid for and just revolve into the general fund.

We need to get down to the root causes of what’s allowing people to stay on Medicaid year after year to reduce the cost to the state.

There’s also an increase in spending on education, and that doesn’t mean cutting the cost for teachers, but it means cutting out some of the fat of administration. We continue to spend more and more every single year. They’re calling for an increase in $2 billion in our education system, yet the proficiency rates are continuing to decrease. We have 60% of our kids in public schools who can’t read at a proficient level for their grade level, and over 70% can’t do math on a grade level.

So we need to look at not only where do to cut, but how can we spend in a smarter way? What is working? And how can we spend more in the ways that are working, and how can we decrease in the ways that are creating dependency for people?

I think you work with the majority party when it is good for the state of Delaware, but they may be doing pet projects that may be good for a few people within their district, but it’s not good for the majority of Delawareans.

For example, the bond bill. I think this came out of an article that I saw out in Spotlight Delaware, where there was $40 million that was spent in New Castle County, throughout the bond bill, but not a single municipality in Kent or Sussex County received any money.

We cannot spend on pet projects when you literally have things like infrastructure that’s not being paid for down here.

I’m not a horse trader. I won’t be a politician who says, “Hey, you vote for this bill, and I’ll vote for your bill.” I don’t think that’s the right way to go about it. The way that I reach across the aisle, and I’ll give you a perfect example of this, is really coming up with, authoring bills that I think are the right thing to do.

And I go across the aisle, and I’m able to garner that support. One of those was with HB 113. It was a bill that stopped taxpayers from funding pensions for convicted child abusers who were in our education system. We had Democrats who refused to vote for that bill.

But I reached across the aisle to Rep. Kim Williams, who’s the education chair, and she helped me get the votes necessary to get that out of committee. I think if you have a bill that is right for the right reasons, you will get individuals across the aisle.

You don’t need to forego your values.

SB 23, in my opinion, is the perfect example of smoke and mirrors. It calls for more building of affordable housing, yet there is not really a definition of affordable housing. It doesn’t have a price tag in it. It doesn’t have any definition of workforce housing that this would be for nurses or teachers or any of that.

Really, all it does is call for higher density. I think it calls for eight units per acre for 20% of a comprehensive plan. So it allows for developers to have more density without actually having regulations on what that affordable housing looks like.

It also pulls back the community-involved, public process of what they see, how many times they see those neighborhoods throughout the planning process. So I think it’s a really bad decision.

We don’t have enough infrastructure, we don’t have enough emergency services, and we definitely don’t have enough healthcare in order to facilitate and handle all the growth that’s going on right now.

I’m always am a proponent of working alongside nonprofits that know what they’re doing.

We have a nonprofit in Milford called Milford Housing Development Corporation. It is similar in a lot of ways to Habitat for Humanity, where they take families, help them through the process. They put in sweat equity to build their house, then they teach them financial literacy as well to know what homeownership really is, and they help them with the bank.

Now, one of the pieces of legislation that I’ve been working on is called a risk loan pool, and I’ve discussed it with Delaware State Hosing Authority before, but I’m formally writing a bill now. A risk loan pool means that instead of writing checks for $10,000 to $20,000 to pay for that initial down payment, the state of Delaware will actually take on a small portion of risk, say 5%, to local community banks.

That means that they can help a lot more people, but it also means it doesn’t artificially inflate the prices in the market. So the housing prices stay stable, and they also can help people who will be just outside of that risk limit for local banks in order to get into homes.

No. 1, stop raising LLC fees and also any fees to start up a business.

I also want to connect [entrepreneurs] them with other small businesses in order to learn about marketing, purchasing, following regulations, etc.

I would also like to see a reduction in the gross receipts tax.

Many people don’t know what that is, but it’s basically like a hidden sales tax on the businesses themselves. It’s a tax that small businesses pay to the state of Delaware on how much money they bring in the door before they’re even allowed to take off any of their debts.

That is really hurting small businesses right now, and they have to pass it along to the consumers in higher prices.

The minority caucus [Republicans] has tried to remove it, I think for the last eight years that I’ve been there, and it has gotten no traction at all.

Again, the, majority party has said, “Hey, we’ll lose revenue for the state of Delaware.”

We keep reminding them that with more money in their pocket, these small business owners are going to be able to hire more people, they’re gonna be able to get more inventory, they’re gonna sell more, and at the end of the day, you’re going to collect more taxes.

I would say two things. No. 1 is funding. Who’s funding our campaigns? You can go look at that on the State of Delaware website for campaign finance.

He is funded by developers in the area. They do not like me because I had a bill that made developers pave their roads before they left a project.

I’ve also introduced legislation for impact fees for developers, that new growth has to pay for new growth. They need impact fees for EMS and first responders, for schools, and for infrastructure. So they’ve been after me for a while because they don’t want anyone to help hold them accountable to the people who live here.

No. 2, I have a record that people can look at. So whether it’s talking about spending, fighting for Second Amendment rights, or about voting conservatively, you can look at my record and see that that’s true. It’s not a campaign promise.

Even though we won by 12 votes, I really took that as a loss.

I thought not enough people knew what was going up in Dover because I feel like if they did, they would see how hard I was working as their voice, as their representative. So over the last two years, I’ve really leaned into helping people see what’s going on in Dover.

Sure. I’m 40 years old. I was born in Hagerstown, Maryland, where I stayed for just a very short period of my life, mainly just as an infant before relocating to Milford, Delaware.

I lived in Shawnee Acres in Milford for a while. At about age 8, I moved to Dover to be closer to my parents’ jobs – they both worked at the courthouse in Dover.

I worked at Bayhealth for about eight years, after leaving the state. And while at the state, I was a child abuse investigator for Department of Family Services. Clearly, that wasn’t the field that I wanted to be in, so that’s when I went and got my MBA in 2014 and found a job with Bayhealth in their finance department.

I later got into the IT department, and to this day, I still work in the same field. I basically would call it medical informatics. I work on a computer every day. I work with high-level executives doing financial reporting and system build, and I enjoy it. It’s a challenge, and I’ve been doing that for 10 years now.

I got into politics back around 2014, right around when Trump was getting into it. And, things have changed with Trump, obviously, over the decade. But, that’s what got me interested and fired up and, kind of an organic transition for me to where I am today in 2026.

I was more into an activism-type capacity, including through the Sussex County Young Republicans.

I was a member of several sportsmen associations, like the Delaware State Sportsmen’s Association, the largest gun rights organization in the state of Delaware. I was a member of Ducks Unlimited.

I’m a big outdoor sportsman, so I’ve always been really concerned about my Second Amendment rights.

As time went on, I kind of got approached in 2021 about running for state representative. I don’t actually live in the town of Ellendale, so I’m restricted to either running for a countywide seat or for a state seat.

Honestly, it’s the support I’ve gotten from people. I don’t think I would’ve come back and done it again if not for the amount of people that supported me and were regretful that it was such a close race.

I’m just kind of trying to do this to get things back to the middle here in District 36 and just try to make a difference that I can locally and go to Dover and at least roll up my sleeves and bring home a little more productivity than we’ve been seeing in the last eight years.

Obviously the cost of living in Delaware has gone way up. The cost of housing is absolutely crazy.

I’m not gonna sit here and say that I have some fancy policy or some arithmetic that’s gonna solve it all overnight, but these are things that I definitely think that need to be at the forefront instead of the two parties being so polarized on other topics. Everyone suffers from the cost of living. Everyone suffer from the cost of energy and housing.

I think a lack of jobs in Delaware is a big issue, especially in Sussex County. That’s one thing I know just being 40 and working class. There’s no really no jobs down here.

I’m a volunteer firefighter in Ellendale, so I’m a big supporter of our first responders. I definitely think that as a volunteer organization, we need as much help as we can get for police, fire, and EMS.

This is something that is needed every single day, at the drop of a hat. So it’s definitely important to make sure that it’s top quality.

Well, we might have the same policy platform, but Rep. Shupe has had eight years to make a difference.

And I can honestly tell you, and I know a lot of people that I speak to at the doors will tell you that nothing has changed in this district in eight years. So it doesn’t really matter to me what’s on paper. That’s really what Bryan Shupe likes to harp on: what’s on paper.

I plan on using the platform to go out and actually recruit jobs here, work with the county, work with the city, and try to bring people into these different areas where people are looking for jobs.

I think that we’re wasting the resources there if we’re just gonna go to Dover and report on what legislation is getting passed or not passed and put it on a website. Meanwhile, people are struggling every day to get jobs and find a place to work.

So I think there’s definitely a lot of things that need to be addressed and not just written on paper. That’s what I try to tell people.

The job isn’t to report back to the citizens on what’s going on in Dover. The job is to actually get things accomplished.

Well, I definitely think there is common ground with the Democrats and Republicans in some facets. You will get some very hard-nosed Republicans that might alarm, but there are cost of living concerns, there’s public safety concerns, there’s jobs.

Everybody works. Everybody’s got to buy a house. It doesn’t matter what party you’re from. And when you run your whole campaign on “It’s the Democrats’ fault,” like a lot of what Bryan Shupe does, you can’t expect to go to Dover and have a lot of friends.

I run my campaign on what Bryan Shupe hasn’t done in eight years, and Bryan Shupe runs his on why he didn’t do it, and it’s because of the Democrats. So to me, that’s an example of how you burn bridges before you even get to Legislative Hall.

I think it’s just starting with where do we connect and where do we intersect? I’m not gonna start with, “Well, I wanna repeal every gun law that was ever signed into law in Delaware. This ticks me off, and I want this.”

And I think there’s some topics that are really hard to go by in this state.

Our education system’s very politicized, and it makes a lot of people a lot of money. So it’s tough to go to somebody’s door and say, “Elect me, I’ll change the education system. I’ll get our gun rights back.” But I think there’s a lot of things you can sit down and say, “Well, where do we intersect on things, and how can we ensure that we’re giving everybody the best quality of life?”

And I think if you get out in the community and you’re talking to people and you’re saying, “Well, you’re a Republican and I’m a Democrat, but you want to lower your cost of living. You want a safe community. You like to have a good job.”

I mean, that’s where you start. That’s why they call it grassroots.

That’s why they call me a grassroots politician; it’s because I don’t really get into the party’s politics. I stick to what the people in neighborhoods think.

Probably just piggybacking what I kind of just said was I don’t really consider myself a politician. I don’t really get into party politics.

The party chooses who they want to support, and that’s fine. But last year proved when I beat their supported candidate at the polls, you don’t have to be supported by anybody.

You can just go out, meet people, knock on doors, and people will come out and support you. That’s really what matters. We live in a republic where people vote, and for me, the most important thing is being in front of the people and not asking people to come to you.

It’s not partisan. It’s everybody’s in the same room. So I think that’s really something I found to be one of my biggest assets.

Well, I think that the state holds a lot of the leverage when it comes to preservation and what to do at the forestry level. For me, I think that’s kind of our lane and try to stay competitive in terms of what’s the market for land.

And I’ve been told that that’s one of our biggest hurdles right now is that the state can’t be competitive with what developers are offering private landowners. So that’s why a lot of this land ends up going to developers, because the state might offer $1 million and the developer can offer $5 million.

So, developers have deeper pockets. I think it’s better for us to focus on what we can help. How can we help to preserve land by making it the best-case scenario for the landowners and the communities and let the sprawl planning and what goes where up to the local municipalities.

I think that’s something we can help at the state level.

Yeah, I mean, similarly, at the state level, it’s important to have relationships with the different entities that maintain these infrastructures.

I think my opponent has shown that he doesn’t have a great relationship with DelDOT, for example. That’s the team we want to be a part of if we’re trying to make sure the roads are improved and getting these projects done for people,

So I think maintaining good relationships at the state level with the different entities that are going to help us improve this infrastructure is important to me. Listening to what the citizens are saying. It’s important to put the money where the people want it.

I’ve honestly just been doing the same exact strategy that I did. It wasn’t really a strategy. It was just organically who I am and what I do. Just trying to stay in front of the constituents, meet the constituents, knock on as many doors as I can, go to the events that people invite me to, and make sure I show up.

When I say I’m gonna show up, I show up. I’m on phone calls. I’m on text messages. People text my campaign line, and I text them back. I speak to them. And I’m never afraid to talk about issues. So, if something comes up and it’s not something that we agree on, I might just have to tell them we don’t agree on it, but I’m not going to tell them to their face something that’s gonna get me a vote and then, go back on that after I’m elected.

And I think that’s my opponent’s issue right now is that he’s trying to walk back a lot of the promises he’s made and hasn’t kept. I don’t have that voting record to defend, so I’m a fresh slate. I’m a hard worker, and I’m ready to just get in there and get to work, and I think a lot of people understand that.