Why Should Delaware Care?
In Delaware, the county government’s primary authority is over land use decisions, including where development projects are allowed to be placed and whether data centers are permitted in the county. The results of Tuesday’s election across the three counties, and particularly in Sussex County, will shake up the future of these land use and energy policies.
At the county level, Tuesday night’s results were marked by a partial win for slower growth in Sussex County, as Democratic challenger Jill Hicks narrowly defeated longtime Republican Councilman John Rieley for a Georgetown-area district.
Meanwhile, current Republican Council President Doug Hudson held on to his Bethany Beach-area seat over Democratic challenger Justine Cuccia – he’s the only incumbent to hold his seat in Sussex County’s government over the past two election cycles.
County election results in New Castle County were highlighted by an overwhelming victory by progressive newcomer Kira Alejandro, and an incumbent defeat for a Kent County Recorder of Deeds race that drew outsized attention due to a last-minute candidate scandal.
The Sussex County races, which drew significant campaign spending and attention in recent months, has the potential to change what housing development projects and land use ordinances are able to gain county approval in the state’s booming southernmost county.
Republican incumbents Rieley and Hudson, who received large sums of campaign money from local homebuilders and realtors, have been known as the most development-friendly county leaders during each of their eight years in office.
Meanwhile, Hicks and Cuccia, the Democratic challengers, campaigned on a platform of slowing growth to match infrastructure, and imposing more requirements on developers.
“People are so angry and fearful of all the overdevelopment,” Hicks said when reached for comment Tuesday night. “That’s what made the difference.”
Sussex County: A closer look
In the heavily watched county council races, Hicks prevailed over Rieley by a relatively slim 552-vote margin, or 2.6% of the total vote, while Hudson defeated Cuccia by a larger margin of 3,212 votes.
Hicks told Spotlight Delaware on Tuesday night she attributed her victory to voters’ desire to “change the decision-makers,” because of how they witnessed Rieley allowing development without the adequate infrastructure to match over the past eight years.
Hudson did not respond to Spotlight Delaware’s requests for comment about his victory Tuesday night.
In the lead up to the election, Hicks and Cuccia both highlighted platforms of being willing to stand up to developers and create more strict county zoning codes.
Hudson and Rieley, on the other hand, cited their existing experience balancing developers’ priorities with farmland preservation and understanding the county code as vital to the government’s success in writing the upcoming 2028 Comprehensive Plan, which will determine where developers can build over the next decade.
Hudson and Hicks, who is known for her role as a founder of the land preservation-focused organization the Sussex Preservation Coalition (SPC), will join three council members elected in 2024, all of whom campaigned on a platform of slowing growth, in writing the Comprehensive Plan.
It remains to be seen how exactly the voting dynamics will play out with future land use decisions, as some of the three members elected in 2024 have at times been criticized for becoming too friendly to developers since being elected.
The result also represents just the second time in recent years that a Democrat has been elected to the County Council, following fellow preservation coalition co-founder Jane Gruenebaum’s election to represent a Lewes-area district in 2024.
This time, though, the district Hicks won encompasses Millsboro and Georgetown, which leans more Republican than Lewes, according to voter registration numbers.
“We’ve pushed west, and that’s good momentum,” Hicks said.
Pervasive concerns with development fueled county residents’ interest in the race, which was matched by massive fundraising from both individual donors and third-party advertisers on the two sides.
Hicks and Cuccia raked in $46,115 and $37,191, respectively, in individual donations, which are
particularly large sums for a county-level race.
While Hudson and Rieley’s individual donation totals were substantially lower, both candidates received substantial money in the form of third-party advertising from the Sussex County Association of Realtors.
Rieley also received a last-minute outpouring of roughly $27,300 in third party advertising from DE Lead, a group run by leaders of the state’s builders’ union.
Kent County sees recorder upset
While the races up for election in Kent County drew markedly less attention than their southern neighbors in the months leading up to Nov. 3, an eleventh-hour video scandal may have helped lead to an upset for the county Recorder of Deeds position.
Democrat Ramona Bracy, who works in the state treasurer’s office, defeated incumbent Republican Recorder of Deeds Eugenia Thornton by a nearly 15% margin.
As its name suggests, the recorder of deeds manages the paperwork on property sales in the county along with mortgagees, easements, federal tax liens, and more.
Bracy’s win came after a video was published online on Nov. 1 in which Thornton criticized Bracy for attending an Indian festival and wearing a traditional Indian outfit, saying on video, “what a fucking whore. She’s not Indian.”
Thornton, who had held the countywide position since 2023, later apologized for her remarks on social media, writing that she was not aware she was being recorded at the time she made the comments, but she “made an offensive and disrespectful remark that I deeply regret.”
When reached for comment on Tuesday night, Bracy told Spotlight Delaware she was “elated” by the election results.
Bracy also said she didn’t believe the video controversy was a significant factor in the election results, because it was circulated so late in the race, when early voting was nearly over. Rather, she cited her platform of “modernizing systems and making things more efficient” as having resonated with voters.
The sole other contested Kent County race was for the at-large Levy Court seat, in which longtime Commissioner Terry Pepper defeated challenger Frank Coleman with 61.4% of the vote.
Pepper, a Democrat, will serve his fourth four-year term on the county government.
Democrats take New Castle County
The county positions up for election Tuesday night in Delaware’s northernmost county were all Democratic victories by over a 25% margin, unsurprisingly as registered Democrats outnumber Republicans roughly 2.5 to 1 in New Castle County.
Democrat Kira Alejandro defeated Republican Melissa Brayman by 5,529 votes for the Pike Creek and Hockessin-area County Council district left open by retiring Councilwoman Janet Kilpatrick.
Kilpatrick, who has represented the district since 2010 was the sole Republican on the 13-member county council. Alejandro’s win against Republican Melissa Brayman, the finance director for the state chamber of commerce, means the council is now comprised entirely of Democrats.
Alejandro, a musician and barista, largely focused her campaign on imposing a data center moratorium in the county. She also amassed a massive fundraising advantage over Brayman, raising $61,590 in individual donations to Brayman’s $7,450.
When reached for comment Tuesday night, Alejandro attributed the win to her campaign focus on prohibiting data centers and stopping overdevelopment – issues she said voters have reached a “boiling point” on.
“This district has never had a Democrat before, so for it not only to be won by a Democrat, but by a 30-year-old woman, I just am really honored,” she said.
Incumbent council members David Carter, whose district includes Middletown and Townsend, and Dee Durham, whose district spans the Brandywine Hundred and Red Clay Creek areas of the county, retained their seats against Republican candidates Alison T. Gibbs and Jamie Collins, respectively.
In a county that has seen multiple prominent data center proposals over the past eighteen months, Carter has been the council’s most outspoken data center critic, introducing multiple ordinances to regulate the facilities in New Castle County.
