House District 23 Primary Conversations:​Luann D’Agostino, Joe Jasper, David Redlawsk & Dan Seador

I live just on the north side of White Clay Creek State Park. So, as you know, we have a huge park right smack in the middle of our district. So, I’m right on the north side of it in Cotswold Hills.

And I own a ballroom dance studio in Hockessin. We are celebrating our 20th anniversary on the day of the primary election.

Delaware’s facing real challenges, from strengthening our public schools, protecting our rights, to addressing affordability, public safety, the future of our communities, at a time when too many people are feeling unheard, and politics feels increasingly divided. I think we need leaders who know how to listen, bring people together, and get results, and I feel like that’s exactly what I’ve been doing my whole life through my involvement in just so many things.

As an engineer, I learned to solve complex problems. As a small business owner, I’ve built a successful and inclusive community from the ground up at the dance studio. As an advocate, I work to make our community safer, strengthen our schools, ensure that every person’s treated with dignity and respect.

I’m lucky to work with part of the University of Delaware all the time. I am coach of the University of Delaware ballroom team.

My husband and I do a lot of work with them. We sponsor them as a studio. So I know how important it is. I’m used to that connection, working with the university. But yeah, I agree, they’re a huge part of our community, and I think what’s going to be very important, especially moving forward, is to make sure we have that connection as a legislature, as a representative to the university, but also to make sure that the university has that same connection with our community.

SB 23 is the bill that recently passed to hopefully get more affordable housing on the market more quickly. There also are some questions though about does that take decision-making or transparency away from community members, and that’s been a theme of a number of people that I’ve talked to as I’ve been knocking doors.

But I think it’s important that we are continuing to be transparent, and I think we can find some more ways to help the affordable housing crisis that we are facing right now without necessarily taking that transparency away.

We have some great small mom-and-pop landlords, rental unit owners in the Newark area. But I think they tend to get pushed out by the big corporations, and I think we need to be careful as we’re moving forward to protect the people who are really trying to help our community and act in the best interest of the community, and not force them to be selling to the large corporations where then we tend to see a lot of the increased prices.

I would love to see some kind of credits or incentives or maybe dropping the transfer tax for first-time home buyers to make that more accessible. I was able to purchase my first home at 23 in Delaware. That does not happen now. You see people in their 40s and 50s sometimes having the first opportunity to purchase a home.

So I think one of the big things that they started to address in our last session was utilities. And again, as a small business owner, I kinda get the double whammy here because utilities go up at home and utilities go up in the business. And we have two rather large cooling units at our space, the 6,000 square feet of the dance studio.

So we see the significant increases in the utility costs. And I know people are seeing that across all of their homes. And they did take steps to help control that a little bit with reining in Delmarva and potential increases in our utilities. I think that is a good step forward. I think we need to be very careful.

But let’s face it, the state had an involvement with the reassessment debacle that didn’t exactly go down properly. So I think anything we can do to help all of our residents know what’s coming as far as costs, help control those costs. I think the legislation that went through that put the 2% cap on the school tax increase was a great way to help people measure what are the costs that are coming forward so that we don’t go without increases for years and then get a 10% jump. Most people don’t plan for that.

So I really think that our legislature had a little bit of lack of vision and left the door open for data centers eyeing our communities. This is definitely my ballpark, having spent 15 years as an engineer with Hewlett-Packard. I helped build some data centers back in the late ’90s, early 2000s. And hands-on with the hardware, I can tell you the data centers they’re looking to put in today are not what was being built before, that were bringing jobs and technology to our community.

I don’t wanna see data centers in our community, especially not close to our communities like the one that was proposed in Newark. What I think is really important is to put the right guidelines and guardrails in place so that we don’t get caught again, one, not being ready for what’s coming down the road, but so that we can look to the future and we’re able to address the rapidly changing technology.

So I’m really happy about what Representative Gorman was able to get passed. I know some of them were not as strong as she would’ve hoped, but again, a step in the right direction. Sometimes we have to take steps towards our ultimate goals.

I don’t want to see that kind of thing happen in Delaware. This happened to be just across the line in West Chester in Pennsylvania. We know it’s a fact that immigrants are putting more into our economy than they could ever take out, because they’re not eligible for many of the services and subsidies that our citizens get.

Immigrant communities have helped build Delaware. They are many of our factory workers downstate. They do so much, and I think we need to offer them whatever protection we possibly can, because that is not happening at a federal level. I think we’re going to have to, as a state, be moving forward and putting a lot more protections in place across the board, whether it be for immigrant rights or civil rights or so many other things that are being attacked at the federal level.

So I’ve been very involved with following the Redding Consortium, and been involved for a decade-plus in fighting for education equity.

But I honestly don’t think their recommendation is ever going to pass. I think it’s going to fail. And when it does fail, Christina School District is really going to need somebody in there because they face some very unique challenges. Being a non-contiguous school district, they have all the special needs schools.

What I would like to see happen is maybe something out of the box. If that doesn’t pass, see something like maybe pooling of funds for the county. Still have separate school districts that are managed separately, but a New Castle County bucket of school district funds that then could be divided.

If there was an option to maybe pool the money without completely putting the school districts together into one, I think there’s some options, outside of the box options that could be explored.

Yes, I have been very active with Moms for a number of years.

Things that we’ve had to pass in the last few years over ghost guns. Whoever thought that 3D printers would be producing firearms? Their technology does evolve. Every time you put something out there to try and make guns safer, they find a way around it to modify things.

Our kids are safe in school. I don’t think people are necessarily feel safe in all of our communities. So until that is the case, there is always something that can be done to try and make everyone feel safer and just keep moving forward.

I live in District 1 in the city of Newark, which is in the Nottingham Green area, just to the west of the university.

I am self-employed and most recently stopped being a beer brewer.

I hate politics, but I do believe in public service. In an ideal world, I think everyone should take a term as a public servant. But unfortunately our society currently, it doesn’t make that possible for many people.

I feel fortunate that this seat became available when it did as I was wrapping up my career as a beer brewer. I’m excited for the opportunity to serve my community similar to what I’m already doing for community service as a member of the City of Newark Parking Advisory Committee.

Partially by having a version of like an open-door policy to be available to listen and be open to have those conversations with the students and the administrators. Also being proactive and seeking them out so that they know who I am and that I do very much want to work with them.

I will need to look into that more specifically at a later time. But the affordable housing scenario in Newark and all over Delaware is far from ideal and consistently getting worse, and it badly needs to be addressed. And there’s a lot of support that’s in the Senate and the House right now that is fighting for that.

I know, Rep. [Larry] Lambert is doing a lot of work on that front. So if elected, definitely very much looking forward to working with him to address those concerns.

Yeah, in areas of Europe they’re doing it, and then just walking around Main Street in downtown Newark, there’s just so much office space and retail space that is available but just not being taken up.

So I feel like the landlords are losing opportunity to get the long-term benefit they’re going for and they keep playing that long game and waiting to charge somebody really high rent. From what I understand, it’s oftentimes $30 a square foot. So yeah, if we were able to develop a system that people that were in between housing needs could live somewhere for a few months, it would just be a fantastic opportunity.

I personally find the data center in Newark, the proposed site on Ogletown Road to be problematic and frustrating. But more importantly, talking to the residents around town, people are up in arms and visibly and audibly very upset about this. And so yes, the short answer is I think we do need more legislation.

The power concern is a really big one that I’m hearing from a lot of residents. And at first glance, it sounded like they were trying to get, or were going to get these companies to supply all of their own power, but they’re not. It’s only a portion, and they have 10 years to actually achieve that, and this is a problem that is going to be affecting the residents now and tomorrow, not in 10 years.

Just keep expanding the protections for the immigrant community. Yeah, I think Mara did a great job drafting some legislation and sponsoring and co-sponsoring other ones. I was actually down in her office months ago lobbying her to sign on to HB94 when it was still being worked on, and she was very receptive and supportive and she did get on board with that one.

I don’t think it will actually take that much convincing, if any. Just ’cause they’re not being talked about doesn’t mean there’s not desire from the other legislators. So especially the balcony solar one, I think that is an easy lift. The green infrastructure is the big lift, so getting the backing from other legislators, I think that they will want to do it, but getting them to sign up for these committees and actually draft legislation is new territory for me.

I live in Paper Mill Falls, which is near the Newark Reservoir. And I currently am the James R. Soles professor and chair of the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Delaware. My position as chair actually is about to end at the end of August after 10 years. I’m stepping down so that another colleague can take over these responsibilities. However, I will remain a faculty member in political science.

I decided to run because I think I bring a unique set of experiences and knowledge to some very, very complicated issues that exist these days, both in terms of dealing with what’s going on in Washington with Trump and MAGA, but also issues relating to education, healthcare, affordability.

I come at this as someone who has previously served in office in New Jersey, when I lived in a different community. I served on the governing body, having experience therefore in representing people and making tough decisions. I have been an academic. I’ve been a professor, a teacher for three decades.

Yeah, that’s an interesting challenge, right? The university is a huge factor here in Newark. It’s a big part of the 23rd and 25th RD’s. The university is an important economic driver for the state as a whole. It’s also a very highly respected educational institution that creates a future for so many students.

And I interact, of course, with those up the line, the deans, the provost, the president’s office. So I understand it from the inside. But at the same time, that doesn’t mean I’ve been happy with everything that I see. In fact, I think there are plenty of opportunities to do better, and particularly for the university to do better in its relationship with the city of Newark, which is a critical relationship that has not been as strong as it should have been over a number of years.

Affordable housing is one of those challenges that we’re facing, and we’re facing it in a sense at two different levels.

We’re facing it at the very basic level, dealing with folks who are unhoused, who literally have no roof over their head and no prospects. And there we need to have, at the state level, a housing first strategy. That is, a strategy that says the most important thing for people is shelter before we worry about the other challenges.

SB 23 is designed to try to cut some of the barriers to building more affordable housing. Again, it doesn’t solve problems for unhoused people but taking some of the barriers away I think is important.

I do think it’s an interesting challenge though between state control and local control, having served as a local official and an elected official. And prior to that, I even chaired a planning commission, so I understand local control. I understand the importance of doing that. But I also think we have to have overall statewide policies in a state as small as Delaware that support these efforts.

And so I think SB 23 is not an unreasonable start, but we’re also going to have to watch it carefully. We’re going to have to be vigilant to make sure it doesn’t run roughshod over localities, and to amend it if necessary if it does.

Yeah, this is a big one, and it’s a very difficult one, right? I think that there are a couple of directions we can go.

On housing in particular for people who rent, we need to investigate rent stabilization. We need to investigate policies that allow people to stay in their homes while recognizing the rights of landlords while also recognizing that people need shelter.

I think we also need to make sure that while we’ve increased our minimum wage, and it’s a great thing that we’ve done it, we need to make sure that the minimum wage does not fall behind in the future, so that we ought to put in place a connection to inflation so that the minimum wage is not stagnant for as long as it was in the past.

And while this isn’t necessarily a direct affordability thing, it is in the end, and that is our state income tax system is really unfair, right? People who make a million dollars, $10 million pay the same rate as people who make $65,000, and that makes no sense. I think we can do more to add new brackets at the top end to increase rates at the top end.

And one of the things that may allow us to do is to lower tax rates or maybe even eliminate income tax at the lowest end of the income scale. And so even saving a few hundred dollars on income taxes for working people matters a lot when the costs of everything else are rising. I think this is part of the wealthiest Delawareans paying their fair share, easing the burden on those just trying to get by.

One of the things we’re all worried about is electric rates, which have been skyrocketing. The legislature has made some progress on getting some of that under control, particularly with Delmarva Power.

But if the data centers come in the way they’re trying to come in, we could see 70% to 80% increases in electric rates to pay for them.

That just cannot happen. It’s really that simple. It just cannot happen.

I oppose any new data centers unless we can’t smell them, can’t taste them, can’t hear them, and we don’t pay for them with our own wallets, our environment, or our health.

I think we are in unique times. The idea that the legislature needs to pass laws to protect Delawareans from the federal government is just astounding to me. As someone who has studied U.S. government, and worked along these lines in politics for 30 years, I’m just stunned that we’re in that position, and I’m very, very glad that Representative Gorman moved forward with these.

I think it’s really important that we limit in any way possible the federal government’s ability to simply swoop in and destroy people’s lives. Not even those who are not here under the law, right? This is destroying the lives of legal immigrants. This is destroying the lives of immigrant communities as a whole.

That is absolutely a legitimate question, right?

We’ve been here 10 years. We came here for a job. I came here because I was recruited to become the chair of the political science department, and we found a home. We have been in multiple places. I think that gives me perspectives that I can bring to bear. I’ve been in different situations. I’ve been in different communities.

As I’ve said, I’ve served a community as an elected official. I’ve served another community as chair of a planning commission. My experience means, in effect, that I’m not just locked into one Delaware way. I’m really able to bring both personal experience, research experience, but also understanding how things have turned out in different places to bear on being a legislator here in Delaware.

There is something really, really special about Delaware, but especially about Newark itself as a university community, as a place that’s looking forward, not backwards, and as a place that I think has an incredible future in front of it. And I’d like to be part of making that future happen.

I live in the development of Evergreen in the city of Newark, just up on New London Road. It’s like the last development in the city of Newark. And I am currently retired. The last regular working job I had was as an assistant chief of operations for the New Castle County paramedics.

I have three granddaughters that are getting ready to enter; one of them has already entered the public school space.

I’ve been hearing for years and years now about the issues with the public school system. Having gone through the local public schools, I think that’s just terrible.

And if I can’t help do better by them by improving things in Delaware, particularly at the education level, then I almost feel like I’ve failed as a parent and a grandparent.

Well, that’s the $64,000 question, I guess. It is a challenge, and I will tell you that I know there’s been an administrative change there.

I’m hearing very positive things about the new president’s interaction with the community.

So I think there needs to be very direct engagement with the university in what their path forward is and how they feel they can better support the community. They’ve kind of been the elephant in the room for a long time.

First of all, I think everybody agrees that there’s a need for more housing. But if you start taking away the ability of the community to weigh in on how open space or how housing is going to be built out or developed, that’s going to be a real challenge.

It almost sounds like, hey, we’re just going to shove this down your throat and you’re going to have to like it. And that is not going to sit well with any community, I don’t care whether it’s the Newark community or any other one.

There needs to be, on the one hand, the understanding is we need more housing, and on the other hand, well, there’s always kind of a NIMBY attitude out there, where that’s great, but we just don’t want it next to our housing. And so it requires a lot of face-to-face discussion, and in the end it’s going to require compromise.

There’s a lot that is outside of the state’s control. Can we be more supportive of people that are in challenged circumstances where they no longer can put enough food on their table or their electric bills have gone crazy?

Yes, I think we can do that. I think there’s been steps taken, and we’ll continue to see what both county council and the state legislation does to require big users of power to be able to cover the cost of the infrastructure and not put that onus on the community.

And if you look at examples like Loudoun County, Virginia, where they’re the data center of the country right now, I think, and they’re regretting it, because of the power sap that has been. So people are already screaming about how high their electric rates have gotten. So there is one way that we might be able to control that.

So we all pay that bill. Now, should we be looking at, I think it’s the Indian River Plant, we should be looking at possibly reopening that or micro-nuclear plants. I think we should be looking at all those things, and that would help on the power end.

We’ve been looking at food insecurity for a while now in the region. And the interesting thing that we have found is that there does not seem to be any real lack of food. The challenge is getting the food to the people who need it. So we are trying to develop a network that is readily accessible where we can bring food, or have a database where we know where food is.

So I think what I would say is I think legislatively we can offer more support for the boots on the ground there, the groups, the food cupboards that are doing the hard work of making sure people get the food that they need.

Well, I believe the data center that you’re referring to is in the White Clay Creek office park. Yeah. And I believe it’s been put on pause at this point. I would agree with that move.

But when it starts requiring the power that these facilities require and the backup power and all that, then that starts sending up flags in the community. I think that particular facility was going to be right near housing and it would’ve been a challenge to those neighbors, I think, with the noise and potential pollution that that facility would create.

And then they’ve had to go, “Whoa, wait.” I think it’s prudent for us as both a community and a state to step back and take a bigger look at this and what its real impact is going to be on the community and on our resources. I understand that on the one side, the people in the construction trade are going to love building out these places.

Because it’ll be good work for them for a short period of time. The bottom line is in the end, unless we’re getting some sort of other revenue source from these data centers, it’s not like they’re going to be employing a whole bunch of people. So I don’t know where the revenue stream for the state and the community comes from with these places.

So I think those kinds of things definitely need a harder look before we commit to them. I think the pace of growth of these facilities has been frenetic and my concern becomes, okay, we build out a bunch of data centers and five years from now the next big thing comes along, then where are we?

Well, I think from the broad perspective, I think certainly all people need to be respected regardless of their background or where they came from and they should be protected and treated appropriately.

And I think what Representative Gorman has tried to do is ensure that people who are immigrants and may be here either undocumented or illegally or whatever are treated appropriately. I don’t really have any issues with that.

I know that there are people that have been in this country for many, many decades that have struggled to get through the legal process and I think clearly the federal government has a hand in dragging their feet on streamlining the processes for intake and judgment on people that are here.

But by the same token, there needs to be a better process in place. So it’s very much a double-edged sword. My goodness, I would hate to think that we would ever build a quote, unquote, “warehouse” to house immigrants that are in transition from wherever to wherever here in the state of Delaware.

That to me is unconscionable. And those kinds of protections absolutely need to be in place. We don’t want to be involved with that at all.

I do think there needs to be some consolidation. There can absolutely be some economies of scale. I’ve talked to dozens and dozens and dozens of people in the education space since I’ve been out knocking on doors and they all agree that there needs to be a vast improvement from where we are right now.

But my real frustration with this education improvement plan is that it just seems to be taking way too long. And I’ve learned to be a patient person when I’m trying to implement change somewhere, but I gotta tell you, when I talk to people that have been in that space for a long time, decades, and they say if any plan gets implemented, it will be six to eight, possibly even 10 years before it’s fully ramped up, and that is absolutely unconscionable.

I’ve got a granddaughter going into sixth grade next year. If it’s going to take six to eight, 10 years to ramp this thing up, she’ll be graduated by the time we got it fixed. That’s ridiculous. It took us 10 years from go to put a man on the moon, and we can’t fix the school district in two or three years.

And my contention would be, let’s take some elements, some real low-hanging fruit out of the Redding Plan I’ll call it, and start implementing as soon as absolutely possible. Do a 20% or 25% piece of it one year. Do 25% of it the next year. Let’s get this going.

If we can’t fix that, all the other stuff, I don’t care what it is, I don’t care whether it’s data centers or bringing businesses in or whatever, none of that stuff matters if we can’t fix the education system.