Why Should Delaware Care?
Delaware’s statewide elections are seeing an unprecedented level of involvement from special interests this year, but local and county races have typically not seen such influence. Now a Sussex County Council race is breaking the norm as tens of thousands of dollars seek to persuade voters.
Political advertisements mailed by a relatively new political action committee backed by Sussex County developers are raising alarms from one southern Delaware Republican who argues that the special interests could sway a local county council election.
The PAC in question, called Preserve Sussex, currently holds about $75,000 in its coffers ahead of the stretch run to the Sept. 10 primary election – a significant sum that is nearly three times more than the leading county council candidate has raised in his or her race to date.
While campaign finance filings say that Preserve Sussex is an issues-based PAC with a Republican affiliation, no one will say what is truly driving a group that sounds like it would be behind preservation-related efforts.
Records show that all of the funding flowing into the PAC last year came from notable Sussex County developers, including tens of thousands of dollars from Milford’s Elmer Fannin, Milton’s Robert “Christian” Hudson and LLCs linked to developments in Millsboro, Lewes and elsewhere in Delaware’s southernmost county. Only one of those LLCs, Maryland-based Stonemark Ventures, donated again to the PAC so far in 2024, according to the latest campaign finance reports.
State Rep. Bryan Shupe (R-Milford) told Spotlight Delaware that even if campaign finance laws haven’t been broken, the effort raises cause for concern.
“You’ve got developers that are hiding, in my opinion, who they are behind the name Preserve Sussex and trying to influence a county council race for a position that is going to directly vote on rezoning, planning for the county and could be voting directly on their projects to accept or deny them,” he said.
Shupe said he has not filed a formal complaint about the alleged violations with the Department of Elections. He also said he and other state lawmakers are considering changes to campaign finance law that would address the “unfair advantage” PACs have over individuals when it comes to how much money they can contribute to individual campaigns.
State campaign finance laws dictate that candidates for public office must form committees, report contributions and expenses beyond nominal amounts during an election cycle, and limit the amount of money that individual donors can contribute to non-statewide candidates to $600 in a cycle.
PACs on the other hand are not tethered by donation limits, and special interests frequently pour tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars into efforts to influence some of Delaware’s highest offices, like governor. That benefit comes with the restriction that PACs are not legally allowed to coordinate with candidates or political parties in their efforts — although the limits of that restriction are often stretched.
Tracking of PAC money, which often funds mailers and TV advertisements to voters, is frequently difficult, as donors are shielded to a degree by limited liability companies and contributions between PACs. That makes their involvement in elections particularly contentious for the public, and exceedingly rare for local races like those targeted by Preserve Sussex.
The PAC has funded two separate mailers sent to voters in the Milford area, one encouraging them to support incumbent Republican Cindy Green in the upcoming County Council District 2 election and the other aiming to discredit her primary opponent, Steve McCarron, a volunteer firefighter and former Woodbridge school board member. The postcards state that they were paid for by Preserve Sussex.
In the case of the Green mailer, state code, regulations and courts have ruled that pro-candidate advertisements typically require another set of third-party advertising reporting requirements.
Green said in a phone interview that she had no connection with the committee or its mailers — and said she hadn’t personally seen the anti-McCarron campaign literature and didn’t know of anyone who actually received that mailer.
Green said she has had a decade-plus-long “political relationship” with Scott Dailey, a self-described “broker, builder, developer” and former Sussex County Recorder of Deeds who is listed on campaign finance reports as the treasurer of the Preserve Sussex PAC. He is also linked to the connected Preserve Sussex Advertisement PAC, which was recently created to handle the third-party advertisements for the original Preserve Sussex committee.
“I don’t want to be rude or disrespectful, but there’s only one rule about Preserve Sussex PAC for me as the treasurer and that’s I don’t talk about Preserve Sussex,” Dailey told Spotlight Delaware when reached for comment on its activity. “I don’t think you’re gonna find anyone that’s going to go on the record about that. I’m the only one who runs it and I don’t have any comment.”
“We have complied with all the filings that I know about,” he said.
Hudson, a major Sussex County developer who donated $25,000 to the PAC in the spring of 2023, told Spotlight Delaware that he couldn’t recall exact details about the group’s pitch, only that it was “more about traditional Sussex values and land use.”
Hudson has not made any additional contributions to the PAC again ahead of the September primary, according to reports, but he said that he has donated to Green’s campaign this year. That donation was not in the period covered by the most recent campaign finance reports that covered up to Aug. 12.
Fannin also has not funneled any more funding to the PAC this year, but gave Green’s campaign $600, according to the latest campaign finance reports filed in mid-August.
The only entity that appears on both the PAC’s 2023 annual campaign finance report as well as the recently filed 30-day primary campaign finance report is Stonemark Ventures, a company behind the Stillwater Harbor development near Millsboro. It, along with an entity named Sw Tool Inc., provided the PAC with another $15,000 each. Three other individual donors — Blake Thompson, Robert Tunnell III and Stanley Kaplan — contributed $2,500 a piece to Preserve Sussex in 2024.
Green said that seeing developers donating to a political campaign is “no different than a campaign that’s full of established Republicans.”
“I don’t know why [Shupe] needs to worry about my primary,” Green said, noting that her campaign hasn’t mailed any flyers but added that candidates can “win a race over advertising.”