This story was produced by Spotlight Delaware as part of a partnership with Delaware Online/The News Journal. For more about Spotlight Delaware, visit www.spotlightdelaware.org .
Among all of the candidates running for Delaware governor, Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long arguably has the most classically formidable résumé.
She was raised on a farm, married her high-school sweetheart, entered health care and earned a doctorate in nursing before teaching at the University of Delaware. She later worked her way up in the Delaware General Assembly, and then was elected lieutenant governor.
During her time in government, she has leveraged her history in nursing to advocate for public health programs that partnered closely with the state’s legion of politically influential nonprofits and hospitals.
Today, she has the backing of much of Delaware’s Democratic establishment, including Gov. John Carney and Speaker of the House Valerie Longhurst, and also a handful of progressive politicians, including House Majority Whip Kerri Evelyn Harris.
On top of it all, Hall-Long is even a descendant of Delaware’s 15th governor who served more than 200 years ago, according to her past campaign literature.
In many years in Delaware’s political past, Hall-Long’s resume would be enough to make her a shoo-in to become the Democratic Party’s candidate for the state’s highest elected official.
But in 2024, the race among Democrats features two other prominent candidates who have each been politicking across the state on various left-leaning issues, while being boosted by campaign committees that ended last year with more money than Hall-Long had in hers.
According to the latest campaign finance reports filed with the Delaware Department of Elections, Hall-Long raised $531,500 since Jan. 1, building on a $687,348 campaign balance from the end of 2023, while at the same time spending just over $1 million.
This has left the lieutenant governor's war chest at $218,511, the smallest of the three Democratic candidates in the race for Delaware's governor.
Her opponent Collin O’Mara, a former secretary of the Delaware Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control, ended the latest reporting period with $917,528 in his war chest. New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer's campaign coffers dwarf both candidates, ending the latest reporting period with nearly $1.6 million on-hand.
To add to the challenges facing Hall-Long, an outside political group funded by executives at TransPerfect – a company from New York – has allocated $1 million to pay for advertisements and campaign materials attacking her candidacy for governor.
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Hall-Long’s campaign did not respond to an emailed question about these political hurdles.
For her part, Hall-Long has stayed focused on what she says were her accomplishments in recent years as lieutenant governor, in promoting paid family leave and affordable health care, as well as creating an advisory board of people from the community, called the Behavioral Health Consortium, that examines issues of mental health and drug use.
“Nobody listening in should suffer in silence,” Hall-Long said, referencing those maladies, during an interview with DETV earlier this year.
Early errors
Hall-Long has also been plagued by campaign finance issues, which began last fall shortly after the lieutenant governor announced her plans to run for Delaware governor.
The campaign launched an internal audit, completed by Dover-based Summit CPA, last year, which that Hall-Long and her husband, Dana Long (who was campaign treasurer) did not accurately report campaign-related expenses when paid for with personal credit cards and loans.
The campaign claimed the auditors found no wrongdoing or violations but refused to release the audit, arguing that amended campaign finance reports would “fully convey” the results of the audit.
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The quietly filed reports late last year showed Hall-Long loaned her campaign more than $300,000 over the course of six years but did not detail what the loans were used for.
At the time, the Hall-Long's campaign said just over $200,000 had been repaid, but the lack of clarity around the Democrat’s campaign finances has continued to follow her throughout the governor’s race.
Those issues have only mounted in recent weeks after a scathing audit of her campaign finances found the reporting to be incomplete , inconsistent, inaccurate and misleading.
In an interview with Spotlight Delaware last month, Meyer skeptically questioned whether an audit even exists.
Republican candidate for governor Jerry Price has also leveled criticism at Hall-Long, questioning how and why the financial reporting issue popped up so suddenly, then was quickly resolved by the campaign.
“I’ll be releasing my taxes every year when I win, just so people know I’m not a thief,” he said.
Price will face longtime Pike Creek-area Rep. Mike Ramone and lifelong Bridgeville resident Bobby Williamson on Sept. 10 in the Republican primary for governor.
Steady support
Hall-Long frequently mentions that she was raised on a farm in southern Delaware with two older brothers.
But life took her away from her hometown after high school, as she studied at Jefferson University Hospital in Philadelphia for her undergrad degree in nursing, before moving on to advanced degrees at the University of South Carolina and George Mason University.
For the past two-and-a-half decades, she has lived amid the relatively new suburbs of Middletown.
In 2000, she first ran for a seat in the General Assembly to represent that area, garnering substantial support for a novice candidate, including from the Delaware State Education Association, the influential union for state teachers.
Ultimately, Hall-Long lost in a contentious race that was characterized by Republican newspaper advertisements as “Mud Slinging in Middletown.”
Two years later, Hall-Long ran again and won the seat in the state House of Representatives. Her campaign website then pointed to highlights in her career, including managing 100 employees at Fairfax Hospital in Virginia, and later working for UD as a professor in nursing, as well as in public policy.
Six years after the electoral victory, Hall-Long ran for and won a seat in the State Senate, in which she served until 2017 when becoming the state’s lieutenant governor.
Her years in the legislature featured work on issues that have become signature to her political persona, including those related to mental health and substance use disorders.
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Her campaign website also says that in the legislature she “spearheaded efforts to invest in much-needed infrastructure and protect our environment.” The website does not go into any detail about those efforts.
A Delaware Online/The News Journal article from 2010 also said Hall-Long was the senator then who was most likely to vote “yes” on a bill.
The News Journal had analyzed a two-year period in which the Senate had voted 512 times. Hall-Long had voted “no” just three times during that period. The phenomenon was criticized at the time by Republican State Sen. Colin Bonini, who said legislators who rarely voted “no” were acting like “sheep.”
But, rather than it being a sign of compliance, Hall-Long’s concurrence was more likely indicative of her support for the Democratic Party establishment whose leadership strictly controlled what bill was heard and voted on by the full Senate.
Hall-Long today continues to be the choice candidate for much of Delaware’s current Democratic leadership.
Still, for the most high-profile and contentious health care bill pushed by her party’s leadership in years, Hall-Long’s position is unclear.
In the coming weeks, lawmakers are poised to vote on, and likely, pass House Bill 350, which would create a board of Delaware officials who would oversee spending by hospitals in the state.
A spokesman for Hall-Long’s campaign did not respond to several emailed questions in recent weeks, including one about Hall-Long’s position on House Bill 350.
Past accusations
During her career, Hall-Long appears to have earned more modest salaries than her Democratic rivals. Still, she has been able to fund past campaigns with what she said were hundreds of thousands of her own dollars.
And, questions about the origins of her wealth are among the ones that her campaign has left unanswered.
She has publicly reported income in past years from the University of Delaware as a professor of nursing. Today, a UD professor makes a minimum of $113,130, according to the university salary scale .
But Hall-Long also appears to have benefited from a home rental business owned by her husband, Dana Armon Long, and her former deputy in government, Tanner Polce.
A year after she became lieutenant governor, Armon Long and Polce formed TWP and BML, LLC, a business that then purchased nine rowhomes in a neighborhood near Wilmington that has seen substantial government investment in recent years.
At least some of those homes have been designated by New Castle County to rent to applicants with Section 8 vouchers.
During the decade before purchasing the rowhomes, Armon Long worked as a contractor for New Castle County within the office that inspects and approves homes for the Section 8 program, according to a county spokesperson.
Hall-Long had not listed the company on her past financial disclosure reports, even as Delaware law directs candidates to list spousal assets.
Last fall, Hall-Long said in a statement that she had “followed common practice and decades of existing precedent in the process of filling out financial disclosures.”
The revelations about the undisclosed rental business were first reported last fall just as Hall-Long was facing the audit of her past campaign finance reports, which had been prepared by Armon Long.
Those also were the latest bad publicity for Hall-Long that involved her husband.
In 2016, WDEL reported that a “confidential source” said Armon Long took the county’s “protected list of low-income housing residents and cold-called them urging residents in his district to vote for his wife.”
Despite the allegation, he continued with the county until 2018 when his company purchased the nine rowhomes for his new business. The purchase prompted his supervisor to tell him that he could no longer serve in that position, a county spokesperson said.
Two years before the WDEL report, Dana Armon Long was caught on video walking toward his car with several campaign signs belonging to Hall-Long’s then-political opponent.
In the video, a person claims he stole the signs, to which Armon Long says, “there is no name on these signs,” referring to ownership taglines from political campaigns.
Police later charged Armon Long with theft.
In the aftermath, Hall-Long released a statement acknowledging that her husband took the signs, and describing him as her high school sweetheart who let his frustrations over campaign attacks “get the better of him.”
Delaware Online/The News Journal reporter Amanda Fries contributed to this report.
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This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Despite broad establishment support, Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long still faces challenges
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