Governor candidates offer sharply different strategies to improve Delaware

Delaware’s dire need for affordable housing and its struggling schools were two of the hottest topics at an Aug. 15 debate between six candidates aspiring to be Delaware’s next governor.

The debate at the Dover Public Library was hosted by the Delaware Journalism Collaborative, a group of more than 20 news outlets around the state that provided panelists who quizzed the candidates on issues affecting everyday residents.

Current Gov. John Carney has hit his term limit, leaving three Democrats and three Republicans competing to take his place. The Tuesday, Sept. 10, primary will winnow the options to one candidate from each party.

With none of them incumbents with records to defend — the closest to an incumbent being Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long — the evening took on a strong tone of “things we can do better.”

The debate stayed mostly collegial, with candidates often agreeing on fundamental problems while taking different tacks on the solutions. Bipartisan nodding could be seen at different points in the conversation, until late in the debate when an immigration question sparked more vehement disagreement.

How the candidates portrayed themselves

Among Republicans, House Minority Leader Mike Ramone brought the most experience. He emphasized his bipartisan chops, stressing that he wins in a majority-Democrat district in Pike Creek and has had to function as a legislator among a strong majority of Democrats. Ramone focused more on the nuts and bolts of policy than his opponents in the Republican primary, and cast himself as a business-friendly candidate ready to bring fresh ideas.

Bobby Williamson, a businessman from Sussex County, described himself as a representative of the real GOP voters in Delaware, as opposed to the establishment. He raised alarms over what he sees as indoctrination in public schools and negative impacts of immigration, while arguing for less government interference in daily life.

Another GOP candidate, Jerry Price, is a former New York City police officer who said he moved his family to Delaware 20 years ago for a better quality of life. He raised concerns about the drug epidemic.

“We have too many drugs on the streets. They kill enough people left and right … and we’ve got to do something about it. And I know how to do it. I can get that done.” He also mentioned promoting career preparedness among young people.

Democratic candidates include Hall-Long, New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer, and former Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Control Secretary Collin O’Mara.

Hall-Long touted her experience in leadership as lieutenant governor and readiness to lead, her experience as a nurse, and her work heading up initiatives including the Behavioral Health Consortium, an advisory group that recommends policy solutions to confront issues like substance abuse and mental health.

Meyer, for his part, stressed his eight-year tenure leading Delaware’s largest county and also pointed to his record of investments in education, funding shelter for those without homes via the Hope Center, a repurposed hotel, and introducing mental and behavioral health initiatives in policing.

O’Mara is hardly an outsider in the small world of Delaware politics, but did not have legislative achievements to run on. Instead, he focused on the need to adopt bolder progressive policies like universal pre-K and school lunches, and reduced prices for pharmaceutical drugs. “We can do so much better,” he said.

Affordable housing a major focus

Affordable housing may have been the night’s top theme in a state where housing costs have soared. Beach homes are driving the trend, with average home prices often topping $500,000 and frequently going much higher. But as multiple candidates emphasized, it’s a statewide issue.

According to a 2023 report from Housing Alliance of Delaware, the state needs 20,000 more affordable housing units for those with low incomes, and on average it’s only building 200 to 250 a year.

O’Mara cited out-of-state investors buying property to use for rental income, driving up prices. He also said the state needs to remove barriers to building homes, especially in areas with appropriate infrastructure.

“There’s a huge opportunity with a lot of office space that we have right now to convert a lot of that into housing,” he added. “We’re going to need density. We’re going to need the opportunities to have more dense, suburban and urban development.”

“Housing is a right,” Hall-Long said. She mentioned a recent investment of more than $100 million in the Delaware Housing Authority, and called for more such investments, while agreeing there are too many barriers for builders.

She also called for rent relief, mortgage assistance, and supportive services for seniors and those with special needs.

Meyer agreed that every Delawarean has a right to affordable shelter, adding “safe” and “quality” to the description.

It will take collaboration with local officials, he said.

“The city of Philadelphia has 1.6 million people as a single city government. The state of Delaware has a little over a million people. That’s something like 50 governments, local government, county government, state government. What’s happening now, when we have a crisis like the affordability of housing, things get gummed up,” he said, promoting innovative thinking like redeveloping office space.

On the GOP side, Price suggested that Delaware adopt a similar approach as the federal government’s efforts after World War II to build and subsidize housing.

When farmland (or other properties) come up for sale, the state could purchase it and build homes, making them available to both seasonal visitors and residents at affordable rent, he said. “We’ll make money off of it.”

Ramone also pointed a finger at restrictions on builders, along with a failure to properly plan and what he sees as overreaching building code requirements that drive up cost.

“If you continue to keep putting on more and more overzealous regulatory behavior on people who are trying to build these homes, if you continue to not create targeted areas with infrastructure … we’re going to continue to not have any places that are affordable,” he said.

He also argued against homeownership as a right, although other candidates had framed shelter, not ownership, as a right. “Everyone doesn’t have the right to own a home. Everyone does have the right to live the American dream and earn the ability to own a home.”

Williamson took a broader stance, saying that housing is not a right. He also said it’s possible to build houses for much cheaper, simpler homes within people’s budgets. In response to the question from panelist Sharon Baker, who mentioned workers at the beaches sleeping in their vehicles because of a lack of housing, he said, “Some of them, they love shacking out in their vans, and they’re OK with that.”

But he criticized regulations that restrict single-wide trailers, which he said are good options for starting homes.

Better education

Delaware’s educational system also came in for considerable criticism, based on statistics like a recent Annie E. Casey KIDS COUNT Data Book ranking Delaware 45th in the nation, with 82% of eighth-graders not proficient in math, and 75% of fourth graders falling short in reading. Candidates weighed in those declining grades, along with salaries for school employees and behavioral issues among students.

The formula Delaware uses to distribute money to schools came in for a lot of criticism.

“Our funding formula was written in the 1940s – 80 years ago,” Meyer said. The former school teacher touted a 22-page plan he’s developed for improving education in the state.

He noted New Castle County’s investments in the educational system, “getting more money directly into classrooms and starting programs that teach over 1,000 low-income students high-income skills” in computer coding, he said. Like the other Democratic candidates, he also argued for earlier education.

“The idea that that education starts at the age of 5 is arcane. We need to look, particularly in communities that need it, starting at the age of 0,” he said.

Hall-Long spoke of her pride at promoting supportive services for children and families, and also called for incentives for school workers, like tax credits and child care.

“I go door to door. I’m with families. I know what we need to do. We’ll invest in those resources,” she said.

Hall-Long also called for changing Delaware’s school funding formula, and emphasized literacy so children have the tools to learn other subjects.

O’Mara said educators in neighboring states like Maryland and New Jersey have some of the highest pay rates in the nation, leaving Delaware always playing catch-up.

“My commitment to all the educators and all the professionals and the paraprofessionals is making sure they’re treated like the professionals they are, that our pay is exceeding the other states,” he said.

O’Mara also criticized the school funding formula, which he said does not adequately address children in poverty or those with special needs. He also called for offering more education for younger children and greater services in general.

“When you look at all the data across the country, the best thing you can do to actually reduce violence in schools is make sure kids are fed. Because when kids aren’t fed, they act out and things escalate,” he said.

Price said he’d look into the issue of pay, but that a fundamental need was attracting people here with good quality of life.

“But I will look into their salaries. I will sit down with them. I’ll discuss the issues. If we need to hire more or pay them more, we can afford to do that out of our budget. That’s not a problem,” he said.

Price promoted free breakfast and lunch in schools to help children learn better. He also said family structure has a lot to do with poor grades. “I don’t know how to get this done. The family structure, I can’t tell somebody, ‘Well, you’ve got to take care of your kid,’” he said.

Ramone called for reconfiguring the Department of Health and Social Services, which he said has many staffing and training inefficiencies.

“We do need increased access to mental health for students, we do. It’s simple. There’s a lot of sociological reasons for that, that we need to solve many of those problems first. But we need to do this now, because we’ve waited for 32 years of one party running our state, and this has become a terrible, terrible failure for our children,” he said.

Ramone added that Delaware’s education system is among the worst in the country, and suggested that money is being spent on bureaucracy rather than in the classroom. “Funding is not getting into the classroom for the children,” he said.

Mental health is important for children, Williamson said, but he’s concerned about addressing it through the schools “given the chance for the alteration of a child’s mind by someone who is in the school system, doing what they want to do and producing children with a different outlook than what the parents want.”

He’s all for helping children in need, he said, but the focus should be on parents’ responsibility to raise their child, not fixing children through the schools.

Williamson called for a voucher system that would let children go to whatever school they want, saying “it would release the teachers to be able to teach our children more efficiently, and in turn, they would be more deserving of better income, and that would be their incentive to do more and more and more.”

The immigration dispute

A question toward the end of the debate about immigration and how to assist the state’s newest arrivals kicked off some of the most vocal disagreements of the evening.

“What would your administration propose to ensure newly arrived Delawareans are supported in the First State, and how would your administration be responsive to immigrant needs in Delaware?” asked panelist José Ignacio Castañeda Perez, a reporter for Spotlight Delaware.

Williamson led off the responses, saying the Bridgeville and Seaford area, where he lives, has seen an influx of immigrants that has changed the dynamics.

“In Seaford they have a big crime uprise. It’s not safe in certain parts of Seaford because of the influx of the new nomads coming in,” he said.

Hispanics are hard workers, Williamson said, and he spoke positively about his next-door Hispanic neighbors, but added, “I don’t want to say this in a bad way, we have this Haitian expansion, and there are some great people in that community, but there are also thugs. … there’s certain gangs that are thriving in this basis. They have come in with the immigrants, and they have intruded into our peaceful way of living.”

He did not cite statistics to back this up, or discuss crime in the area committed by non-immigrants.

The audience, which had listened quietly for the duration of the debate, grew restless, and Williamson’s sentiments were booed at one point. After the debate, the Delaware Hispanic Commission issued a rebuke, saying “these remarks are not only inaccurate but also harmful, perpetuating dangerous stereotypes that do not reflect the true contributions of immigrants, particularly the Latino community, to our state.”

Democrats fired back in their remarks, supporting Senate Bill 44, which aimed to establish an Office of New Americans to support immigrants, but did not advance in this past legislature.

Hall-Long said the bill was very important to her.

“All people bleed red and need economic support. They (immigrants) are the backbone to our communities … skilled workers taking care of our poultry plants, our agriculture industry, working in our hospitals, taking care of our families,” she said. “These are individuals that deserve our support. They make us stronger.”

Meyer said he would support an Office of New Americans in his first budget, and recalled moving to Guatemala to work on his Spanish, where he was struck by the hospitality of residents there. “I yearn for Delaware to have that same sense of hospitality and kindness,” he said.

O’Mara criticized Delaware’s lack of health care coverage for children of undocumented immigrants, and said, “Immigration is the future of Delaware, right? We want to be one of the most hospitable states to immigrants anywhere in the country. And immigrants make communities safer, immigrants make economies stronger, immigrants allow economies to function. And so anything that suggests otherwise just isn’t based on data.”

Price, in his response, said a lot of the support to immigrants comes from community leaders and volunteers, and balked at talking about identities. “We always go Black, white, Latino, LGBT, and people come up to me, ‘What are you going to do for my group?’” he said. “I say, ‘I’m going to treat everybody the same, same respect.’”

Ramone blasted the current immigration system, calling it “complex and dysfunctional and expensive and impossible to get done correctly in a reasonable amount of time. That needs to be modified.”

He called for a better pathway to citizenship, noting that’s a federal, not a state problem. Once the system is fixed, he said, we can then focus on holding people accountable who don’t follow the rules.

To see the rest of the discussion, including discussions on protecting Delaware’s vulnerable beach areas, attracting new businesses, and the advisability of paid family leave, visit youtube.com/@DEJournalismCollaborative .