Outside PAC money enters Delaware governor race to boost Bethany Hall-Long's campaign

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 .

A fundraising disparity that once plagued Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long’s campaign for governor could be closing after several outside groups entered the elections landscape – capped last week by a well-funded political arm of the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association.

The group, called the DLGA PAC, said in filings to state regulators that it received $475,000 on July 15 from a separate political action committee, called People for a Healthy Delaware – a group founded nearly a decade ago by former state Sen. Patti Blevins.

Its current treasurer, Michael Finnegan, said Blevins no longer works with People for a Healthy Delaware. He also said the group has long had ties with Hall-Long.

“I don’t think it’s any secret that Bethany, for a number of years, has raised money for People for a Healthy Delaware,” Finnegan said.

After receiving its contribution, the DLGA PAC made two purchases over the past week for advertising that supports Hall-Long. So far, it has spent $200,000 of the total.

Hall-Long is a past co-chair of the Democratic Lieutenant Governors Association. Her campaign staffer Roshan Patel previously served as treasurer for the DLGA PAC.

In a message, Patel said he is not aware of the third-party political activity supporting Hall-Long’s campaign. He noted that laws exist that prohibit candidate’s campaigns from coordinating with such outside political groups.

The DLGA PAC is the latest outside group supporting Hall-Long to announce its intention to influence the 2024 election campaign, which plans to spend $1 million to support Hall-Long's bid for governor. In late spring, two others filed with the state elections department.

The organizations – called First State Forward and Workers for a New Delaware – each list the same Philadelphia address on their contact information in their registration with the state.

Property records show the address belongs to Jimmy Cauley, a Pennsylvania political consultant who last year ran the unsuccessful campaign of Philadelphia mayoral candidate Jeff Brown .

Other money is in play

The three groups favoring Hall-Long form a counterbalance of sorts to another outside group that has opposed Hall-Long’s candidacy.

That PAC, called Citizens for a New Delaware Way, pledged in May to spend a hefty $1 million in its efforts. It is associated with executives at the New York translations company, TransPerfect, which has feuded with Delaware institutions since 2016.

TransPerfect’s million-dollar pledge followed the revelation earlier this year that the campaigns of Hall-Long’s two Democratic Party competitors in the race for governor held significantly more money at the end of last year.

Other PACs that have recently registered in Delaware include one representing an influential hospital group, and another that supports Collin O’Mara candidacy for governor – one of Hall-Long’s two Democratic opponents in the race.

New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer, the third Democrat in the race for governor, does not appear to have a PAC supporting him, but his campaign war chest – at $1.7 million at the start of the year – dwarfed his competitors.

An official from the hospital organization, called the Delaware Healthcare Association PAC, said the group is not currently planning to influence the governor’s race.

“But we are currently in the process of evaluating all of our options to ensure our elected officials support Delaware’s hospitals, health systems, and health care-related organizations,” said Brian Frazee, president and CEO of the Delaware Healthcare Association.

Union money comes to aid?

In order to fund its July contribution of nearly half a million dollars, People for a Healthy Delaware had to raise roughly $400,000 during the first half of 2024, according to state elections records.

But, the question of who gave it the substantial sum remains open, as Delaware’s deadline to file updated campaign finance reports is weeks away.

Nevertheless, campaign records from two other states indicate that at least a portion of the money came from regional trade unions.

New York’s elections department shows that a PAC called Growing Economic Opportunities contributed $100,000 on April 1 to People for a Healthy Delaware. Records show that the contributions were explicitly made to support Hall-Long’s candidacy for governor.

The New York records also list the address for Growing Economic Opportunities at the same New Jersey office that houses the Laborers’ International Union of North America . The New Jersey elections department calls the group “an independent spending committee operated by the New Jersey State Laborers union.”

Weeks after its contribution to People for a Healthy Delaware, the group gave $50,000 to the still another Delaware political organization, called the DE Building and Trades PAC. That group is affiliated with the Delaware AFL-CIO and its politically powerful president, James Maravelias.

When reached by phone, Maravelias said he was not aware of People for a Healthy Delaware, nor its sizable contribution to the DLGA PAC.

However, he noted that his own support for Hall-Long’s campaign comes as a result of his antipathy toward her competitor, Meyer, the county executive.

“My PAC is against Meyer,” he said.

Last spring, Maravelias said his building trades group hired an airplane to tow an air banner at the Delaware beaches opposing Meyer and supporting Hall-Long.

In his interview with Spotlight Delaware, Finnegan, the treasurer for People for a Healthy Delaware, said he could not reveal who gave his group the hundreds of thousands of dollars it raised recently because he did not have the group’s financial records.

Finnegan said he is on vacation this week in Rehoboth and the records are in Wilmington. He did acknowledge that there “could have been” a $100,000 transfer to his group from Growing Economic Opportunities.

Asked why he didn’t simply pay for ads directly, Finnegan noted that DLGA is legally designated as a third-party advertiser. He also twice stressed that his attorney advised him that there’s “no problem with our PAC donating to another PAC.”

“As far as I know this may not be the only place that the money’s being spent,” he said.

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This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Outside PAC money enters Delaware governor race to boost Bethany Hall-Long's campaign