Why Should Delaware Care?
Campaign donations are one of the most direct and legal ways that special interests can curry favor with elected officials, particularly through political action committees (PACs). This year’s contentious gubernatorial race has drawn a record sum of outside campaign funding in PACs, raising questions about what influence donors hope to gain for the significant support.
With cash running low and seven days to go before last month’s primary election, a political action committee that supported Matt Meyer – the candidate who ultimately won Delaware’s key Democratic nomination governor – was rescued by a quarter-million-dollar gift from Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire and former mayor of New York City.
Bloomberg’s fortuitous contribution, revealed in a campaign finance report filed this month, allowed the Change Can’t Wait PAC to surge to the finish line for the primary election with a spree of scandalous political mailers.
While some of the ads lauded Meyer – who currently serves as New Castle County executive – others denounced his chief opponent, Lt. Gov Bethany Hall-Long, as a campaign finance scofflaw.
“Bethany Hall Long BROKE THE LAW,” one Change Can’t Wait political mailer stated, in reference to an investigation published two months earlier concluding that Hall-Long’s husband had taken thousands of dollars from her campaign.
The ads were countered by messaging from Hall-Long supporters who said Meyer had enabled sexual harassment within his local government’s offices.
The claims were in reference to two lawsuits brought in the summers of 2020 and 2024 – both election years – by government employees who said county supervisors failed to properly investigate and punish serial sexual harassers.
“Meyer has been sued repeatedly for silencing these women,” one political text message stated.
In all, Bloomberg’s quarter-million-dollar contribution placed an exclamation mark at the end of a bitter gubernatorial primary campaign that was fueled by millions of dollars from third-party political groups, including Change Can’t Wait.
New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer has benefitted from the spending of the Change Can’t Wait PAC, which helped him build a race against Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long. | SPOTLIGHT DELAWARE PHOTO BY JACOB OWENS
Meyer ultimately won the Sept. 10 primary contest for governor, beating Hall-Long and Collin O’Mara, Delaware’s former chief environmental regulator.
Meyer faces Republican House Minority Leader Mike Ramone in the Nov. 5 general election.
It’s unclear if Change Can’t Wait’s last-minute politicking tipped the electoral balance toward Meyer. Several voters told Spotlight Delaware on primary election day that they either ignored the cacophony of mailers, phone calls, and broadcast ads that flooded Delaware in the weeks before the election – or that those ads caused them to sour on the governor’s race entirely.
Nevertheless, Bloomberg’s contribution was the single largest to the Change Can’t Wait PAC, which previously had been funded by hefty sums from regional developers, a retired Wilmington-area banker, and prominent and wealthy Delaware families, including the du Ponts and the Hynanskys.
Bloomberg’s gift also came at just the right moment for a PAC seeking to influence Delaware’s election.
On Sept. 3, Change Can’t Wait PAC held a mere $38,000 after purchasing more than $1 million in political ads during the previous three months, according to campaign finance reports.
With the new cash that Bloomberg sent Sept 4, the PAC was freed up to spend an additional $283,000 during the final days before the September election.
It directed most of the money to its newly minted legal entity, called a third-party advertiser, which subsequently passed it along to two Washington, D.C.-area political advertising firms, according to campaign finance reports.
The resulting political mailers added to others sent by a separate PAC that was funded by a $1 million donation from Phil Shawe, yet another out-of-state business magnate who also supported Meyer and opposed Hall-Long.
The spending by Shawe – the CEO of a New York company called TransPerfect – was his latest in a nearly a decade of high-dollar critiques of Delaware institutions that followed a 2015 state Chancery Court decision to auction off his company.
A spokesman for Shawe’s group told Spotlight Delaware that his PAC opposed Hall-Long because her campaign had not responded to their outreach
“She made it really easy for us by blowing us off,” the spokesman Chris Coffey stated.
Is it gun control?
While Shawe made clear why he sought to influence the Delaware governor’s race, the reason for Bloomberg’s hefty gifts to the Change Can’t Wait PAC is not immediately known.
When asked that question in an email, a spokesman for the PAC provided a vague response, stating “people donating to Change Can’t Wait care deeply about the direction and future of Delaware.”
Neither officials representing Bloomberg nor Meyer responded to requests to comment for this story.
Asked for thoughts on the contribution, Delaware State University professor and longtime local political analyst Samuel Hoff – a critic of big money in politics – noted that the contribution at least was not “dark money,” a reference to a trend of politics whereby anonymous donors seek to influence elections with high-dollar gifts sent through nonprofits or anonymous limited liability companies.
Hoff also suggested that Bloomberg might see Meyer’s political platform as aligned with issues he also cares about.
Since leaving the New York City mayor’s office in 2013, Bloomberg has directed much of his advocacy through political spending or through his longstanding foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, which is among the largest in the United States.
Among Bloomberg’s choice issues that also are relevant in Delaware include an expansion of charter schools, a reduction in the use of fossil fuels, and implementation of stricter gun laws.
In early October, a national gun control PAC founded by former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, endorsed Meyer’s campaign for governor, stating that he as New Castle County executive had “implemented the most comprehensive set of gun safety laws in the county’s history.”
Bloomberg contributed to Giffords’ PAC a decade ago, before he formed Everytown for Gun Safety to send millions of dollars to campaigns in 2020 in states with relatively lax gun laws, such as Florida and Texas, according to a New York Times report.
The post Bloomberg donated $250K to support Meyer PAC ahead of primary appeared first on Spotlight Delaware.