Why Should Delaware Care?
Delaware is only apportioned one seat in the U.S. House of Representatives due to its small population, making the election of our congressional representative a statewide race. This year’s race for Congress does not feature an incumbent for the first time in eight years, making it a crossroads for how Delaware will be represented.
In some ways, each of the two candidates running for Delaware’s lone seat in the U.S. House of Representatives are unlikely politicians.
In other ways, the successes of Sarah McBride and John Whalen have been quite predictable.
McBride’s achievements in Delaware have been historic in recent years as she was the first transgender person to serve in the state’s General Assembly. Yet, while unique, her success was also preceded by a career and upbringing that was intertwined with Delaware’s political and corporate classes.
As a millennial Democratic state senator from Wilmington, McBride calls former Delaware Gov. Jack Markell a mentor. She has recounted how Beau Biden once called her a member of the Biden family.
And, then-Vice President Joe Biden even wrote the foreword to her memoir, which was published two years after she gave a speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.
Her father also previously chaired Delaware’s influential Corporation Law Council – a group of private, corporate attorneys who write laws that govern how much of global capitalism is conducted.
Last month, McBride sailed to a primary election victory over two lesser-known opponents. It was a win that was aided by dozens of endorsements from across the Democratic Party in Delaware and nationally, as well as by a massive fundraising advantage.
At the end of September, McBride’s campaign had raised nearly $3.5 million in just over a year, according to reports filed with the Federal Election Commission – the highest election cycle total ever for any candidate seeking Delaware’s U.S. House seat.
In contrast, Whalen – McBride’s opponent in the Nov. 5 general election – wasn’t expected to win his September primary election and become Delaware’s Republican candidate for Congress.
The Millsboro retiree and political novice wasn’t the choice of his party leadership, had only announced his candidacy in July, and had subsequently raised only $2,285 before the primary. He also loaned his campaign about $8,300.
He spent the money on campaign signs and on a “Beef & Beer” fundraiser held in August at the American Legion hall in Millsboro.
Despite the political disadvantages, Whalen won a decisive primary victory over his politically moderate Republican opponent Donyale Hall, a Dover Air Force veteran who had campaigned to become the Republican Congressional nominee for nearly a year.
The victory became the latest in Delaware in which Republican voters rejected their party’s endorsed candidate in favor of one who held more conservative values. Whalen, a retired police officer who lives in the Republican stronghold of Sussex County, campaigned on calls for curtailing immigration, and for cutting federal government spending.
He also has described gun regulations as “useless” with respect to deterring violence.
Though his platform aligns closely with the base of the Republican Party, Whalen’s victory bewildered many political observers who had predicted that Hall would win comfortably, and could pose a rare threat to Democrats in the general election.
When asked in October about the primary results a month earlier, Hall still expressed amazement at Whalen’s victory, especially given that Republican voters had picked a Pike Creek moderate in state Rep. Mike Ramone as their choice for governor.
She also suggested that Whalen’s late entry into the race benefitted him because it upended her election strategy of focusing on independents and conservative Democrats in northern Delaware in advance of the general election.
Hall said party leaders and her political consultant didn’t see Whalen as a threat to her, so she had already spent her limited campaign money with an eye toward the Nov. 5 general election, rather than the Sept. 10 primary.
Whalen “was supposed to be a speed bump, not a roadblock, but it just turned out that way,” she said.
More than gender identity
While Whalen and McBride are each, in their own ways, not typical politicians, they share little else in common.
From policies to age, money in the bank to time spent in Washington, D.C. – the differences between McBride and Whalen are many and extend beyond the issue of gender identity that has captured national headlines.
How Delaware voters feel about those differences may set the tone for Delaware’s political reputation for years to come.
If McBride wins, she would reaffirm Democrats’ grip on politics in the state, while also becoming the first transgender person elected to Congress. That first would likely catapult her and the state into the crosshairs of several members of Congress who have been hostile to transgender people.
Political shots were already taken in that forthcoming fight early this summer when Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene called McBride a “dude” on a show hosted by former-Trump adviser Steve Bannon. She also referred to McBride by the name she had used before transitioning to a woman – an insult to transgender people known as “deadnaming.”
For her part, McBride has sought to build her campaign around issues unrelated to her gender.
She did not mention gender identity during political debates held in recent months, and her campaign website lays out a platform of nine other issue areas that include typical left-of-center calls for expanding Medicare with a public option, opposing efforts to limit access to abortions, and investing in renewable energy infrastructure
Her website also nods at McBride’s pro-business tilt, as it celebrates the Delaware Financial Center Development Act.
The 1980s-era act – which is responsible for the credit card industry’s outside presence in Delaware – reformed banking laws in the state, including by removing limits on interest rates credit card companies could legally charge to their customers.
McBride argues that a similar change in federal laws governing financial transactions is necessary today, given the advent of new technologies that capitalize on big data, and blockchain technology.
Such a change would allow Delaware “to leverage our legacy to become a leader in these evolving industries,” her website states.
The Democrats’ advantage
If Whalen wins the race, he would become the first Delaware Republican to serve in Congress since 2008, when Mike Castle bested Karen Hartly-Nagle to retain the seat he had held for nearly two decades.
A Whalen victory would also follow a decade of political shifts in other states with strong union legacies that had unexpectedly tilted toward former President Donald Trump’s version of the Republican Party.
Still, the scenario is unlikely in Delaware.
A poll conducted by the University of Delaware after the primary election last month found that 52% of respondents favored McBride while 31% favored Whalen.
Additionally, Democrats dominate state voter rolls with roughly 45% of Delaware voters registered with the party. About 26% of Delaware voters are registered Republicans. While those numbers show a large number of independent voters, Republicans have routinely captured only about 40% of the general election vote tallies in Congressional races during the past decade.
Their best performance during the period was also their most recent when Lee Murphy garnered 43% of the vote for Delaware’s U.S. House seat in a 2022 race against incumbent U.S. Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester.
Rochester today is seeking Delaware’s U.S. Senate seat that will come open at the end of the year with the retirement of U.S. Sen.Tom Carper.
For Whalen to outperform Murphy and have a shot at the Congressional seat, he’ll have to turn out voters who sit outside of the conservative base who voted in the primary. Such a feat will take constant campaigning and public appearances in October, which he hasn’t appeared to be doing to date.
Whalen did not attend a candidate debate at the University of Delaware earlier this month, giving McBride the sole platform alongside the moderator at the event.
A corresponding debate for the U.S. Senate race also featured only a single candidate in Republican Eric Hansen, after Rochester did not attend and independent Mike Katz was not invited.
Whalen did participate in a debate last month for Delaware candidates for U.S. Senate and U.S. House, in which only Rochester failed to attend.
At the event, he stood out as the most conservative of the group. He also was the least polished.
While McBride gave long, in-depth answers that reflected her time as a lawmaker, an advocate and even as a past student body president at American University, Whalen’s responses were relatively short and did not delve into nuance of public policy.
When asked about how pharmacy benefits managers impact health care costs, Whalen said he wanted to pass on the question, noting he “doesn’t have enough” information on the issue.
Instead, he stuck to his core issues during the event, repeatedly stressing his roots in Delaware and his values of cutting government spending and what he said were attacks on amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
“These are the things that concern me and these are the things I’ll address if you send me to Washington,” he said.
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