Three Big State-wide
Races
By Joseph A. Pika, Professor Dept. of Political Science and International
Relations, University of Delaware
 |
Three statewide elections highlight the Delaware elections in 2000: Governor, U.S. Senate and the at-large U.S. House seat.
Two-term governor Tom Carper is challenging the state's senior Senator,
Bill Roth. Roth has risen since 1967, his maiden year in Congress, to
a position of influence and power as Chair of the Senate Finance Committee,
a formidable incumbent advantage. When these two electoral titans meet
head-to-head, it will represent an unusual situation. Delaware's principal
political leaders have usually avoided direct confrontations, a key to
the bipartisan nature of the state's political establishment. When Carper's
predecessor as Governor, Representative Mike Castle, was precluded from
running for reelection in 1992, Carper and Castle switched jobs with Castle
moving into the House and Carper into the governorship. Castle has received
only token opposition in his previous reelection bids and can expect the
same in 2000.
The gubernatorial election will find the incumbent Lt. Governor, Ruth Ann Minner, confronting a strong Republican challenger likely to emerge from three contestants. Following sixteen years of Republican control (1977-1993), Democrats have been in power for the last eight years. Minner would be the state's first woman governor and the first to hail from downstate for more than a quarter century. (The upstate/downstate division is the state's most enduring political division.)
Three Republicans are seeking their party's nomination with most observers
predicting that John Burris, until recently President of the State Chamber
of Commerce and also from downstate, likely to outdistance former judge
William Swaine Lee and Speaker of the House of Delegates, Terry Spence.
Republicans are anxious to avoid a September primary and may find a way
to resolve this three-way contest before it damages their fall chances.
Several issues are likely to shape the statewide races. For the governorship, education, taxes, and growth are likely to be most prominent. For a quarter century, both Republican and Democratic governors have pursued similar strategies to encourage the state's economic growth and development. Future development hinges on continued improvement in public education, an area where the two most recent governors, Castle and Carper, invested enormous effort to launch sweeping reforms.
Recent inaction by the state legislature has slowed the introdcution of high stakes for students when promotion (2002) and graduation (2004) will be tied for the first time to performance on statewide tests. Student consequences have become a political issue in the statewide races. Similarly, Delaware has avoided a sales tax but has high rates in personal income taxes.
Recent budget surpluses have generated efforts to reduce personal income
tax rates and to discontinue the use of property taxes to fund schools.
Economic growth has produced rapid, largely uncontrolled residential growth
in northern and southern Delaware. Transportation, sewers and water supplies
have become important infrastructure issues as existing systems have been
stretched to the limit and lingering drought conditions have revealed
insufficient planning.
Overall, Delawareans will have to choose between staying the course with strategies and incumbents who have brought sustained statewide prosperity and the need to choose new responses and new leaders. It has the potential to be a watershed election.
