Delaware Political Weekly: August 4-10, 2012
1. R Mark Doughty Files in 23rd.
Want to know all about him? Well, I thought here might be a good place to start. Hmmm, maybe not. Or maybe he has an ‘electric’ personality. Lemme try something else…the Google! OK, looks like, according to the Better Business Bureau, Doughty is the (I’m not making this up) “Lord of the Deal” for something called the Fun Department LLC. He is joined in what appears to be an event-planning enterprise by, I’m not making this up, Ms. Amye McDearmon, First Lady of Fun. OK, I’ve finally found him, and he does seem to be a fun guy. The company, run by Nick Giannoulis, appears to specialize in corporate team-building through fun. I’m thinking paint ball here. For me, not fun. Anyway, Doughty has filed as a Republican to face the winner of the Democratic Primary in the 23rd RD to replace retiring Rep. Terry Schooley. The three D’s are all high-quality candidates, in alphabetical order, Paul Baumbach, Claudia Bock, and Jerry Grant. We’ve discussed them before, and likely will again before the primary. Doughty’s candidacy makes sense viewed in isolation: The district is not a slam-dunk D district ( registration is 5352 D; 4084 R; and 3585 I), was represented by R Tim Boulden before Schooley; and there is a three-way D primary that might leave some bruised feelings. Oh, and I’ve finally found the political link. Michael Boulden, who is from the propane gas side of the Boulden family, is now a partner in the Fun Department. Nothing wrong with any of that. Certainly as good a candidate as any to be added onto the ballot by the Party. Since the three D’s are not likely to let any wounds fester after the election, I consider his bid a long-shot, especially since the district generally votes more D than the registration figures reflect. But, it’s certainly better than no shot, which is what the R’s were facing two days ago.
2. Bill Montgomery Tells the Truth. Probably Won’t Help Him…
I give Bill Montgomery credit. He told the truth. Not that he hasn’t before, but it was a hard truth which will not likely benefit him politically. From the story in today’s News-Journal:
Montgomery, the former chief of staff to current Mayor James M. Baker, predicted that a 15 percent property tax hike will be needed in the next mayor’s first year, calling it a “one-and-done” revenue boost that could help stave off future rate increases as the city braces for budget deficits projected to be about $4 million in the next two fiscal years.
“I’m sorry to give you that news, but if I am your mayor, I will be seeking a double-digit tax increase, plain and simple,” Montgomery said during a candidate forum hosted by the Wilmington Rotary Club.
My favorite DL City Political Blogger Cassandra Marshall is quoted, dare I say it, ‘liberally’, in the article. And, while I agree with her that this will likely not help Montgomery politically, I admire him for saying it. How you’re gonna close a hole in the budget should be discussed during a campaign, but all too often isn’t. I’m not saying that all sorts of other alternatives should not be explored, but I think voters deserve to understand what could well happen. I think it’s likely that taxes will be raised by whomever becomes Mayor. I think virtually every candidate running for mayor knows it. Montgomery has just said it out loud. Won’t help him politically, but I think he did the right thing.
3. R Scot Sauer Challenges Tim Sheldon in 9th NCC District.
Scot Sauer, who, for five minutes, had filed to seek the 19th District RD seat held by the retiring House Speaker Bob Gilligan, has now set his sights on incumbent New Castle County Councilman Tim Sheldon in the 9th Councilmanic District. You can (sorta) find out why here.
That’s it for this week. What did I miss and whaddayathink?
I’m enjoying Montgomery’s smackdown of Williams currently in news rotation on WDEL — the line about having the ACLU on speed dial if Williams gets elected. It’s the first time I’ve heard Montgomery sound more energized than a funeral director.
Bill is a good man. Why he wants to be Mayor of a dying city is beyond me.
Here’s the thing about possible tax hikes in the City:
1. Promising to raise taxes NOW basically means that Montgomery sees no opportunity and I mean NO opportunity for better efficiencies within City government. This *does* make him the next 4 years of Jim Baker who made cuts in government largely at the prodding of City Council.
2. No one likes to pay more taxes, but the City is spectacularly bad at making the case for them. As in better transparency. If you did not get a visit to your neighborhood association from either Bud Friel or Kevin Kelley you were never going to get an especially good, detailed explanation of whys and hows of the city budget.
3. Some of the budget issues have been the result of grants that allowed the city to hire more police. Those grants run out and then the city has to pick up the costs. Everyone wants to celebrate the new hires, but no one spends much time telling taxpayers what this means in 2 or 3 years when city taxpayers have to pick up the cost. You can see the same pattern with the sewer and water funds — not so much the grants, but the lack of transparency. Other issues are certainly around health care costs and those are killing every employer.
4. The other problem is perception. There seems to be plenty of funding when a project at the Riverfront or Downtown needs grants or loan guarantees or forgiveable loans. Granted, much of this comes from bond issues, but most folks don’t get that. It looks like — as it did for the last tax hikes — that taxes go up to invest in stuff that is not in taxpayers neighborhoods.
Or the shorter version is — We know what is best for you, so shut up and pay. It may be that the city needs to raise taxes. But I don’t think I’m alone in asking that whoever is in charge in 2013 take a long, hard look at what goes on down at French St and makes sure that the current expenditures are providing ALOT of value to taxpayers.
Tax hikes are bad. Spending efficiencies are good. Why doesn’t Cass see that on the federal level?
Is it even possible for you to not be an idiot here? I wrote I don’t know how many words about taxes in one place and you can’t even figure out the differences between the city of Wilmington and the Federal level.
Please go back to the children’s table where you belong.
Probably because, unlike Wilmington’s, federal taxes are at their lowest levels in 60 years.
So the real question is, why can’t you see the very different situations of a nation and a city?
David is okay with breaking his “no new taxes” pledge when it comes to The City of Dover’s financial situation, so he must allow reality to penetrate the teabag bubble once in a while.
Great explanation here, Cass. You’re on the mark with points 2, 3, 4, and I wish you were wrong on 1. Montgomery would have been better served if he had said he knows his time in City Hall has shown him where the dead wood is and he’ll get rid of it … but there’s not so much dead wood to cut that we can avoid a tax increase.
The Baker administration has done a poor job on marketing, transparency and perception. (Well, maybe not a poor job, but that certainly is the perception.) And that is somewhat surprising because, after 30-plus years of working in government and the media, John Rago arguably had more experience and talent than most any high-level communications director I’ve known. But he did little to enhance the city’s overall messaging and communications effort and, best I can tell, he tried little and succeeded even less at muzzling the shoot-from-the-lip mayor.
Unfortunately, if Williams is elected, I think we’ll get Baker deja vu in terms of marketing, transparency and perception (not to mention arrogance).
Kudos to Montgomery for telling it like it is. Shame on anyone who doesn’t vote for him because they don’t want to pay more in taxes. (There may be other reasons to vote against Montgomery, but that’s for another time.) Whoever is elected mayor will eventually propose a tax increase, and only a fool would believe a candidate who promises that he won’t.
I also admire Montgomery for being clear and consistent. Most of what the other candidates have promised to put in place if elected could never occur without significant tax increases–but they neglect to mention that, per the usual way pre-election discourse occurs on the trail. I agree that if there are better measures to increase revenue such as trimming the fat in departments etc. they absolutely need to be explored. But being honest and transparent seems to be what people say they want–when someone is, they flip out. Human nature is interesting.
Montgomery would have been better served if he had said he knows his time in City Hall has shown him where the dead wood is and he’ll get rid of it … but there’s not so much dead wood to cut that we can avoid a tax increase.
There might not be enough deadwood to avoid a tax increase, but that doesn’t mean you don’t go looking for it. And really, I’m not even looking for big cuts to government as much as I am looking for more efficiency AND more client-orientation from the one that is here. But there is dead wood, and I’ve been listening long enough to people here to know that there is a core list of folks down on French St whose non-productivity has enough visibility that there is consensus that they should go.
But back to my point about transparency. Montgomery told a group of WPD and WFD folks back in the winter that there would be a 15% increase in 2013. If the city knew this then — before any budget hearings for the latest FY budget — how is it that no one knows the detail of this already? (Except maybe Freel and Kelley)
Williams is making too many promises to not have to raise taxes. And taxpayers aren’t going to get any better window into what goes on down on French St, I agree.
But I find it hard not to sympathize with folks who won’t vote for Montgomery because of the promised tax increases. Certainly he deserves credit for being up front about it, but he certainly STILL isn’t telling the people who will have to pay the extra why they need to.
In further news in the 23rd RD race, earlier this week I was endorsed by the party: http://www.deldems.org/our-democrats/endorsed/ncc
Ultimately, Montgomery’s electability problem, as we’ve discussed before on DL, is that his constituency is narrow (Midtown Brandywine and the ever shrinking corporate upper and upper middle class)and that, despite his usual good manners, he remains tied too closely to the current in-your-face mayor.
Cass,if you knew about the need for a 15% tax hike, surely others did too. But, in an election year, it’s obvious that Baker didn’t want to foul his budget process by saying “I’m not going to raise taxes now but the next guy is really going to stick it to you next year” and the other candidates (except for Montgomery) sure as hell aren’t going to talk about it.
The first time I heard about the 15% increase was at the WFD/WPD event I noted. No doubt that Baker (with a big assist from City Council) worked at deferring the tough decisions until after the election. That doesn’t change my point about not telling taxpayers any detail about 1) what this means and 2) what it is supposed to cover. Montgomery owes even more info if he talks about this as “one and done” (which I don’t believe).
But agree about the electability problem.
Doughty, the republican candidate for the 23rd, in his filing shares his campaign website at http://WWW.ELECTMARKDOUGHTY.COM, according to http://elections.delaware.gov/reports/genl_fcddt.shtml
I guess that when we shake hands at a candidate forum I should first look for a buzzer in his palm.
Montgomery’s tax raising pledge is not political courage, it shows a total failure to trim government and conoslidate departments.
Back in December, Montgomery was pandering to personally give out bonus checks when the city refinanced a bond issue at a lower rate and saved a few million– until Bud Freel and responsible others pulled the plug on that nonsense.
Cassandara is right on many of her points. The city also grants a lot of no bid contracts, ‘forgivness loans’ to big developers, and ‘inside’ consulting contracts that can easily be cut. Where is Montgomery’s courage in cutting those?
I was at the Rotary mtg. yesterday. Bill said he wants to be Mayor because it will be a culmination of his long career. That is no vision for the future — of what as once a great city and crucial to the state’s ecomomic engine.
I’m not convinced that Montgomery has precisely the “electability problem” that mediawatch suggests, although the demographics bear examination.
I think of the 1984 primary as a metaphor for Wilmington. The Vari, the Frawley and the Patton-Carroll constituencies were each about one third of the Democratic electorate, in both 1984 and 1988. Although there were persuadable parts of each sector, they each have tribal elements that have shown adhesion in succeeding elections. [It’s astonishing that at that pivotal point in the City’s history, the candidates were so mediocre. Vari was a cartoon character, Patton-Carroll the most undistinguished first-viable-black-candidate imaginable and Frawley the most polarizing of the many plausible candidates from a fairly strong City Council.]
When in 1992 there were just two candidates, Rep. Sills was able to draw enough disaffected Frawley supporters and help from Leo to oust the incumbent. In 2000, Baker succeeded to the Frawley base, and drew enough from the other two camps to beat Sills. In 1992, Sills had to harvest former Vari and Frawley voters, and in 2000 Baker had to pull Vari voters and erode Sills’ strength among black voters.
Now that we’re back to a [basically] three-candidate race, how have the demographics changed from 1984-88? Most Frawley voters are with Montgomery. Clearly, anyone who voted for Patton-Carroll will support the more qualified DPW [hey, did you notice, his initials are WPD backwards?]. It’s the Vari constituency that has shrunk – and Kelley may be the last to realize it. The Hispanic sector has significantly increased, and does not fall naturally into any of those camps.
Bill Green was not anointed as Philadelphia mayor. There were three other qualified Democratic candidates in 1979, one black [Charles Bowser], two white [Al Gaudiosi, Bill Klenk]. Had the latter two not dropped out [Klenk fairly late], Green would have lost the primary and Bowser would have faced David Marston in the general election.
Philadelphia is far more tribal than Wilmington, especially at the end of the Rizzo era, but tribes drive intra-party voting patterns. I don’t think that the white collar portion of the Democratic party is smaller than 30 years ago. Rather, the African-American portion, both blue collar and white collar, turns out at higher rates than 30 years ago. DPW is the result of an invisible primary that ferreted out others. Although the Tuesday primary will depress the blue-collar turnout, all involved concede that Williams can count on a 40 percent turnout.
If Montgomery indeed inherits the Frawley constituency, he’s at 35. He can fight for improvement at the margins, but unless Kelley realizes that he’s the Kendrick Meek in this race, then Montgomery becomes the Charlie Crist and Williams is crowned as the Marco Rubio.
To Manifold: The city has changed a lot in the last 25 years. Montgomery won’t inherit the Frawley constituency (which is clearly smaller in 2012 than 1984), and he splits it with Kelley.
In this race, Dennis Williams brings the strongest political resume as Chair of JFC, former homicide detective and 17 years elected to the largest turnout area (Rep. District 1) in the city & endorsed by city cops, city firefighters and black clergy. DPW has the clear edge.
Montgomery has just taken all the steam out of his longshot campaign with his Walter Mondalesqe pledge to raise taxes double digit, after they already did it in 2010 and 2011. Jim Baker is a huge albatross on his neck.
Kelley is a viable contender, but his district has one of the higest crime rates in the city. He is credible with experience on Council, but viewed also as part of the problem and not reform enough for serious change and really cracking down on crime issue.
Jason, the tax increase was killed, electric rates were lowered, and honest accounting of expenses with the trash service paying for itself occurred in Dover. There were no new taxes, no tax increase, and electric, water, sewer, and trash bills saw no net increase and will see a net cut over the next two years. Instead, we cut spending and put into place pro-growth polices. That is the only way out. We need to grow the private sector.
With all respect to the anonymity that cloaks us all, I wonder if JJ is the online handle for Dwight Davis. The comment, “The city also grants a lot of no bid contracts” is among the most baseless allegations since Councilperson-aspirant Davis said in 1980 that he would “see lawyers and judges” walking into downtown massage parlors.
The city is subject to bid laws [which exempt only professional services]. Since city procurement is, unlike the Romney tax returns, out in the open, can JJ point to any “no bid contracts” in violation of law?