Townsend Is In!

Filed in Delaware, National by on September 17, 2015

Received this just awhile ago:

Dear Friends,

Today, I ask for your support as I announce my campaign to represent Delaware in Congress. 

Delaware faces a significant challenge: rebuilding an economy that works for all Delawareans and that reverses the inequality spreading across America. That’s why our campaign will champion policies that grow and strengthen the middle class, provide every child with an opportunity to succeed, promote equal justice in the criminal justice system, and ensure retirement security for our seniors.

Four years ago, I was joined by students, community leaders, and neighbors in a grassroots campaign for the Delaware State Senate. Although some doubted our prospects, Delawareans like you showed they’d back a candidate who reaches out, listens, and will always do the right thing for Delaware, even when it’s the hard thing.

In the coming days, I will begin to announce my team for 2016 – a diverse group of Delawareans whose support I’m grateful to have.  Together, we will engage thousands of Delawareans on their doorsteps and at gatherings across Sussex, Kent, New Castle, and Wilmington. We will build on a strong legislative record to reignite the energy of past campaigns, and put forth a vision for the future.

I’d be honored to have you join me on this journey.

Sincerely,
Bryan Townsend

www.bryantownsend.com

 

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Comments (26)

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  1. Jason330 says:

    I just signed up, and donated. Add $0.01 (one cent) to your contribution so they know it came from a DL reader.

  2. pandora says:

    Go, Bryan!

    Signed up and donated! (Added the one cent, too!)

  3. Steve Newton says:

    I can’t add the $0.01 because I already mailed a check. But despite ideological differences in several areas, Bryan has my support.

  4. Free Market Democrat says:

    Welcome to the race to be the Congressman for the Australian University of Woolloomooloo!

    “Is your name not *Brian*? No, it’s Michael. That’s going to cause a little confusion. Mind if we call you *Brian* to keep it clear?”

    And then they spelled it wrong to get all of us very confused.

    Oh well, at least none of their last names start with a C.

  5. JTF says:

    Just hear Townsend on the radio and was a bit disappointed. Said he wouldn’t do anything differently than John Carney? Was expecting a lot more from him.

  6. Bane says:

    Is this the “liberal” we’ve chosen to jerk-off for an entire election cycle only to be let down when they get in office and have actual responsibilities beyond just pandering PDD and bloggers? Sounds good!!! This will be fun!!

  7. Jason330 says:

    Bane, We all know that politicians will let us down and disappoint us eventually. We are grown ups. And yet we carry on. We believe in liberalism (or progressiveness if you prefer). The believe in the golden future that year by year recess before us. It eludes us, but no matter. Tomorrow we will run faster, stretch our arms farther… AND one fine morning—-

  8. Russ Melrath says:

    To early to JUMP on Townsend bandwagon. Why don’t
    progressives keep an “open mind” and see who files and hear them out.

  9. Bane says:

    Jason… what you said was eloquent and very polished. It was also bullshit. You should run for office. hahah

    What Russ said makes more sense.

  10. ben says:

    are you still also waiting for the “rest of the science” on climate destruction, Russ?

  11. Bane says:

    Ben if you think that Townsend being a departure from Carper politics is just as definitive as climate science, I would like to know if the Kool-Aid that Townsend provided you came out the pitcher cold, or did you have to add ice? The people want to know? Or maybe I should ask El Som since he’s the one pouring! lol

  12. ben says:

    mmmm cool-aid. I’m assuming it’s blue… and i can add my own vodka.

  13. I just ponied up. $.01 added to the tab.

  14. OK, Bane. I have volunteered extensively for both Short and Townsend. I even helped Short get the nomination for the Special Election after Wayne Smith resigned (It was my RD, and I had run against Smith previously). I like them both as people. I even worked for Short in the House for two years.

    I’ve also written extensively about their records and legislative priorities. Bryon’s legislative priorities have been Carperesque–cutting bureaucratic red tape on business. Bryan’s have been consistently progressive. Not to mention he had the guts to take on the corrupt Tony DeLuca and the entire Delaware D establishment who backed the corrupt DeLuca. He even lost a job over that run.

    I do think that Russ Melrath has a point in that, if you don’t know the two or their records, there’s no rush to make a choice.

    But, there are a few progressives out there who have followed what’s going on. And we’re enthused about having a chance to elect a progressive to Congress, as opposed to one who has already aligned himself with Carney and Carper and their priorities.

  15. JTF says:

    Then why did he say on the radio today that he wouldn’t do anything different than Carney?

  16. I didn’t hear him on the radio (I was working), so all I have is your assertion. That alleged statement, w/o context, means nothing. There’s no way that any candidate, even Bryon Short, would say that he wouldn’t do anything differently than Carney.

    What show was he on? Please provide a link, if there is one.

  17. Milli Vanilli says:

    I hear you El Som. But he also strikes me as a pandering greaseball willing to say whatever to whomever to get elected. His amendment almost killed HB50 and he’s a corporate lawyer who spends most of his day helping companies maximize profits through loopholes in state law.

    He beat DeLuca, not because DeLuca was a bad guy and he wanted to remove him from office, but because he was searching for a seat and Tony D was weak. Im not giving him the hero award for that. He hasn’t even gotten through one full term and he wants a ticket to Washington? What happens when you put a corporate lawyer on the Banking Committee in DC…? We get screwed.

  18. ‘Pandering greaseball’. Wrong.

    Your ‘analysis’ of why he ran against DeLuca and beat him is…fiction. He was a huge underdog in that race. Only someone running that type of grassroots campaign could have won. Oh, and a Democratic Party bagman fired Townsend for having the temerity to challenge DeLuca.

    You have no idea what he spends his days doing. Although it is clear that the so-called corporate lawyer meme is the meme of the Short campaign. One of Short’s strongest supporters has thrown out that meme on several occasions here, deliberately ignoring Short’s record of ‘cutting bureaucratic red tape’ on business. In other words, intellectual dishonesty.

    ‘Cutting bureaucratic red tape’ is what enabled DuPont to spin off Chemours, which will ultimately cost the taxpayers over $1 billion in toxic waste site cleanup costs, just to offer one example. That wasn’t Short, it was our Delaware delegation that embraces such ‘cutting of red tape’. Which is why I don’t want another obsessive ‘cutting red tape’ guy there.

    As to the amendment that ‘almost killed HB 50’, it was a good amendment. Here’s what it would have done:

    “This amendment affords eleventh grade students the opportunity to elect not to participate in the statewide assessment.” It passed the Senate, 13-3. The bill passed the Senate, 14-7.

    So, any inference that he was trying to kill the bill is…dishonest. You’ll have to ask the House why they chose to weaken an HB 50 that had been strengthened with Townsend’s amendment. I know that it took two votes to do it. Spiegelman’s amendment removing the Townsend amendment was defeated the first time around, but passed the second time.

    Gotta say, pretty weak stuff here.

  19. ben says:

    by all means, let’s all go support the OTHER left leaning progressive running. oh. wait.

  20. Milli Vanilli says:

    El Som I usually have a great deal of respect for your commentary. I view you as a really sharp guy that understands that political game. You were in the game and many of us are not. You know good and well that adding an amendment to that bill that would have given classroom decision making authority to students (not parents or administrators) would have never allowed that bill to pass.. And it didn’t until it was stripped away. Ask my friend John Kowalko what he thought of that ammendment. Even if it did pass, it would have given the Gov a great reason to veto it. It was an obvious poison pill with a sugary taste. So either he is stupid (which I know is untrue) or he is full of crap.

    Nobody doubts that Townsend ran a good campaign. That does not make my point about him searching for an office and seeing DeLuca as weak fiction? He was vulnerable due to a lot of bad press and being absent in his district, thats a fact. Townsend ran a great campaign, but that doesnt mean that DeLuca wasn’t incredibly vulnerable.

    Furthermore, of course his boss fired him. I would fire someone too if they just started working for me and immediately asked to run for office taking them away from their work. Then he goes to a firm famous for stashing away corporate candidates? I’m suppose to act like you’re Teddy Kennedy now?

    If you can honestly put your name on the idea that DuPont and the banks will NOT have a friend if he wins, I will donate today, not because of him, but because I kinda trust you.

  21. Jee-zus. This is the last time I’m gonna rebut each one of these lame points. After that, you’re on your own.

    All the amendment did was extend to 11th grade the opt-out provision. It changed nothing else in HB 50. The governor was gonna veto the bill with or w/o the amendment, and he vetoed it w/o the amendment. So it was not a poisonous pill. I don’t give a bleep what Kowalko thinks about anything b/c, if he can’t be the hero of his own narrative, then nobody else should wear that mantle. But he did oppose the Spiegelman amendment on the first vote. If Kowalko badmouthed the amendment, he didn’t do it publicly. The amendment made the bill stronger for supporters of HB 50. It overwhelmingly passed the Senate, as did the bill. People who would call it a ‘poison pill’ have no clue what they’re talking about.

    We at Delaware Liberal were screaming for months, if not years, that DeLuca was so corrupt and so anti-progressive that he had to go. I’d never heard of Bryan Townsend during that initial time that I and others here were calling out DeLuca. We wrote that Markell should fire DeLuca for the blatantly illegal conflict-of-interest of being both a legislator and an enforcer of laws, something the Delaware Supreme Court has opined is a constitutional violation. Not only DIDN’T Markell do that, he did everything his Administration possibly could to get him reelected. So, your notion that Townsend was somehow doing the governor’s bidding with his amendment to HB 50 is laughable. Talk to him sometime, ask him yourself. And DeLuca was not really weak, in fact, he had huge advantages to Townsend, but he DID have potential vulnerabilities if only a superior candidate could exploit them. Townsend did.

    As to the ‘of course his boss fired him’ meme, you’ve once again got that wrong. His boss fired him b/c his boss is a top D fundraiser, but pretty much exclusively for the entrenched power structure (Carper and his minions). In fact, he’s so entrenched, guess what he just got appointed to? If you guessed the Pierre S. DuPont Individual Freedom Award board, you’d be correct. You know, the foundation that has awarded the useless award to the likes of Jack Kemp and Chris Christie. He brings the same kind of ‘bipartisanship’ to that as he does to everything else. My money’s on Evan Bayh, or perhaps the corporate Pete Peterson, as his first choice. The Delaware Way at its worst. Law firms TRY to get elected officials to hang their shingles with them. But this guy fired Townsend b/c he refused to be a Delaware Way politician and tow the line. Any other reading of this belies the facts. (BTW, along with Kemp and Christie, the previous recipients of the DuPont Award: George Will, Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, and Steve Forbes. Progressives all.) Townsend’s ex-boss BELONGS on that board.

    As to what he’ll do when elected when it comes to corporate welfare, ask both him and Bryon Short. I will. All I can say is that one candidate is as Delaware Way/Corporate Welfare as it gets, and has legislated as such, while the other has been a progressive breath of fresh air so far.

  22. Jason330 says:

    Chip Flowers must be kicking himself for his hubris. Or, more likely, kicking some other imagined agents of his undoing.

  23. Wow. Last I’d heard, Dennis E was planning on challenging Cathy Cloutier for the State Senate seat. Talk about your vanity candidacies. And…Sean Barney?? Carper ain’t gonna allow that. He and Short will split the Heir to Carper/Carney vote. If Short and Barney were the only two running, I’d vote for Short. Maybe Barney will run for IC. Or Register of Wills.

    Not one Blunt, but two Blunts? (BTW, is Ted a Democrat this week?)

    This is gonna be fun. As will next Tuesday’s Al Show (cha-ching!)

  24. John Manifold says:

    Dennis E. Williams, some 17 years ago this month, called on Bill Clinton to resign in light of the Starr Report.

    Profile in courage!

  25. John Manifold says:

    Delaware: “a small state, totally dominated for most of the last three or four decades by three or four guys who keep getting reelected, except when they trade one of the state’s four major offices and get elected again. ”

    http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/trainwreck-a-comin