Is Meredith Chapman the face of the new DEGOP?
With the utter domination of Lacey Lafferty by Colin Bonini, and now that Charlie Copeland has kicked the Party’s downstate garbage unceremoniously to he curb with his claims that the DEGOP is no longer in the business of shitting on gay people, it is worth asking, what’s next?
That question can be answered, to some extent by looking at the three millennials the DEGOP has recruited to get their feet wet this year by running for the state senate; Meredith Chapman, Anthony Delcollo, and James Spadola.
Of the three Delcollo, is the nut. He was the attorney representing Lafferty in her dust up with Frank Knotts. Sure he is young, but he has the heart (and web site) of a crusty old codger. His campaign bristles with the barely constrained nuttiness one finds among Fox News addicts. We can leave him out of this.
That leaves Spadola and Chapman. Spadola has been discussed here, to so I’ll take a look at Chapman and see what the future DEGOP looking through her as the lens.
First of all, when you visit her website, it isn’t what you see, but what you don’t see. No abortion talk, no 2nd Amendment calls to arms, no screaming war eagles or red white and blue bunting, or even overheated claims that the government is “too big.” In short, her site is a clean break with what had been DEGOP orthodoxy. On a color palette of soothing greens and blues, Chapman’s web site adopts the look and feel of a Green Party candidate. And the written copy under the issues tab does little to dispel that first impression.
Finance
With the State consistently relying on volatile and unreliable revenue sources, the ability to develop a balanced budget each year becomes more challenging. Delaware is essentially living paycheck-to-paycheck. It’s time to develop new funding mechanisms for the First State and make the tough decisions necessary to focus funding where it’s needed most.
Pretty generic. Where is the typical GOP line that poor people are crushing the budget under their unreasonable demands for public transportation, and schools?
Innovation
In the new economy, it’s not enough to create jobs. We must develop a foundation for long-term, economic viability that encourages new ideas and invites entrepreneurs and businesses focused on innovative ideas to build or grow their business in the First State.
Again, it is tough to argue with that because there isn’t much there it argue with.
The one policy area that Ms Chapman does elaborate on a little bit is education and while trying to keep it generic, she goes off the rails a little bit:
Charter Schools have had a positive impact for so many families in Delaware, but more choices don’t mean better choices. And that’s clear particularly here in District 8. There are 22 charter schools in New Castle County – in addition to the option of school choice, yet so many families opt to move across the border to Pennsylvania, where the schools are ranked higher. They maintain their Delaware jobs because the commute doesn’t change drastically, but we lose their taxes, their community engagement and their talented children. We need to incentivize families to want to go to public school – to build communities within our public school system.
Is it true that “so many families opt to move across the border to Pennsylvania” to get in their great, well-funded public schools? I’m seriously asking, because it strikes me as one of those truthy items that GOPers pick up along the way and never substantiate, or even really think critically about.
Someone help me out. Am I missing something? If Chapman is the new GOP, then there isn’t a lot of “there” in there. Of course, over the course of her career, she’ll have the distinct advantage of running against Democrats. And as we all know, when is comes to vacuousness, Democrats take a back seat to nobody.
I don’t know how you could back up the claim that more families move across the border. I’m curious if any data even exists to support or dispel that. I’m sure there’s something somewhere. That doesn’t speak to the rest of the state though. Not all of DE borders PA.
Interesting though that she chooses Pennsylvania public schools to compare/contrast with Delaware. Pennsylvania, where school boards control the operating tax rates as indexed with inflation plus a per-district adjustment based on the overall ‘wealth’ of the district. The only time they seek voter approval is if the requested rate increase is outside the ‘index’, beyond what inflation and ‘district wealth’ account for.
Two points:
* I wouldn’t write off Delcollo so fast. Yes, his website is laughably bad, but he’s a bright, driven guy and has a good personality for campaigning. As to representing Lafferty — that’s overblown. Young lawyers do not get as much say over what clients they accept as you seem to think.
* I don’t know how many Delaware parents up and move to get kids into PA schools, but I can speak from experience that many people relocating to Delaware for jobs buy houses in PA just for the reasons Chapman says. Whether that’s rooted in perception or reality is another debate.
The 8th district borders PA (i think) , so I’ll allow her comment on that grounds. It simply isn’t factual.
I’d vote for her but I’m weak
Also, she’s running against Dave Sokola. Delaware public education’s “best friend”. *sarcasm* What choices we have here! *more sarcasm*
” Chapman’s web site adopts the look and feel of a Green Party candidate”
Data shows the “screaming eagle” approach doesn’t work, so adopting a new look is inevitable. She is after all a marketing professional.
I don’t know enough about her to say if she is in fact a new kind of Republican. But if you are a young person looking for a start in Delaware politics, the Republican party is where the opportunity is. I suppose I should pay more attention to her.
That said, I would really like to see Sokola off the Education Commitee. Sokola has been a solid progressive on everything except education, but his education agenda has been a disaster that drags down all economic progress in Delaware. Still, I’m not sure if I should wish for Sokola to be replaced by a freshman Republican.
“Is it true that “so many families opt to move across the border to Pennsylvania” to get in their great, well-funded public schools?”
Many talk about it but few can afford to do it.
She appears to be trying to thread the needle and run against Sokola as a Charter School skeptic without throwing charters totally under the bus. Whoever wrote this stuff was head’s up enough to leave out vouchers and all the coded “school choice” language Republicans usually use.
The charter lobby has a working majority in the Senate. I don’t see Chapman changing that.
commonsense is right — the bigger problem is for families that move here for employment. PA just works out to be a better deal. I’ve often commented here that if I had kids when I moved to the area, it is pretty certain that I’d be living in PA.
Still, I know a handful of people who moved from DE to PA largely for school reasons. On couple is discussing moving back now that their kids are grown. It may be anecdotal, but it is there. And even if it isn’t large numbers, there are enough people talking about this option that the DE schools add one more bit of bad branding to their bag.
“Affluent public school parents moving to Pennsylvania” has been a GOP meme for more than 20 years …. It’s a cousin of Al Giacco’s threat to move Hercules to Pennsylvania when Pete du Pont was governor if the 19.8 percent personal income tax rate wasn’t cut.
However, since that meme was birthed, three things happened:
1. McMansions sprouted in the once rural Appoquinimink district, where buses took kids to “neighborhood schools” instead of to Wilmington.
2. The Neighborhood Schools Act of 1996 virtually eliminated any busing of Newark-area kids to Wilmington, so the only “problem” for affluent Newark public school parents was their kids having to sit next to poor Wilmington kids who were bused to the ‘burbs.
3. Not long after the 1995 Charter School Act was passed, the Newark Charter School was created, with an attendance zone that helped freeze out much of the African American population even in the greater Newark area.
Sure, some families still move to PA when their kids reach school age, but they’re accepting a much higher tax burden when they have far less expensive alternatives in Appo and, if they win the admissions lottery, Newark Charter.
The thing that might get Ms. Chapman out of her stealth mode is to ask her specifically if she supports Colin Bonini’s policies for Governor.
Good point, Cassandra … especially if one unearths the fact that Ms. Chapman worked for a while on the campaign staff of the person who defeated Bonini in his bid for state treasurer in 2010.
Wait…people are moving TO PA for higher taxes? Education isn’t exactly cheap up there. And they are having their own funding problems from…….republicans.
I know, right?
I do have multiple friends who moved to PA from the Newark area specifically because of schools, but I recognize that’s entirely anecdotal. I’d be interested in looking at broader numbers though, and I think Mediawatch’s points are very valid.
I would disagree that “the only “problem” for affluent Newark public school parents was their kids having to sit next to poor Wilmington kids who were bused to the ‘burbs”. Problems are deeper than that, from what I see as a parent (although I’m not discounting some parents having that issue).
I like Meredith. She’s an independent thinker and goodness knows the Republican party needs more of that and less screaming eagles in lockstep.
I have explained this move-to-Pennsylvania-for-the-schools equation before.
Property taxes in the Chadds Ford or Kennett Square areas are (for the ease of the arithmetic) about $10,000 a year for the same house taxed at under $2,000 a year in Delaware.
If you have one child, it is cheaper to stay in Delaware, because you’ll end up paying more in taxes than for private school. With two kids, it probably pays to move to Pa. but not by so much it’s worth the hassle of moving. With three kids, it’s a no-brainer — you’ll get more for less money in Pa.’s public schools than Delaware’s private schools.
Cassandra is right on the money about this: The effect is greater with people who are moving in from out of the area, because they all hear (and read) horror stories about Delaware’s crappy schools before they experience them.
Ironically, if you live in Pa. and still send your kids to a Delaware private school, they will be transported there by a school bus from Pennsylvania. If you live in Delaware, you’re on your own. More taxes, more services.
@sussexAnon and we don’t have our own funding problems in Delaware? Where they keep taking from the transportation fund.
Where they declare natural gas as renewable energy?
Where they invest in a car manufacturer and get nothing.
Where we are forced to invest in Bloom Energy and currently there are 7 jobs open in Delaware, there are 20 in California.
Where they give drivers licenses to ILLEGALS, when they just turn around and cancel their insurance.
But, were ok with the Demo’s running the state!! and I don’t just blame the Demo’s, it’s the republicans as well, who can come up with some decent candidates.
Just look at the Presidential race, I don’t think we could get any worse than Hillary and Trump!!
@anonymous — Add to that that the income taxes in PA are lower than they are here. If you have kids, the tax increase is basically the price of private school.
From an offline conversation a friend noted, that there is no question that Dave Burris is heavily involved in this campaign in a way that he isn’t with Delcollo. Never using the word “republican” is a sure sign and a direct pickup from his management of Ken Simpler’s campaign. Team Chapman is apparently VERY sensitive to anyone noting publicly that Meredith is a Republican. They know that it is radioactive for many Newark voters.
Another radioactive factor of Meredith is her inability to call UD administration out. She will likely have to go ‘not voting’ on any matter calling for more transparency from UD board of trustees–an issue of great importance to many UD-related Newark families.
So she’s essentially, from what I’ve been able to tell (I’ve been researching her since before the primary) a one-issue candidate and that issue is education. Not that education isn’t immensely important mind you… But I’m not sure I’m willing to throw away Senator Sokola (whom I agree with on every other topic, except education and I’ve had that [frustrating] conversation with him) for one issue.
As you say, she says nothing about a woman’s right to choose, she has no real environmental policy/ideas, she has nothing on infrastructure or any of the other myriad of other important issues that affect not only SD 8 but the entire state. Yes, she goes to represent the 8th, but she makes decisions and votes that impact everyone.
Also, if I remember the district correctly, the 8th borders also borders quite a bit of MD, not that people are “moving” to MD for the schools (or anything else).
“Ironically, if you live in Pa. and still send your kids to a Delaware private school, they will be transported there by a school bus from Pennsylvania. If you live in Delaware, you’re on your own. More taxes, more services.”
There is a distance limit to how far the buses will go, but you are correct. In addition, students from Pennsylvania have their books paid for by the state if that school still uses books. If a school assigns a student a tablet or if the student is required to purchase a tablet or laptop and the books are electronic, I’m not sure how that works.
@cassandra: True, although it’s not clear-cut, because the tax reciprocity deal between the states penalizes people who live in Pa. but work in Delaware, or so my old colleagues who lived in Pa. used to complain.
I was just keeping it simple. Your bottom line is the same as mine — if you have more than two kids, you will save money (over the cost of private school) by living in Pa. for their school years.
Of course, this only applies to people who can afford private school in the first place, so it’s not a widespread phenomenon.
“not that people are “moving” to MD for the schools (or anything else).”
Not quite true. I know several people who prefer a more rural lifestyle who moved to Cecil Co. for exactly that reason. (One specifically wanted someplace she could keep her horse.) Thirty years ago they would have moved to Landenberg, but that’s not rural anymore.
Not coincidentally, none of them had school-age kids.
Anybody want to talk about the graying of the Delaware Democratic party’s leadership?
John Carney, at 60yrs old is their fresh new young gun?
John Daniello is 174yrs old.
Tom Carper ran his first campaign against Ceasar Rodney.
The only young democrats in the mix either got the opportunity by accident (Bentz) or pushed back against the party…. (Sean Matthews and Townsend)….. and none are minorities or women. When are the Dems going to join the youth arms race that Copeland has already begun?
You skipped over a couple of young ‘uns: Coons is 53 and Denn a mere 50. Next to Carney, they’re mere babes in the woods.
FWIW, Chip Flowers, the treasurer in exile, is now 41.
Plus Navarro in his mid-40’s, Hall-Long (52), LBR is 54 or 55 (Wikipedia is unsure).
Sick of old white men controlling everything
Since I was talking about Republicans I only really slighted Carl Pace, who is running against 125-year-old white guy, Bruce Ennis. But, yes. I get your point Bane. The Dems aren’t filling empty ballot spots with greenhorns in need of some electoral seasoning.
I heard Spadola held an LGBT event in the city for his supporters a few weeks ago… that’s quite a change.
“I heard Spadola held an LGBT event in the city ”
Good for him. I’m sure he is a “real” Republican underneath, though.
All of these “new” Republicans are. I didn’t say it in the post, but I assume that all of these cleaned up, polite millenials will tell you that the poor have too much money and the wealthy have too little.
Chapman’s “Green Party” themed website is all window dressing. She wouldn’t be a registered Republican is she didn’t hold some very fucked up beliefs and hold them dearly.
The R’s, Dave Burris in particular, see a chance to win the State Senate. It’s unlikely, but could happen if everything breaks right. However, Spadola, who has drawn praise from some unlikely people, isn’t winning against McDowell in a presidential year in this overwhelmingly D district. Just not happening.
Chapman is more competitive, but Sokola remains the favorite as he is well-liked by not particularly partisan types in his district.
A 125 year-old white guy is the ideal composite candidate for the people in Ennis’ district.
The most likely flip wouldn’t happen, if it happens at all, until next March or so, when the Special Election for BHL’s seat would be held.
Having said that, Spadola and Chapman are recruiting successes for the R’s…IF they stay active if/when they lose the first time, and IF they don’t flip registration in order to have a better chance at winning.
I’ll probably write an article as to why D’s are currently not developing as many young candidates interested in running for office when I return from vacation. But it’s not like we don’t have ANY.
I’d take a look at the RDs that these guys reside in. that’s the prize they are really after. Al of this “Millennials to flip the Senate” talk is simply to give Celia Cohen a narrative.
Only problem with that scenario is that Burris works for the Senate R’s. He’s trying to pull a reverse Erik Schramm (Schramm helped the House D’s win the majority back in 2010.)
The one problem? Demographics may not be destiny, but in politics, it’s pretty damned close. Which is why a flip of the Senate chamber is unlikely, if not impossible.
As to moving across the boarder for schools, I have only anecdotal evidence to offer.
As a lawyer in Wilmington, a good numbers of the senior associates live just across the boarder and many claim it’s for the better school system. They’re folks who have the financial resources/flexibility to pick up and move if they want, but aren’t partners yet who could afford $25k a year for grade school.
However, even if my anecdote is representative…senior associates at Wilmington law firms is a very small sample size relative to the whole NCCo population.
#FWIW