Country Roads, Take Me Home

After putting in a full day at the office on Wednesday, I said to myself “nothing would cap this off like a mad dash back and forth across Sussex County to try to visit as many of my Democratic Party friends as I can.”

Stop number one was at the Eastern Sussex Democratic Club’s annual picnic in Rehoboth. Virginia Harmon and her group have sponsored this event for the last few years, and it is a great tradition. While I was driving out of Rehoboth, I called Michele at the house to check in on the boys. Important lesson learned: if you hear children screaming and the sound of plates clattering to the ground over the phone, “how’s it going honey” is not a good conversation starter.

Stop number two was an hour northwest at a restaurant in Greenwood, where District Chair Pat Ewing and the 35th district Democratic Committee were holding a meeting. All the stars come out for the 35th district: by the time I arrived, Jack Markell and John Carney were already there. There is a reason everyone comes to the 35th: looking around the room, some of the most storied behind-the-scenes names in Sussex County politics were at the table. George and Gladys Adams, Dudley and Pat Ewing, Joe and Joanne Conaway…these are quality people who have been the lifeblood of the Sussex County Democratic Party for years. Pat Ewing and I go back an especially long way. She was one of my very first supporters when I ran for Insurance Commissioner in 2004, and when I needed someone to introduce me at my swearing-in ceremony in January of 2005, I asked Pat to drive up to Wilmington to do it.

The final stop of the night was back in Ellendale, at the 36th Democratic Committee Meeting. And again, a lot of history: the 36th District was one of the first representative districts to endorse me in 2004. As I like to say, they were for Denn before it was popular to be for Denn. Chairman George Strick gave me one of the nicest introductions I have ever received—I can’t remember everything he said, but one thing that stuck in my mind was “this guy does not quit, if you knock him down he just keeps coming at you.” I guess out of context it makes me sound like a rabid bull in Pamplona, but the way he said it, it was about the biggest compliment I could earn.

Michele and I are taking the boys to the Delaware State Fair on Saturday. Livestock beware.