If You Want Your Chicken, You Have To Go Through Me

Other than hounding fabulously rich people for money, one of the most time-honored traditions in Delaware politics is campaigning at the Delaware Electrical Cooperative’s annual meeting, which is today in Harrington. Actually, it is the politicians who refer to it as a “time honored tradition”; I believe many of the attendees refer to it as “the horrific obstacle course I need to navigate to get to my free chicken dinner.”

As I learned when I was a first-time statewide candidate in 2004, the Electrical Cooperative dinner presents some logistical challenges. Most of the attendees take trolleys from the parking lot to the building where the dinner is held, so instead of a slow stream of people coming into the building, they arrive thirty or forty at a time. It won’t be so bad this year because it’s not an election year, but next year a scrum of one or two dozen candidates and their supporters will be stalking the stairway leading into the dinner—increasingly ornery from being out in the August heat all afternoon—and will then descend like locusts on the poor unsuspecting dinner attendees as they exit their trolleys. All things considered, the folks attending the dinner are very gracious, and some of them may even like it—the phenomenon is kind of like Lindsey Lohan arriving at a dance club. Except that they are sober. And wearing all their clothes.

I will report in tomorrow.