Good News, Bad News

I will give you the bad news first. In spite of now being three years old and fully capable of wiping their hands before pawing at me, my children have nevertheless ruined all of my suits. Yesterday they triumphantly sullied the last one. I have had to triage my jackets with the least amount of banana smeared on them (at least, I hope it’s banana), while waiting for the local dry cleaners to struggle mightily to save the others. So if you see me on the campaign trail in the next few days and want to tell me that there is something on my suit…don’t.

The other bad news is that the House Republicans yanked yet another one of the consumer protection bills I proposed from the House agenda yesterday. This bill, which had passed the State Senate by a 20-0 bi-partisan vote, was designed to regulate “medical discount plans”--health plans that often look like health insurance but really aren’t. The plans are targeted at low income communities which have high uninsured rates, and even the Federal Trade Commission (overseen by the somewhat-less-than-consumer-friendly Bush administration) has identified these plans as an industry that needs to be watched. Thanks to the House Republicans, they will go unwatched in Delaware for at least a while longer. The Republicans’ excuse for yanking the bill yesterday was that they hadn’t realized I was going to testify in favor of it—apparently they thought we would argue for the bill through interpretive dance--and they needed to fly in special experts from the industry to testify against me. I will hold my breath. Thanks to Representative Helene Keeley for fighting to try to get this one done on behalf of consumers.

Now for the good news. First, the upside of the House Republicans selling out consumers was that I actually got out of Dover at 5:30 and unexpectedly got to see the boys before they went to bed and watch American Idol with my wife. Not a bad consolation prize. And second, yesterday was the filing deadline for 2007 campaign finance reports, so we finally found out where I stand with respect to the fundraising part of the Lieutenant Governor’s race. As the News Journal is reporting this morning (you can read it here), I now have a 5-1 fundraising advantage over my only announced opponent. That is great news, and to those of you who contributed and helped give me this advantage, thank you. To those of you who didn’t, you can fix that right now by taking out your credit card and clicking here.