Well, I'm Getting At Least 82 Votes

Later today I am going to be formally announcing something that I think is pretty significant: the names of 82 people who have agreed to be honorary co-chairs of my campaign for Lieutenant Governor.

Why eighty-two? Because I wanted to have two co-chairs from each one of the 41 Representative Districts in the state. And they are not supporting me just because I am so good looking. They are supporting me because I have been up and down this state for the past three years doing my job—trying to visit every senior center in the state once a year, exhorting every civic association and business group that will hear me about the need to press their legislators for insurance reform in Dover, and helping individuals who have been treated unfairly by the insurance industry.

Some of them are people I have known most of my career. Tony Allen, one of my co-chairs from the 4th district in Wilmington, met me in 1993, the year the Phillies went to the World Series. I was so addicted to the team that I had every game on the radio in my office, something that was a little bit unusual in the high-powered law firm where Tony and I were both fairly new employees. Tony heard the game on, wandered in, and sat down. Tony went on to become the first executive director of the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League, at the same time as I was working as legal counsel to the Governor, and we worked together on some tremendously important issues such as racial profiling and business opportunities for minority and women owned businesses. Tony is now a big shot at Bank of America, still a force in the community, and I am proud to know him and to have him as one of my co-chairs. Ironically, the other co-chair from the 4th district is Sally Coonin, a leader in the teaching and education community, who used to be Tony’s high school teacher.

I have known Senator David Sokola, one of my co-chairs from the North Star/Pike Creek area, even longer. Back in 1990, while I was still in law school but spending part of the summer and fall in Delaware, I asked former county Democratic chairman Joe Reardon which campaign needed an energetic young guy willing to roll up his sleeves and work for a Democrat. He said there was a guy running an uphill race in a Republican district who might just have a shot because he was smart, honest, and the hardest campaigner he had seen. So I went to work for David Sokola in 1990, he won, and I have never regretted it—one of the straightest shooters in the Delaware General Assembly, and someone I am proud to have on my side.

Some of them, frankly, are people who weren’t always my political allies. Kay Ryan, a Democratic activist and one of my co-chairs in the 38th district down at the beach, worked as hard as anyone to be sure I wasn’t the Democratic nominee for Insurance Commissioner in 2004. But she has watched me at work, and now she is one of my biggest advocates. I am glad she is on my side, not only because it is the ultimate form of flattery, but also because she is as tough as they come and I still have some tire treads on my back from her in 2004.

Some of them are friends of mine from organized labor. They know that I was a leader in reducing workers compensation insurance premiums, which was absolutely critical to retaining jobs here in Delaware, but also a leader in making sure that the premiums weren’t reduced by keeping injured workers from the best medical care. Others such as Darlene Battle, who is a leader of a Delaware organization that fights for housing and other rights for low-income residents of our state, and Ed Speraw, the head of an organization that fights for the residents of manufactured homes, are people who know that I have fought alongside them.

The list goes on—elected officials, businesspeople, health care providers, leaders of the African-American and Hispanic communities, leaders of the gay/lesbian community, Democratic party activists….What all of them have in common is that they have seen me at work, they know what I have done as Insurance Commissioner, and they know how important it is to apply the same energy and focus that I bring to my current job to the Lieutenant Governor’s office, so I can be a force for the welfare of children in our state.