Governor
Governor Ruth Ann Minner was first elected in 2000. She was the Lt. Governor to the popular Tom Carper, who was term limited and running for Senator Roth's seat. Her campaign was simply to continue the good times experienced in the 1990s under Governor Carper. Therefore, now that the good times have ended, she could be in trouble. Indeed, when I think of her accomplishments, only one comes to mind: The Public Smoking Ban.
For Delawareans, you either love it or hate it. I am a social smoker in that I have been known to smoke three to five cigarettes when there is a beer in my hand. Now, under the ban, you have to smoke outside and not in the bar or restaurant or bowling alley or in the Casinos or what have you. At first, for me, the ban was incovenient. But now, I enjoy the fact that my clothes don't stink the next morning. Further, I enjoy not coughing up a lung the next day after being subjected to a night full of second hand smoke.
So the Ban is a wash for me and I believe a majority of Delawareans. When the Ban was first enacted, many bar owners and devoted smokers were enraged. "Ban Ruth Ann" bumper stickers appeared everywhere. But the outrage has waned and now I believe that Governor Minner was smart to enact this ban early in her term. If she had just enacted it in 2003 or 2004, she will have been defeated in a landslide.
Besides the Public Smoking Ban, I strained to think of any other accomplishment. So I went to her [website hppt://www.ruthann2004.org] to see what she was crowing about:
As Governor, Ruth Ann is working to improve our schools, strengthen and make safe our families, foster economic development, protect our environment and make Delaware more livable, and run the state government responsibly and well. With the help of the General Assembly, dedicated state employees and thousands of citizens, she has made significant strides in each of these areas as well as others:
- Emergency Health Powers legislation expanding the amount of health information the state collects, clarifying the chain of command in the event of a biological or chemical attack, and ensuring the protection of civil liberties in such an attack (H.S. 1 to H.B. 377);
- Expanding the crime of terroristic threatening to anthrax-type hoaxes and heightening criminal penalties for false threats (S.B. 288);
- Ensuring that state employees who are called to active duty military service under Operation Enduring Freedom do not lose pay during their service (S.B. 272);
- Allowing the state to fill temporary vacancies left by employees called to active duty with retirees who do not require training (S.B. 439);
- Collecting information about work and residential history from cancer victims in order to better study any environmental causes of cancer (S.B. 372);
- Regulating, for the first time, aboveground storage tanks, like the one that caused the death of a worker at Motiva in Delaware City in July 2001 (S.S. 1 to S.B. 273)
- Raising the penalties for those who are convicted of drunken driving more than once (H.B. 296);
- Delawareans no longer have to pay out of their pocket if they reasonably go out of their HMO network;
- Residents are now notified within 24 hours when there is an environmental accident in their community;
- The first step toward curbing urban sprawl in our state has been taken by asking cities and towns to plan for growth, to grow only where they plan and by continuing to preserve farmland and open space;
- The Department of Technology and Information has been created allowing highly-skilled people to be hired and;
- First State children have been put first by improving foster care and child safety.
Some good accomplishments there, but nothing outstanding. Therefore, Governor Minner would have been vulnerable if she faced serious opposition. For example, the Republicans could have run longtime Attorney General M. Jane Brady against her. Brady may have won. But we will never know.
Delaware Republicans suffer from the National Republican's disposition to "It's His Turn" politics. Former Superior Court Judge William Swain Lee, who gained notoriety from the Capano-Feehy Murder Trial, is the 2004 Republican Gubnatorial Candidate. Lee let his Capano Trial celebrity go to his head like Judge Ito in the OJ Simpson head. He immediately resigned his Judgeship and entered the 2000 Republican Primary for Governor. He lost by 57 votes to Chamber of Commerce President Burris, who went on to lost to Minner in November. His slim margin of defeat guaranteed him a spot at the table in 2004 in the party bosses' mind, if he wanted it. He did and has been shoring up support among the Establishment for the last four years while being an Of Counsel at a local Wilmington law firm.
So Bill Lee is the presumptive Republican nominee. He faces token opposition from Mike Protrack (who is an airline pilot) in the September 11 primary and in the traditionally decisive GOP convention is this month, but Bill Lee will win the nomination.
The Republicans must be kicking themselves and if they are not, they are delusional. They have a chance to knock off a weak Democratic incumbent, and they decided to nominate an uninspiring and dull candidate who has no real reason as to why he wants to be Governor. Sure, his website says that he is centering his campaign on four issues:
Education: Delaware's school children need a Governor who has the political independence to say that we will pour no more money into a broken education system until we've fixed it, until teachers and administrators are held accountable, not just our children. Then we'll spend what it takes to attract and retain our nation's best teachers because quality teachers are the key to quality education. Then we'll give them the authority and tools they need to do their job.
Environment: Delaware's air and her rivers and bays need a Governor who owes nothing to polluters and who will not be afraid to enforce our environmental laws.
State Budget/Finance: Delaware needs a Governor who won't play games with our revenue estimates, who won't seek tax increases based upon trumped up numbers.
Taxes: Delaware needs a Governor who understands that there is a price we pay every time we raise taxes...that price is jobs!
Yeah, how exciting. So we have a weak incumbent and an even weaker challenger who makes Ruth Ann look charismatic. So Governor Minner should win a second term. Whether she deserves it or not is yet to be seen.
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