Delaware Sen. Tom Carper, a moderate Democrat who has held statewide office since 1976, announced Monday that he would not seek a fifth term next year. The senator also made his preferred successor clear in his departure speech, in which he asked Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester to run. Blunt Rochester, who holds the state’s only House seat, became both the first woman and Black person to represent Delaware in Congress with her 2016 victory, and she'd make history again should she replace Carper.
While the eventual Democratic nominee should have no trouble in the general election in solidly blue Delaware, state politics were far different during the early part of Carper's career. The future senator, who was born in West Virginia and served in the Navy during the Vietnam War, first arrived in the First State in 1973 as a student of the University of Delaware's business school. He quickly became involved in local politics the next year by working on Democrat Jim Soles' campaign for the House, an effort that ended in a 58-40 loss against Republican incumbent Pete du Pont despite the Watergate wave that ushered many Democrats into Congress.
Carper, though, had more luck in 1976 when he sought the post of state treasurer at the age of 29 and won 55-43 as Jimmy Carter captured the state's electoral votes by a smaller 52-47 margin. Carper's win proved to be a bright spot for his party locally on what was otherwise a rough night: Du Pont unseated Gov. Sherman Tribbitt in a landslide while two future Carper foes prevailed in their respective races, with Sen. William Roth winning reelection and Thomas Evans succeeding Du Pont in the House.
The new treasurer, though, quickly proved he could decisively hold down his post every two years (the treasurer's term was only extended to four years in 1983) even during even tougher political climates. Carper won 59% in both his 1978 and 1980 reelection bids, with the latter campaign taking place as Ronald Reagan was carrying the state 47-45 and Evans was winning 62-38. But while Evans was one of Reagan's closest allies, his political fortunes nosedived the following year over an affair with a lobbyist.
Carper, with encouragement from Sen. Joe Biden, ended up launching a challenge to Evans just five minutes ahead of the candidate filing deadline in 1982, and he looked like the frontrunner for much of the campaign. The race, though, appeared to close late after the New York Post ran a story claiming Carper had abused his wife and children.
Both denied the allegations, with Carper's wife, Diane, saying, "Let me state, unequivocally, that I would never allow my children or myself to be abused." Carper unseated Evans 53-47 in what would be the only single-digit victory of his career, a win that came shortly before the Carpers' marriage ended. Yet despite his fierce denials and threats to sue the Post, Tom Carper admitted in 1998 that he had in fact struck his wife. "Did I slap my wife 20 years ago? Yes," he told reporter Celia Cohen, who was writing a book about Delaware politics. "Do I regret it? Yes. Would I do it again? No."
In 1992, Carper left the House to trade jobs with Republican Mike Castle, who was termed-out as governor, in a move that became known as "the Swap." Both men had no trouble winning their new offices, and Carper's victory kicked off an unbroken streak of Democratic control of the governorship that continues today. But despite his detente with Castle, Carper had no such understanding with Roth, the state's other top Republican, and Carper decided to challenge him for the Senate in 2000 in what would become a closely watched battle.
Roth, the namesake of the popular Roth IRA retirement account, had won reelection in 1994 56-42, two years before Carper claimed a second term as governor in a 69-31 landslide. At the start of their campaign, Carper posted decisive leads in the polls, though things once again seemed to get closer in the final weeks.
The two largely avoided directly attacking each other, though the 53-year-old Democrat appeared to reference the 79-year-old incumbent's age with messages like "Tom Carper. A Senator for Our Future." Roth suffered two fainting spells late in the campaign, which brought him unwelcome scrutiny at a crucial time, even though Carper never addressed his opponent's health issues. Ultimately, Carper won 56-44 as Al Gore was carrying the state by a similar margin.
The senator never again earned any serious opposition from the GOP, but he did face a spirited primary foe during his final campaign in 2018. Air Force veteran Kerri Evelyn Harris tried to take advantage of progressive anger at Carper's support for the banking and pharmaceutical industries, both of which have a major presence in Delaware, as well as his 2006 vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh as an appeals judge. Harris, however, struggled to raise money against Carper, a Delaware institution, and the senator turned her back 65-35 ahead of one final easy victory in the general election.
Hell yeah! Democrats and progressives simply crushed it from coast to coast on Tuesday night, so co-hosts David Nir and David Beard are devoting this week's entire episode of "The Downballot" to reveling in all the highlights. At the very top of the list is Jacksonville, where Democrats won the mayor's race for just the second time in three decades—and gave the Florida Democratic Party a much-needed shot in the arm. Republicans also lost the mayor's office in the longtime conservative bastion of Colorado Springs for the first time since the city began holding direct elections for the job 45 years ago.