NEWS

Big bucks pour into Delaware Senate race

Matthew Albright
The News Journal
Campaign mailers from Stephanie Hansen and allied PACs sent to voters in Delaware's 10th Senate District.

The February special election that will decide which party controls the state Senate has been the most expensive General Assembly race Delaware has ever seen.

More than $550,000 has been spent to deluge residents of Middletown, Glasgow and southern Newark with mailers, phone calls and television and digital ads. A Delaware Senate race usually "costs" each candidate about $50,000 – or $100,000 for a particularly fierce race, political operatives say.

Most of the money is coming from Democrats, who are determined to elect Stephanie Hansen and preserve their 44-year-old majority in the Senate — and with it, one of the few remaining Democrat-controlled state governments in America.

MORE: A look at the political muscle Democrats are putting into this race

MORE: Learn about the issues in the campaigns 

A new political action committee, First State Strong, has dropped more than $380,000 to support Hansen, on top of more than $60,000 her campaign itself has spent. PACs are a way for donors to support candidates beyond the $600 contribution limit to a campaign and follow different disclosure rules than campaigns.

Stephanie Hansen (right), campaigns with Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long. Hansen is the Democrat seeking to fill the Senate seat Hall-Long left vacant when she was inaugurated last month.

Unions are throwing financial support to Hansen, and Democrats from around the country have donated to the cause.

Republicans claim Democrats are spending so much money because they know Hansen could not otherwise beat their candidate, John Marino.

"My opponent is trying to buy this race," Marino said. "I don't think it's going to work. I think the voters of this district are too smart for that."

Marino's campaign has spent more than $30,000, and its primary PAC ally, FirstStateFirst, has spent more than $35,000. Marino also has received donations from pro-gun, anti-abortion and anti-tax groups. But the Republicans have not come close to matching the Democrats' firepower.

Republican senate candidate John Marino canvasses a neighborhood near Newark.

Numbers cited here are from the latest-available campaign finance reports. More money will be spent in this final week before the Feb. 25 vote.

State Republican Party Chairman Charlie Copeland filed a complaint with the Department of Elections claiming that First State Strong and the Building and Construction Trades Council illegally coordinated advertising with the Hansen campaign.

"The Democrats and their allies will stop at nothing to hold onto power in Delaware," Copeland wrote as he filed the complaint.

Commissioner of Elections Elaine Manlove denied the complaint Friday afternoon, saying the GOP couldn't prove either group coordinated with the Hansen campaign. But Republicans say Manlove is biased and vowed to take their case to court.

"This ruling strikes directly at the root of our government – and it allows Stephanie Hansen and the Democrats to illegally use secret money in a desperate attempt to hold onto power," Copeland said. "This simply cannot be allowed."

Democrats say Copeland's outrage is a political stunt, arguing the GOP provided zero concrete proof the campaign and PACs broke the law. They say the GOP is crying crocodile tears because its members also spend through PACs — and have done so for years.

"I think Republicans have showed for the past eight to 10 years that they are going to spend whatever money they have to win at all levels of government," said Sen. Bryan Townsend, D-Newark.

Democrats' allies filed their own election complaint against Republicans late Friday afternoon.

Jim Maravelias, president of the Delaware AFL-CIO union organization, accused the Marino campaign and the FirstStateFirst PAC of coordinating illegally.

Republicans said they heard Democrats making this argument on the campaign trail, but insist it has no merit.

Late Saturday, Commissioner Manlove told The News Journal the complaint came into her office after business hours on Friday. Manlove she had not had time to review the complaint, but she shared a copy with the newspaper. She planned to review the matter Monday with a deputy attorney general.

Accusations fly

Townsend made campaign finance reform a plank of his campaign for Congress last year. However, he says Democrats can't fight with one hand tied behind their back.

"I wish the rules were different," he said. "But we have to play by the rules of the game."

State Sen. Bryan Townsend, D-Newark, greets a voter at the polls during last year's primary elections.

 

Democrats say there are plenty of examples of Republicans boosting candidates with PAC money.

"When I saw [Republicans] raising these complaints, I had to read it three times to sort through the hypocrisy," Townsend said.

Treasurer Ken Simpler got major PAC support in his 2014 campaign, including mailers and $90,000 worth of cable TV ads, Democrats point out.

FirstStateFirst spent more than $71,000 on November's elections. It supported Sen. Anthony Delcollo, who defeated former Senate President Pro Tempore Patricia Blevins.

Sen. Greg Lavelle, R-Sharpley, is treasurer of FirstStateFirst. He says the problem is not that Democrats are using a PAC, it's that nobody knows who is donating.

"This is an incredible amount of money for a short race like this one," Lavelle said. "Doesn't Stephanie Hansen think the public should know who's funding this?"

State Sen. Greg Lavelle, R-Sharpley, is treasurer of the Republican-aligned FirstStateFirst PAC.

Candidates' campaigns have to disclose who donated and what they spent twice before the election – 30 days and eight days before voters go to the polls. PACs, on the other hand, have to file those reports only during election years.

That means First State Strong's donors won't be disclosed until it files its annual report next year.

Lavelle also hasn't had to file a report. But he says his PAC has been around for years and voters can see who has donated to it in the past. First State Strong was created in January, so it has no disclosures on record.

Democrats argue that's a quirk of the calendar, but Lavelle said it's no excuse.

"I think Stephanie Hansen should demand that they disclose what organizations have contributed," Lavelle said. "If they do that, I'll gladly disclose myself."

Only one name is officially connected with First State Strong — treasurer Michael Finnigan, a former New Castle County budget official. Finnigan did not return calls seeking comment.

The News Journal contacted several top Democrats rumored to be connected with First State Strong, but they declined to comment.

Republican Party Copeland's complaint argued that Democrats broke the law by coordinating between the PAC and the Hansen campaign. Here are the rules: A PAC can collaborate on a campaign on "issue advertisements" that do not instruct voters to select a particular candidate. For "express advocacy" on voting, however, they cannot collaborate.

The GOP points to a mailer paid for by First State Strong that says "John Marino keeps losing elections because his proposals hurt the middle class." That clearly represents express advocacy, the GOP contends. They note that First State Strong's bare-bones website includes praise for Hansen and point out that the group's donors and operators are almost certainly Democrats tied to the campaign.

Republicans had a similar argument against the Building and Construction Trade Council. The union ran fliers explicitly calling to vote for Hansen, then later held campaign events for her at its headquarters.

Attorneys representing First State Strong, Jonathan Berkon and Emily Hogin, called Copeland's complaint "utterly frivolous."

"Even if we were to excuse complainant's failure to read up on recent Supreme Court decisions — particularly those issued the same year when complaint had to grapple with the Senate candidacy of Christine O'Donnell — its failure to take even a cursory look at Delaware's statutes before filing the complaint merits less sympathy," the lawyers wrote in a letter to Manlove.

Manlove ruled that the First State Strong advertisement was an issue ad, not express advocacy, so it was irrelevant whether the group coordinated with the campaign. She ruled that campaign events prove the union supports Hansen, but do not prove that they coordinated with her on the ad.

Copeland accused Manlove of making a political decision, arguing a judge should rule.

"Elaine Manlove – the partisan Elections Commissioner whose re-nomination in 2016 was opposed by all 24 elected Republicans in the General Assembly – has struck again," he said.

Maravelias' complaint against the GOP points out that Lavelle both runs the FirstStateFirst PAC and solicits donations for Marino. It includes several fliers paid for by FirstStateFirst praising Marino's pledges to fight corruption and stop tax increases.

Lavelle acknowledges he works closely with the campaign but says his PAC's ads are focused on the issues – which means it is not illegal to coordinate.

"I am acknowledging coordination, but I'm paying attention to the law," Lavelle said. "When they complain about me, they clearly show they don't understand what the law is."

The complaint does not explicitly accuse FirstStateFirst of engaging in express advocacy.

The era of big money

America's two major political parties are in an arms race to spend not just on elections at the federal level, but increasingly at the state level, says Michael J. Malbin, executive director of nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute.

"The phenomenon you see nationally is a substantial increase in independent expenditure either coming from or originating from the parties," Malbin said. "They are becoming major players in state elections, especially those where the balance of party control is at stake."

Delaware's debate over fundraising is atypical in that Democrats are the party reaping the benefits. In most cases, Republican candidates enjoy the biggest financial windfall from PACs and similar groups.

The Republican Legislative Campaign Committee spent $29.9 million on state legislative seats in 2010, $40.6 million in 2012 and $38.1 million in 2014, according to the Center for Responsive Politics website, OpenSecrets.Org.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee spent $10.9 million in 2010, $17.2 million in 2012 and $15 million in 2014.

Spending on local races dropped for both groups in 2016 — the Republicans spent $13.7 million and the Democrats spent $6.3 million. Malbin attributes the decline to the presidential race "sucking all the oxygen" out of fundraising.

"This is not chump change," said Malbin, who is also a political science professor at the University of Albany. "This is serious money going into focused races in pivotal states. It's getting to the point where it's not unusual to see six-figure expenditures in state house or assembly races."

It is not lost on Democrats that Republicans drastically outspent them nationwide in the last few election cycles. Democrats believe that may be one reason their party has gotten whipped at the state level.

Not counting Delaware, there are only five state governments fully controlled by Democrats, while 24 are run by the GOP.

"I don't think we as Dems have really organized this way before," said Sen. Townsend. "I think everyone should prefer that there be less money in politics. But we've allowed ourselves to have our hands tied behind our back, and now we're saying enough is enough."

The stakes of state legislative control are about to get much higher: In 2022, state legislatures will redraw the district lines for Congress and state houses, a chance for the party in power to create structural advantages to keep that power.

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That has led some Democrats to work on ways to funnel money and other support to the states that need their help the most.

The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee sent a fundraising email on Thursday saying a donation to Hansen would be a chance to push back against President Donald Trump.

"If we lose, a new Republican majority will take power and rubber-stamp every single one of Trump's hateful policies," the email says. "They'll grind all our progress to a halt."

The left-leaning magazine Mother Jones talked to two California-based organizations, Sister District and Flippable, that claimed to have raised $87,000 for Hansen. That is more than the campaign itself raised between Jan. 1 and Jan. 27, the period covered by the latest campaign filing.

The California organizers said they felt Democrat's donations in deep-blue California would not make as big a difference as they would to Hansen, who is the last woman standing in the way of Democrats losing another legislature.

Malbin expects America will see more of these types of cross-country donations for key races.

"In instances like this where a party can break single-party control or make it, then you can expect a lot of focus there," Malbin said. "People who have never set foot in Delaware may be willing to give money."

This story has been updated to include new information about a complaint filed by the AFL-CIO president and to correct the spelling of Bryan Townsend's name and clarify his past positions on campaign finance laws.

Contact Matthew Albright at malbright@delawareonline.com, (302) 324-2428 or on Twitter @TNJ_malbright.