School funding, affordable housing and more: Delaware gubernatorial candidates sound off ahead of September primary

What questions do you have about the 2024 elections? What major issues do you want candidates to address? Let us know.

This story was supported by a statehouse coverage grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

The six candidates running to replace outgoing Delaware Gov. John Carney gathered at Dover Public Library to debate the issues on Thursday.

Democratic candidates Bethany Hall-Long, Matt Meyer and Collin O’Mara joined Republicans Mike Ramone, Jerry Price and Bobby Williamson answered questions about their vision for the future of the First State. Topics included affordable housing, education, minimum wage and climate change. The forum was hosted by the Delaware Journalism Collaborative, which includes WHYY News.

All of the candidates said the state’s education system was in dire need of improvement, with less than half of students in grades 3 through 8 performing at or above grade level in English language arts and math. A blockbuster report released last year showed Delaware was underfunding high-needs students by $500 million to $1 billion. The report was the result of a lawsuit that alleged the state was underfunding disadvantaged students.

O’Mara said he supports implementing the recommendations in the report. He said food insecurity is one reason that students are not learning in the classroom at the levels they could be. He told debate attendees he would fight for universal free breakfast and lunch in schools.

“They’re not fed in schools the way they could be, in the way they are in other states” O’Mara said. “We don’t have the child tax credit with a refund ability like you see in a lot of other states.”

Republican candidate and former NYPD officer Jerry Price said he also supported free school meals, while Republican Minority Leader Mike Ramone said he would take a bipartisan approach to restructuring the state’s current funding formula. GOP candidate and small businessman Bobby Williamson favored a voucher program.

“Let the parents raise their children, feed their children,” he said. “It’s fine if it is a deprived child who needs help — I’m all for that. But to generalize everything back to ‘the schools are going to fix all of our children;’ we as parents need to step it up.”

New Castle County executive Matt Meyer and Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long stressed the need to provide more mental health support in schools. Meyer highlighted the county’s efforts to help the Red Clay Consolidated School District and three other districts build school-based wellness centers in two elementary schools and a middle school earlier this year.

“I know as a teacher, we need to give our teachers the opportunity to teach and when students need food, when they need housing, when they need mental health and substance use and all sorts of other supports, we need to provide those supports,” Meyer said. “It is as important as providing a quality teacher to stand in front of students.”

All of the candidates agreed that affordable housing was a problem throughout the state and that reducing regulations and increasing multi-family housing would increase the supply.

Hall-Long said housing was a right.

“A lot of these roadblocks are at our county-level,” she said. “People cannot get permits. Prices go up. Developers go to other states. We need individuals being able to turn dirt here and look at a culture of excellence. That’s what I’ll demand within our system.”

Ramone disagreed that housing was a right, arguing the government was making housing less affordable.

“You got to get the government the heck out of the way. We’re a capitalist society. Everyone doesn’t have the right to own a home,” he said. “Everyone does have the right to live the American dream and earn the ability to earn a home.”

The candidates also generally agreed that Delaware should continue to replenish the state’s beaches, but differed on where the financial responsibility lay.

O’Mara, who served as secretary of Natural Resources and Environmental Control under former Gov. Jack Markell, said the state’s investment in environmental sustainability paid off when Hurricane Sandy hit in 2012. But he said the legislature erred this year when it failed to allocate more money for resilience when it passed an accommodations tax on rental units.

“Imagine what we could leverage if we had $30 million of state money to leverage $70 million to make our communities more resilient,” he said. “We could basically manage our evolution much better than we can right now.”

Williamson and Price said they believed the beach towns should pay the bill because they receive tourism dollars. Ramone said the issue was an opportunity for an entrepreneur to find a climate change solution rather than a mandated government decision.

Delaware voters will head to the polls for the primary on Sept. 10. In addition to the governor’s race, there are contested races for Congress, Wilmington mayor and several other offices. Winners will get their party’s spot in the Nov. 5 general election.