Hall-Long’s campaign finance scandal sends Delaware governor’s race into uncharted territory

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Delaware’s topsy-turvy race for governor keeps careening down uncharted paths.

Consider all that’s happened, just in the last week.

The focal point isn’t views on education policy, criminal justice reform, tax plans or other issues that traditionally dominate races for state government’s highest post.

Instead, it’s the campaign finance scandal of Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long, the favorite of the state Democratic party and Gov. John Carney to succeed him.

With less than six weeks remaining until the Sept. 10 Democratic primary election, Hall-Long is reeling from a state Department of Elections report that found she repeatedly broke state laws when filing campaign finance reports over several years.

The report led two top aides to bolt from her campaign, her primary foes to call for a federal investigation or independent counsel and two fellow Democrats in the state House to take the rare, if not unprecedented, step of publicly demanding that she withdraw from the race against New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer and former state environmental chief Collin O’Mara.

The blockbuster 16-page report, released late Thursday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from WHYY News, said Hall-Long violated the Delaware code from 2016 through 2022 by not disclosing $298,000 in payments to her husband and longtime campaign treasurer Dana Long, and by failing to record those advances to the campaign and payments the couple made on 16 different credits as loans.

The report also concluded that Dana Long had been paid $33,000 more than the couple reported loaning the campaign — a finding that stands in sharp contrast to Hall-Long’s contention that she had loaned her campaigns $101,000 more than she had been repaid.

Though Hall-Long had amended seven years worth of campaign finance reports in November after leaders and volunteers in her nascent gubernatorial campaign quit over the questionable payments to Dana Long, Elections Commissioner Anthony J. Albence is now ordering her to further amend the reports to bring them into compliance.

Albence did not fine Hall-Long and said he was not referring the findings to Attorney General Kathy Jennings for possible prosecution, however. Failing to properly disclose campaign loans and spending is a misdemeanor in Delaware.

Jennings, who had prodded Albence to release the report that Hall-Long asked him to keep from the public, said she concurred with the decision not to seek criminal charges. Jennings proclaimed, however, that “official explanations” by Hall-Long’s campaign about money paid to Dana Long “do not survive scrutiny.”

Hall-Long’s primary competitors immediately pounced on the findings of the forensic audit by former Philadelphia FBI senior executive Jeffrey Lampinski, saying they cry out for further investigation.

O’Mara said Hall-Long’s “black letter violations’’ of campaign laws were so disturbing that Jennings should appoint an independent counsel unaffiliated with Delaware’s ruling “Democratic apparatus” to continue the review. All nine statewide elected officials, including Carney and Jennings, as well as two-thirds of state legislators, are Democrats. Albence, also a Democrat, was nominated by Carney to the post in 2019 and confirmed by the state Senate.

Meyer then upped the ante, holding a news conference Monday in downtown Wilmington, where he blasted Hall-Long’s “nearly decade-long illegal conduct” and called for the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office to launch its own investigation.

“Laws don’t apply to some more than others,’’ Meyer said. “The report found that Ms. Hall-Long broke the law. The report provides evidence that she tried to cover it up and was still covering it up until the last moment when she asked our state election commissioner to keep the report detailing the illegalities confidential and not to release these findings to the public.”

Meyer followed up officially on Wednesday with a letter to David Weiss, U.S. Attorney for Delaware, saying the state’s findings “indicate potential violations’’ of federal law, including mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, tax evasion and conspiracy.

A spokeswoman for Weiss declined to comment on Meyer’s request for a federal probe.

‘None of this will be referred to the attorney general’

Hall-Long has sought to move on from the scandal that had begun burbling in September. That’s when she suspended fundraising after her campaign manager and fundraiser, along with other team members, quit because of questions about the money paid to Dana Long.

A WHYY News investigative story in November, based on confidential accounts of people who worked at that time with her gubernatorial campaign, was cited several times in the Department of Elections report.

Hall-Long pointed out late Thursday in the first of several written statements since the report’s release that “none of this will be referred to the attorney general.” She stressed that she had “voluntarily disclosed discrepancies” with previous finance reports and would continue to “address any bookkeeping discrepancies head on.”

The lieutenant governor also referred to the report as “preliminary,” although Albence stressed to her in writing that it was the “final” version.

Hall-Long has also disputed the findings of the state report.

“Our family has loaned my previous campaigns before running for governor more money than we have been reimbursed and we have forgiven that remaining loan balance,’’ she said in a statement Saturday. “My family has never benefited from my time in public office.”

On Tuesday, she pushed back against criticisms by Meyer, O’Mara and others, though she didn’t name them.

“When you have the endorsements our campaign has earned and you’re an accomplished woman in politics, I know that comes with a target on my back,’’ Hall-Long’s statement said.

Rep. Phillips says Hall-Long lied about conducting ‘audit’

But the ranks of critics have grown and include two women in the state House of Representatives.

State Reps. Sophie Phillips and Madinah Wilson-Anton, both Democrats from Bear who have not been supporters of Hall-Long’s candidacy, called on her to withdraw from the race.

Such strident statements from Democrat lawmakers about a high-ranking party member whose gubernatorial bid is supported by Democrat House Speaker Valerie Longhurst are basically unheard of in Delaware.

Phillips told WHYY News that she was appalled by the state report’s findings.

“I was honestly shocked. I didn’t know any of that to be true,” Phillips said. “As an elected official, I need to be able to trust the executive branch and especially someone who’s going to be in charge of running a $6 billion budget. So yes, just utter shock. I don’t think she is the right person to run in a general election against the Republicans either.”

House Minority Leader Mike Ramone of Pike Creek and former Rehoboth Beach police officer Jerry Price are facing off in the Republican gubernatorial primary. The primary winners will face off in the Nov. 5 general election.

Phillips, who is in her first two-year term, said she was infuriated by what the state report concluded about what last fall Hall-Long had called an “audit” of her campaign finances by Summit CPA Group of Middletown.

Hall-Long had never released the audit, despite calls by her primary opponents and government transparency groups to do so. Hall-Long instead announced in November that, while her handpicked accounting firm found “errors’’ in the finance reports, “no wrongdoings or violations were found.”

The state report countered that Summit CPA Group and its principal, Karen Remick, “did not appear to seek audit evidence beyond the Longs’ representation that certain credit card charges were campaign related, and further accepted purported 2016 charges as campaign related with no documentation the charges had occurred.”

The report also said Remick would not cooperate with the state’s review, which began in January. Dana Long was interviewed but not the lieutenant governor. The report didn’t specify why not, and neither Albence’s office nor Hall-Long would say why she did not speak with former FBI boss Lampinski.

Phillips said it’s now clear that Hall-Long’s statements about the Summit CPA Group over the last nine months “turned out to be a lie.”

Wilson-Anton, elected in 2020, said Hall-Long’s actions are disqualifying.

“This is not the behavior of someone who is fit to run for office, let alone fit to lead our state as governor,’’ said Wilson-Anton, who nevertheless expressed some affection for Hall-Long.

“She is a sweet lady. I honestly believe she means well,” Wilson-Anton said. “But that’s not enough. We need our governor to be competent and visionary, and that means they can’t put untrustworthy people in positions of power and public trust, especially when they have a history of violating that public trust and abusing their power.”

Dana Long had been arrested for stealing Republican campaign signs near Middletown during his wife’s 2014 race for state Senate. She won that election by 267 votes out of 12,193 cast, won the race for lieutenant governor in 2016, and was re-elected in 2020.

‘I know she has integrity,’ Gov. Carney says of Hall-Long

Speaker Longhurst did not respond to repeated requests from WHYY News for comment about the state report and her endorsement of Hall-Long.

Gov. Carney, however, has doubled down on his support of his lieutenant governor.

The governor, who is running for mayor of Wilmington and has a primary race against former state treasurer Velda Jones-Potter, would not agree to an interview but issued a statement through campaign manager Javier Horstmann.

“Bethany and her campaign were clear that they made some mistakes. They acknowledged them, and cooperated with this review,” Carney’s statement said. “I know Bethany. I know she has integrity, and will be a governor who does the hard work, and puts people first.”

The state Democratic Party also is sticking by Hall-Long, despite a call by former state chair Erik Raser-Schram for the party to rescind its endorsement.

“Donors and voters must know we take this type of conduct seriously,’’ wrote Raser-Schram, who worked previously for Meyer and is supporting him. “For the Democratic Party to refuse to rescind its endorsement is to endorse the abuse of money Delawareans entrusted her with.”

Raser-Schramm told WHYY News that current party chair Betsy Maron responded to his call with a one-word text: “Disappointed.”

Maron did not respond to requests by WHYY News for comment.

Campaign, finance chiefs depart after state report

With the election just 40 days away, the state’s 350,000 registered Democrats who are eligible to vote in the primary can expect to be inundated with positive and negative campaign mailers, social media posts and television ads about the three candidates.

Political insiders estimate that 80,000 to 110,000 will cast ballots.

Leading Hall-Long’s effort in the final laps to woo those voters, however, will be yet another leadership team.

When the scandal first erupted in October, campaign manager Brandon Cox and chief fundraiser Jennifer Mueller abruptly quit along with several volunteers.

In January, Hall-Long announced a new campaign manager, Donnie Johnson, and new finance director, Sydney Diewald.

Johnson left in April for personal reasons, campaign spokesman Dan McCormick said this week, though that move was never announced publicly.

She also hired Quentin Heilbroner over the winter as campaign director in charge of field operations, but when Johnson departed, Heilbroner essentially took over the larger role, McCormick said.

But the report’s release spurred Heilbroner and Diewald to leave the Hall-Long campaign, McCormick said Wednesday after reports of their departure began circulating this week.

Heilbroner and Diewald didn’t respond to requests for comment by WHYY News.

In their place, Hall-Long has turned to Matt Dougherty, who since 2022 has been operations director in her lieutenant governor’s office.

Dougherty is now taking unpaid leave from his $79,000-a-year state post to run the primary campaign in the final weeks.

Replacing Diewald with the title of fundraising director will be Debra DeLuca, a veteran of Delaware Democratic politics.

Despite the state report and the withering fallout that has followed, McCormick expressed optimism that the current team will win on Sept. 10 and in November.

“New campaign leadership roles have been solidified,” McCormick said, “to focus on Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long’s path to victory.”