Meyer defeats scandal-plagued Hall-Long and O’Mara in Delaware’s Democratic primary for governor

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The Delaware Democratic Party leadership was against Matt Meyer.

So were Gov. John Carney and House Speaker Valerie Longhurst.

Joining in the opposition were the two powerful unions — representing state teachers and organized labor.

Yet New Castle County Executive Meyer capitalized on Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long’s yearlong campaign finance scandal and former state environmental protection chief Collin O’Mara’s late entrance into the race and rolled to a convincing victory Tuesday in the three-way gubernatorial primary.

Meyer, whose candidacy was fueled by a huge fund-raising advantage, won 47% of the vote in the marquee race of the Delaware primary season, according to unofficial results from all 530 precincts as well as early voting and absentee ballots. Hall-Long was second with 37% and first-time candidate O’Mara finished third with 16%.

Meyer, 52, will face state House Minority Leader Mike Ramone in the Nov. 5 general election to succeed Carney, who by law could not seek a third term.

Ramone, 63, a business owner who has represented the Pike Creek area of western New Castle County since 2008, cruised to victory Tuesday in the Republican primary. With nearly three-quarters of the vote in, Ramone won 73% of the vote against political newcomers Bobby Williamson (11%) and Jerry Price (16%).

Meyer will be the prohibitive favorite to win the governorship over Ramone in a state where Democrats outnumber Republicans nearly two to one and since 2018 have held all nine statewide elective offices.

Meyer, a lawyer and former teacher who has been county executive since 2017 and has been eyeing the governorship for years, told WHYY News at about 10 p.m. — when about two-thirds of the votes were in and he held a formidable lead — that he was gratified voters chose him and his platform. The victor didn’t address the fact that the party leadership didn’t support his candidacy.

“What we’ve seen in this election is that Delaware Democrats want a leader who’s going to deliver with accountability and honesty, who has a credible record that will be able to improve our schools, address affordability issues and housing and cost of living, address the inaccessibility of healthcare in large swaths of Delaware, and better employment opportunities,’’ Meyer said.

“That’s the message that I’m taking from this election — that the work we’ve done in the county for the past eight years is noticed and the vision for the future that we’ve communicated and developed, listening to people across this state, is something that Delawareans really want,” he continued.

Hall-Long’s defeat in a race filled with turmoil within her camp could prove to be a bitter end to the nursing professor’s two-decade long political career. Hall-Long, 60, was first elected to the state House in the Middletown area in 2003, became state senator in 2008, was elected lieutenant governor in 2017 and then re-elected in 2020.

Hall-Long and campaign spokesman Dan Mccormick could not be reached after the votes were tallied.

O’Mara, 45, didn’t get into the race until March and was widely viewed as a spoiler who could harm Meyer’s candidacy. After the results were in, O’Mara said he was “incredibly proud that we ran an entirely positive, issue-based campaign during the most viciously negative primary in Delaware history.”

“I am committed to continuing our work on critical issues of education equity, affordability, climate, and rebuilding our economy to make Delaware the First State of the 21st century,” O’Mara said.

Ramone could not be reached after winning the primary.

Some voters interviewed at polling places Tuesday mentioned Hall-Long’s troubles but others did not.

Prina Read, of New Castle, said Meyer was her choice.

“Obviously, Delaware as a whole is a much bigger platform and much more territory to cover than New Castle County,’’ Read said. “I think he’s proven his ability to be a good governor.”

Ramada Chapman, of Wilmington, also voted for Meyer.

“It got a little dicey even up to like the last 24 hours but I do think it’s Matt’s time,” Chapman said. “I think he’s done the work to work up to it. And I think it’s time for some fresh leadership with integrity.”

Khaleb Freeman, of Wilmington, said he voted for Hall-Long.

“I kind of fell in love with her personality and who she represented,’’ Freeman said. “I feel like she represents a newer generation in her own way and bringing forth new ideas.”

Kimberly Livington, of the Millcreek area, said she would have voted for Hall-Long but for “the recent scandals” and instead chose O’Mara.

Hall-Long faced revolt in her own campaign after launch

Hall-Long, by virtue of winning two statewide races for lieutenant governor, was widely viewed by political observers as the frontrunner when she announced her candidacy last September, and Carney immediately endorsed her.

At the time, Meyer was her only opponent, having declared his candidacy three months earlier. While Meyer had won two New Castle County races, the Wilmington native and resident was a relatively unknown candidate in Kent and Sussex counties, where about 130,000 of the state’s 351,000 registered Democrats live. Hall-Long, by contrast, hails from Sussex County.

But the race to replace Carney took a dramatic turn within days of Hall-Long’s launch when she abruptly suspended fundraising. That occurred within days of her campaign launch, and forced the cancellation of a handful of events, including one Carney was supposed to host.

Hall-Long’s campaign initially told some supporters she was dealing with a “personal, private matter.’’ But she soon announced that a review of her campaign finances she launched had found “there may have been reporting issues that require attention.” The lieutenant governor promised that forensic accountants would “thoroughly audit’’ her campaign receipts and spending.

What Hall-Long didn’t announce, however, was that her campaign and fundraising managers, plus other staffers and volunteers, had bolted from her team after discovering that more than $207,000 had been paid to her husband and campaign treasurer, Dana Long. The revolt, based on insider accounts, was revealed in a November WHYY News investigation.

The WHYY News story came days after the lieutenant governor said an audit had found she had been sloppy in recording $308,000 in loans that she — not her husband — had made to her campaigns since 2016, and $207,000 in repayments. Dana Long, who was not named as the recipient of the $207,000, was replaced as treasurer and Hall-Long said she would not seek to recoup the $101,000 loan balance.

Yet Hall-Long resisted calls by Meyer, Common Cause of Delaware, and others to release the so-called audit, insisting the issues were behind her and the campaign was back in stride.

Instead, the University of Delaware professor stressed to voters that she was well-equipped and prepared to be the first nurse to become a U.S. governor, and the second woman to hold the post in Delaware.

Carney, who had decided to run for mayor of Wilmington and won Tuesday’s Democratic primary, never held a fundraiser for his handpicked successor. Carney did, however, continue supporting her bid to succeed him, and even recorded a video promoting her candidacy.

Hall-Long reports ‘Incomplete, inconsistent, and often inaccurate’

Behind the scenes, however, the Department of Elections was investigating the matter, and hired forensic analyst Jeffrey Lampinski, the former Philadelphia FBI chief.

The report was finalized in late July and released to WHYY News under a Freedom of Information Act request, even as Hall-Long lobbied Elections Commissioner Anthony Albence to keep the findings confidential.

Lampinski’s findings were damning, and noted that Hall-Long’s handpicked accounting firm had not conducted an audit or even checked that actual receipts and expenses matched what her campaign had reported.

The 16-page report’s primary conclusions were that Hall-Long’s campaign had:

• Repeatedly violated Delaware law from 2016 through 2023 by not disclosing $298,000 in payments to her husband, and by failing to record advances the couple made to her campaigns as loans.
• Still not disclosed $91,000 in payments to Dana Long, who had written the checks to himself.
• Paid the couple roughly $299,000, all but $1,100 to Dana Long, but only $266,000 in loans could be verified. “In other words, they disbursed themselves $33,178.65 more than I was able to substantiate in personal loans to the campaign,” Lampinski wrote.
• Didn’t document the loans as required by law. Most of the money had been allocated through credit card payments for campaign expenses. The couple used 16 different credit cards, almost all of which offered rewards for goodies such as free hotel stays, flight discounts, or “cash-back” refunds to the card balance.

“I find the Committee’s account of expenditures in its public campaign finance reporting incomplete, inconsistent, and often inaccurate, leading to an unreliable picture of its financial affairs,’’ Lampinski wrote.

Campaign to replace John Carney turns nasty in final weeks

Meyer called for a federal investigation into the scandal after Attorney General Kathy Jennings said she would not pursue criminal charges for the campaign finance violations, which under Delaware law could be prosecuted as misdemeanors.

O’Mara called for an independent counsel to review the matter, and a reform to campaign finance laws.

Hall-Long challenged Lampinski’s finding that her husband was paid more than the couple loaned the campaign, and noted that no criminal charges were lodged against her or her husband.

But the report from the office of the elections commissioner Carney had nominated for the post  intensified the harsh spotlight that had been shining for months on the lieutenant governor.

Other controversies also dogged Hall-Long. WHYY News revealed that she had accepted more than $25,000 in donations that exceeded the $1,200 donor limit, including from union PACS, developers and doctors. The disclosure that the donations violated campaign finance laws forced her to return money to several contributors.

In addition, Jennings called publicly for the committee she and Hall-Long co-chaired to immediately halt to grants from a multimillion dollar fund aimed at reducing overdose deaths from prescription painkillers, heroin and fentanyl. Jennings did so after her office began investigating how a $290,000 grant was spent by the nonprofit Code Purple Kent County, whose leader contributed $1,200 to Hall-Long’s campaign just days after the agency received the money.

While Meyer publicly focused his campaign on his leadership of Delaware’s largest county, in the wake of the report’s release less than seven weeks before the primary election, the campaign grew increasingly negative.

Political action committees opposed to Hall-Long aired television ads and filled mailboxes with fliers about her campaign finance illegalities.

PACS opposed to Meyer countered with a deluge of mailers about a sexual harassment lawsuit filed in August by a county tax assessor against her supervisor who was demoted for sending her profane, explicit texts.

The fliers sought to paint Meyer as a leader who tolerated sexual misconduct, tying the new lawsuit to an unrelated one filed by several women against the county’s deputy police chief for alleged behavior that dated to more than 20 years before Meyer took office in January 2017. Meyer and the county settled the police case in 2022 for $3 million, including legal costs. Neither lawsuit accused Meyer of any form of harassment.

As late as Monday night, in a last-ditch effort to woo voters, Hall-Long sent a text to the state’s registered Democrats to say Meyer was “using out-of-state dark money to spread lies about me and my family and to buy the governorship.”

O’Mara, who since 2014 has headed the National Wildlife Federation, didn’t join in the attacks by PACs, which spent well over $2 million in the race.

Instead, he focused on his previous role as environmental protection chief and a goal of revamping the public education system, largely by boosting funding, making health care less expensive and overhauling campaign finance reporting laws.

But in the end, Democratic voters chose Meyer, setting up a match-up against Republican Mike Ramone in November.