Despite what you may have heard from Christine O’Donnell, fiscal conservatism is alive and well in Delaware. Thursday, we had a special election (due to Chris Coons’ Senate election in November) for president of the New Castle County Council, and Tom Kovach, the winner, is a Republican who ran on a platform of accountability and tough fiscal responsibility.
Kovach’s win is especially sweet as he got 57% of the vote against a high-ranking union official in a county with over 94,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans. The lesson here is that a credible candidate whose solid fiscal conservative policies also address local concerns (combined with a robust get-out-the-vote effort) can carry the day.
This election matters because New Castle County (locally known as NCCo) has 60% of Delaware’s population, and is home to the state’s major business operations, such as DuPont and Astra Zeneca. Over the past few years, NCCo also experienced the closing of two major auto plants (Saturn and Chrysler), but a strong union presence remains.
Last November, Coons trounced O’Donnell by 66,000 votes in NCCo, overwhelming her modest gains in the much less-populated lower two counties, Kent and Sussex. Back then, voter distaste for O’Donnell caused a lot of collateral damage for down-ticket Republicans, including Kovach, who lost his seat in the state legislature. Fortunately, he didn’t let that defeat stop him from making the most of a special election opportunity.
Kovach employed a few simple themes — bringing accountability to county government, controlling spending, and not raising taxes. He successfully painted his opponent (a longtime council member) as a latecomer to the need for sunlight on the council’s business, especially when it involves real estate deals. It helped that Kovach’s opponent was hand-picked by the Democratic politician and NCCo county executive Paul Clark, who seems to be a bit ethically challenged in that area. Just last month, the NCCo ethics commission rebuked Clark for not recusing himself on a real estate matter involving a client of his wife’s law firm, which represents a developer.
More help came when Kovach’s opponent claimed the dubious achievement of nobody on the council having gone to jail during his six-year tenure.
Read more at the Daily Caller
Kovach’s win is especially sweet as he got 57% of the vote against a high-ranking union official in a county with over 94,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans. The lesson here is that a credible candidate whose solid fiscal conservative policies also address local concerns (combined with a robust get-out-the-vote effort) can carry the day.
This election matters because New Castle County (locally known as NCCo) has 60% of Delaware’s population, and is home to the state’s major business operations, such as DuPont and Astra Zeneca. Over the past few years, NCCo also experienced the closing of two major auto plants (Saturn and Chrysler), but a strong union presence remains.
Last November, Coons trounced O’Donnell by 66,000 votes in NCCo, overwhelming her modest gains in the much less-populated lower two counties, Kent and Sussex. Back then, voter distaste for O’Donnell caused a lot of collateral damage for down-ticket Republicans, including Kovach, who lost his seat in the state legislature. Fortunately, he didn’t let that defeat stop him from making the most of a special election opportunity.
Kovach employed a few simple themes — bringing accountability to county government, controlling spending, and not raising taxes. He successfully painted his opponent (a longtime council member) as a latecomer to the need for sunlight on the council’s business, especially when it involves real estate deals. It helped that Kovach’s opponent was hand-picked by the Democratic politician and NCCo county executive Paul Clark, who seems to be a bit ethically challenged in that area. Just last month, the NCCo ethics commission rebuked Clark for not recusing himself on a real estate matter involving a client of his wife’s law firm, which represents a developer.
More help came when Kovach’s opponent claimed the dubious achievement of nobody on the council having gone to jail during his six-year tenure.
Read more at the Daily Caller
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