State Sen. Mike Ramone thanks supporters at his home after winning the Republican nomination for governor. Photo by George Rotsch.
Matt Meyer handily won the three-way race for the Democratic nomination for governor Tuesday, besting Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long 47% to 37%,, according to unofficial election results..
Former DNREC secretary Collin O’Mara had about 15% of the vote.
Ultimately more people didn’t vote for Meyer than did, with Hall-Long’s and O’Mara’s tally beating Meyer by about 4,000 votes.
As Meyer looked ahead to the general election, he invited all Delawareans to join him in building a better future.
âTonight is just the beginning of this movement,” Meyer told supporters after his win was confirmed. “Whether you were with us in this primary or not, if you believe in our stateâs great promise and potential, if you believe that our kids deserve the best possible public schools, that families deserve every chance at a job that provides economic security, that our environment demands protections to ensure that Delaware remains a beautiful place for those families to prosper, that housing must be safe and affordable for allâif you believe we in Delaware can do better, welcome aboard. Letâs get to work.â
Meyer will face Republican Mike Ramone in the November general election.
Ramone easily disposed of his challengers, winning 72.4% of the vote to Jerrold A. Price’s 16.3% and Bobby Williamson’s 11.5 %
Ramone, considered a moderate candidate, said he was grateful so many people worked on his behalf, hoped his message of unity and working together would resonate in the general election and was very pleased with his showing, considering he was the last to file for the race but got 70% of the vote.
“We always say we’re not red or blue, we’re Delaware yellow,” he said. “We work for the state and for the people of the state, not for a party or special interest. I think it enforces all of those things, because there are the things we’ve been saying.”
Ramone said he hoped to meet with some of the Democrat voters who didn’t support Meyer and see what he could do for them and what they could do together. He hopes to sell some of them on his record as an entrepreneur and business owner for 42 years and his 16 years in the Delaware House of Representatives.
Among the issues he focused on was the size of Delaware government, which is the state’s largest employer; doing better in healthcare and particularly mental health and the opioid crisis; ripping off the Band-Aids that have so far been applied to problems in education and finding solutions.
One race did have a shocking result: Speaker of the House Valerie Longhurst — the first woman to hold that title in Delaware — lost her primary to Kamela T. Smith, one of the Working Families Party, 53.3% to 46.7%.
Smith is a longtime Bear resident and a director of community engagement and education. Longhurst was a longtime member of the legislature who this year was the face of an unpopular campaign to create a new state board that would oversee and have the power to change hospital budgets to keep down healthcare costs in Delaware.
Longhurst’s and Hall-Long’s losses mean that the two ranking women in the Legislature are gone.
About 22.4% of Delaware’s half-million voters who are registered Democrats or Republicans turned out in Tuesday’s primaries. Because Delaware is a closed primary state, only voters who have declared a party can vote in that party’s primary.
Delaware has 351,454 registered Democrats and 205,687 registered Republicans.
Tuesday’s ballots had nine Republicans and 77 Democrats primarying each other.
A win by a Democrat in the primary almost always means that person ultimately is elected in November.
With poles closed at 8 p.m., the Delaware Department of Elections website crashed early and often until being stabilized.
Matt Meyer, who won the Democrat nomination for governor of Delaware Tuesday, puts an ‘I voted” sticker on his son, Levi, after voting Sunday at the Wilmington PAL Center.
‘Change election’ win
As Charlie Copeland, a Republican former state senator and director of the Caesar Rodney Institute’s Center for Economic & Fiscal Policy said on DE TV’s primary coverage show, this year’s elections were change elections.
In most cases, the new face won over longtime politicians.
One exception, he noted, was Gov. John Carney Jr.’s win in the Democratic nomination for mayor of the city of Wilmington. He beat former city treasurer Velda Jones-Potter 53.8% to her 46.2% in an election that drew a lot of race and class chatter.
But, Copeland noted, Meyer won his race and state Sen. Kyle Evans Gay won hers, beating State Rep. Sherry Dorsey Walker, a longtime politico, by 48.3% to 36.8%. Debbie Harrington took 14.9% of the vote.
State Sen. Sarah McBride was declared the winner for the Democratic nomination for U.S. Congress, a seat that Lisa Blunt Rochester is leaving to see Sen. Tom Carper’s Senate chair.
In New Castle County, Marcus Henry beat Karen Hartley-Nagle in the race for New Castle County Executive 60.7 to 39.3, which Copeland represented the change theme because Henry — the son of former Sen. Margaret Rose Henry — was a newer face than Hartley-Nagle.
This is what the Delaware Department of Elections reported at 11 p.m., with 528 of the 530 precincts reporting. Check for updated and final results here.
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