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Delaware primary to decide governor's contest and could pave the path for US House history

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Delaware primary to decide governor's contest and could pave the path for US House history


DOVER, Del. (AP) — Voters in Delaware are set to decide the nominees for several political contests, including a closely watched campaign for governor and a potentially historic race for U.S. House.

The contest for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination that pits Delaware’s lieutenant governor against the chief executive of the state’s most populous county is the marquee race in Tuesday’s primary election.

Democrats also are voting in a U.S. House race where the favored candidate if elected would be the first openly transgender person in Congress. That would join another trailblazing race in November in which the lone Democratic candidate for an open U.S. Senate seat could become one of only two Black women in the Senate next year.

Meanwhile, Democratic Gov. John Carney is hoping to continue his long career in politics by winning his party’s nomination for mayor of Wilmington.

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Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Here’s a closer look at those key races:

DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY FOR U.S. HOUSE

State Sen. Sarah McBride would move one step closer to becoming the first openly transgender person elected to the U.S. Congress with a win in the Democrat primary on Tuesday. Delaware’s lone U.S. House seat is being vacated by Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, who has no primary opponent as she seeks the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Democratic Sen. Tom Carper, who held the seat since 2001.

McBride faces only token opposition in the primary from businessmen Earl Cooper and Elias Weir, neither of whom reported raising any money for their campaigns. Cooper is a political newcomer, while Weir finished dead last in a 2016 congressional primary with less than 1% of the vote. McBride, meanwhile, has raised almost $3 million in contributions from around the country.

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McBride achieved national recognition at the 2016 Democratic National Convention as the first openly transgender person to address a major party convention in the United States.

The winner of Tuesday’s primary will go up against either Donyale Hall, a Dover businesswoman and a Gulf War-era veteran of the U.S. Air Force, or James Whalen IIII, a retired state police officer and construction company owner from Millsboro, who are facing off in the GOP primary. Democrats have held the seat since 2010.

Meanwhile, with a victory in November Blunt Rochester could become one of only two Black women in the Senate next year, joining Angela Alsobrooks of neighboring Maryland if she is also victorious in her campaign.

DEMOCRATIC GUBERNATORIAL PRIMARY

Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long, who has held public office since winning a state House seat in 2002, is hoping to overcome a campaign finance scandal and succeed Carney, who can’t run for governor again due to term limits. Hall-Long has been endorsed by Carney and Delaware’s Democrat Party establishment.

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But the two-term lieutenant governor is facing a tough primary challenge from New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer, who has raised substantially more money and has repeatedly drawn attention to Hall-Long’s campaign finance violations. Former state Environmental Secretary Collin O’Mara also is seeking the Democratic nomination, but has been overshadowed by the other two candidates.

Hall-Long’s campaign finance scandal surfaced last September, when she abruptly postponed a campaign event with Carney, saying she needed to attend to “a personal, private matter.”

In reality, her campaign was in disarray after people hired to lead it discovered major discrepancies while reviewing years of finance reports. The scandal led to a series of resignations among top campaign staff and prompted election officials to commission a forensic audit. The audit found that Hall-Long and her husband had received payments totaling $33,000 more than what she purportedly loaned to her campaign over several years — with many of the loans never being reported in the first instance.

It also found that Hall-Long’s husband and former campaign treasurer, Dana Long, wrote 112 checks to himself or to cash. The checks totaled just under $300,000 and should have been reported as expenditures. Instead, 109 were never reported in initial finance reports, and the other four, payable to Dana Long, were reported as being made to someone else.

Despite the violations, Delaware’s attorney general and elections commissioner, both fellow Democrats, declined to seek criminal charges against Hall-Long.

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DEMOCRATIC PRIMARY FOR WILMINGTON MAYOR

Carney is prohibited by law from seeking a third term as governor, but he wants to remain in public office as a chief executive and is seeking the Democratic nomination for mayor of Wilmington, Delaware’s largest city.

His opponent is Velda Jones-Potter, a former Wilmington city treasurer who lost a bid for mayor four years ago. Potter served a two-year stint as Delaware’s state treasurer after being appointed to that post in 2008, but she lost an election for a four-year term as treasurer in 2010.

The winner of Tuesday’s primary will face no opposition in November. Carney has said as mayor he would build on the investments his gubernatorial administration has made in Wilmington, with a focus on improving public schools, expanding affordable housing and helping small businesses.



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Delaware

Federal judge says Delaware labor officials must give data to ICE

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Federal judge says Delaware labor officials must give data to ICE


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A federal judge in Wilmington has ordered the Delaware Department of Labor to hand over confidential state employer data to Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigators.

On April 13, U.S. District Judge Colm Connolly ordered Delaware labor officials to comply with a federal immigration subpoena they had “ignored,” writing that the state lacked legal grounds to resist it and that its political arguments were “wholly inappropriate.”

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The subpoena seeks wage reports and employee rosters containing confidential employee information for 15 businesses and sought by ICE investigators as part of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda.

Attorneys representing the state’s Department of Labor justified their noncompliance by arguing that local and federal regulators give state officials the authority to refuse federal investigators’ requests. They warned that allowing ICE to access employer data would discourage reporting and weaken the unemployment insurance program.

Local federal attorneys representing ICE argued the department is legally required to hand over the data targeting businesses that tip-line reports put under suspicion of employing undocumented individuals. In court filings, they said the state’s refusal to comply amounts to a legally unsound disagreement with federal immigration policy.

The arguments: Federal judge questions Delaware’s attempt to sidestep ICE subpoena

The contested subpoena was the last in a series that went unanswered by state labor officials during the first quarter of 2025. The subpoenas themselves are not legally confidential. However, Connolly, the presiding judge, sealed the final subpoena – the one at issue in the case – after federal officials sued the state to force compliance.

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The state has produced redacted copies of some of the initial subpoenas to Delaware Online/The News Journal via a Freedom of Information Act request. Those early subpoenas targeted a Perdue facility in Seaford as well as a fencing company and a Mexican restaurant in northern New Castle County.  

The final subpoena seeks data on the employees of 15 state businesses for the final two quarters of 2024 and is the subject of the current court wrangling. Connolly also denied the state’s argument that the document be unsealed so the businesses could exercise a right to fight the subpoena in court.

Breaking down the ruling

In assessing whether to enforce the subpoena, Connolly said the threshold question was whether it served a legitimate purpose, sought relevant information, and was not “unduly broad or burdensome.”

Connolly wrote that the investigation pertained to businesses suspected of employing undocumented people, which is in the scope of the agency that issued the subpoena, that the information sought is relevant to that inquiry and that it would not be “unduly burdensome” for the state to copy the 30 records sought by the subpoenas. 

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Connolly, who is the court’s chief judge and was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2018, also shot holes in what he described as the state’s “novel theory” that production of such records would endanger the state’s unemployment insurance program.

“I am neither willing nor able to adopt DDOL’s cynical view of the State’s employers,” Connolly wrote. 

Editor’s note: The judge’s ruling can be read at the end of this article.

Having decided that, he turned to the question of whether the Department of Labor had proved the enforcement of the subpoenas would “undermine the integrity of the judicial process.” 

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The state argued that enforcement of the subpoena would step on confidentiality regulations in the state’s statue and that the subpoena flows from an “improper purpose” described as an “intense agenda of immigration enforcement.” 

Prior coverage: Delaware to fight ICE, Trump administration demands for local businesses’ employee lists

Connolly ruled that the regulations do not override the subpoena power. He wrote that the state’s argument painting the subpoena as improper because of the current intensity around immigration enforcement is a “political argument, not a legal one.”

“This Court is not the proper ‘forum in which to air [DDOL’s] generalized grievances about the conduct of government,’ Connolly wrote. “It would be wholly inappropriate for me to consider this line of argument, and I decline to do so.”

Trump’s deportation agenda and Delaware

The legal fight is part of the front in Trump’s ever-expanding deportation agenda, which has seen the federal government seek new ways to leverage states’ and other datasets in its immigration roundups.

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Trump, with the help of Congress, ballooned Immigration and Customs Enforcement funding nearly six-fold from $12 billion in the previous fiscal year to $75 billion in his budget legislation last year.

Recent: ICE detained a toddler in Delaware as arrests topped 500

The agenda has included workplace and neighborhood raids by masked ICE agents, arrests at jobs and courthouses, incidents resulting in deaths, fast‑tracked deportations and allegations of racial profiling and inhumane detention practices lacking due process.

In Delaware, ICE has more quietly doubled its number of detainments through October of last year compared with the year prior, rounding up more people in street arrests along with four children.

This is a breaking story and updates will follow.

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Contact Xerxes Wilson at (302) 324-2787 or xwilson@delawareonline.com.



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Delaware

ATVs and dirt bikes roar down Delaware Ave., lawmakers search for solutions

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ATVs and dirt bikes roar down Delaware Ave., lawmakers search for solutions


BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) — It’s just like clockwork. As the temperatures rise, ATVs and dirt bikes shift into gear in Buffalo.

New video shows a horde of ATVs and dirt bikes on Delaware Avenue Sunday afternoon. Some are seen driving on the incoming traffic lane, and one even pops a wheelie.

Fillmore District Councilman Mitch Nowakowski represents this area.

“This only leads to more chaos and disruption, and ultimately leads to potential fatalities for both those that are operating and those that are in the vehicles,” Nowakowski said. “And it’s wrong.”

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These all-terrain vehicles have proven to be a persistent problem for drivers over the years in Buffalo. Nowakowski says once the snow melts, he starts hearing complaints about these vehicles from residents.

“It’s making our city’s streets unsafer and the velocity and the volume in which they congregate and the manner in which they drive not only jeopardizes their life, it jeopardizes the life of everyone around them,” Nowakowski said.

The councilman wrote a letter on Monday to Family Court Judge Brenda Freedman, requesting a meeting to discuss strengthening a collective response to reckless driving involving young people.

“Councilwoman Everhart and I want to sit down with the judge, explain what’s happening in our districts, where we see car thefts, we see the Kia boys, which I’ve even been a victim of,” Nowakowski said. “We see the violence on the 33 of drag racing where somebody has lost their life. And we want to know what programs are in place. But then, where’s the accountability once somebody is in your courtroom for a second, third or fourth time?”

Nowakowski said police using better equipment and technology has helped curtail all-terrain vehicles on city streets.

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“If it comes from them being able to see it through a drone or people calling in. We’ve seen a curb in that,” Nowakowski said.

Those who see illegal activity or a public nuisance can contact Buffalo Police or the city’s 311 Call & Resolution Center.

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