People are very skeptical of politicians these days, and I don’t blame them. Between “Read My Lips, No New Taxes,” “Mission Accomplished,” “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” and “I Was Just Trying To Be A Good Mentor To Those Pages,” it has become hard for the public to know who to believe.

That is why I plan to spend a lot of time during my campaign talking about real, concrete things that I have already done during my relatively short career in politics. I think that people take your campaign promises a lot more seriously when you can point to a record of accomplishment. Today’s New York Times points out the importance of the work I am very proud to have done on cancer care for the uninsured in Delaware.

Today’s Times points out that cancer care for the uninsured has become such a problem that the American Cancer Society is dedicating its entire advertising budget for the year to highlighting it. You can read the article here. Well, Delaware has been way out in front of the nation in addressing this problem. Back in March of 2001, the Delaware Advisory Council on Cancer Incidence and Mortality was formed. I was a member of the council. When we issued our report in April, 2002, one of our most prominent recommendations was for Delaware to become the first state in America to pay for cancer treatment for the uninsured. The reason was simple: there are plenty of statistics showing that the quality of care for cancer patients with insurance is superior to treatment for those without.

We didn’t just stop with the report, we lobbied the Governor and General Assembly to implement and fund its recommendations. In 2003, our efforts paid off: the Governor and General Assembly implemented our recommendation by funding cancer treatment for any uninsured Delawareans who are at or below 650% of the federal poverty level—about $130,000/year for a family of four.

There is still an awful lot of work to be done. As the Times noted today, cancer detection—which is key to keeping mortality rates down—is directly related to whether people have health insurance. Uninsured breast cancer patients, for example, are twice as likely to have their cancer diagnosed in a late stage (when it is much harder to treat) as those who have insurance. So the ultimate goal must be to get people insured. And there is also a lot more to do in investigating the environmental causes of cancer. All that said, the Cancer Consortium’s program to treat uninsured cancer victims is groundbreaking. And so are some of our other recommendations that were implemented, including the indoor smoking ban, a high-profile colorectal cancer screening program, and the creation of a top-rate “patient navigator” program to assist cancer victims in getting the best possible treatment.

I am proud of the work that I did with the Cancer Consortium, not just in coming up with its recommendations but in being a leader in the effort to get them implemented. It is something I am going to talk about during the campaign, so that when I talk about my agenda as Lt. Governor, people will know that they can take what I say to the bank.

People are very skeptical of politicians these days, and I don’t blame them. Between “Read My Lips, No New Taxes,” “Mission Accomplished,” “Weapons of Mass Destruction,” and “I Was Just Trying To Be A Good Mentor To Those Pages,” it has become hard for the public to know who to believe.

That is why I plan to spend a lot of time during my campaign talking about real, concrete things that I have already done during my relatively short career in politics. I think that people take your campaign promises a lot more seriously when you can point to a record of accomplishment. Today’s New York Times points out the importance of the work I am very proud to have done on cancer care for the uninsured in Delaware.

Today’s Times points out that cancer care for the uninsured has become such a problem that the American Cancer Society is dedicating its entire advertising budget for the year to highlighting it. You can read the article here. Well, Delaware has been way out in front of the nation in addressing this problem. Back in March of 2001, the Delaware Advisory Council on Cancer Incidence and Mortality was formed. I was a member of the council. When we issued our report in April, 2002, one of our most prominent recommendations was for Delaware to become the first state in America to pay for cancer treatment for the uninsured. The reason was simple: there are plenty of statistics showing that the quality of care for cancer patients with insurance is superior to treatment for those without.

We didn’t just stop with the report, we lobbied the Governor and General Assembly to implement and fund its recommendations. In 2003, our efforts paid off: the Governor and General Assembly implemented our recommendation by funding cancer treatment for any uninsured Delawareans who are at or below 650% of the federal poverty level—about $130,000/year for a family of four.

There is still an awful lot of work to be done. As the Times noted today, cancer detection—which is key to keeping mortality rates down—is directly related to whether people have health insurance. Uninsured breast cancer patients, for example, are twice as likely to have their cancer diagnosed in a late stage (when it is much harder to treat) as those who have insurance. So the ultimate goal must be to get people insured. And there is also a lot more to do in investigating the environmental causes of cancer. All that said, the Cancer Consortium’s program to treat uninsured cancer victims is groundbreaking. And so are some of our other recommendations that were implemented, including the indoor smoking ban, a high-profile colorectal cancer screening program, and the creation of a top-rate “patient navigator” program to assist cancer victims in getting the best possible treatment.

I am proud of the work that I did with the Cancer Consortium, not just in coming up with its recommendations but in being a leader in the effort to get them implemented. It is something I am going to talk about during the campaign, so that when I talk about my agenda as Lt. Governor, people will know that they can take what I say to the bank.

I do not have time for an official post this morning (I wish I could say that I was doing something important-sounding, but my boys have become obsessed with a book about Corduroy—a stuffed bear who I find a little creepy because he mysteriously comes to life and then goes back to being a stuffed animal—so my morning blogging time has been consumed by mind-numbing re-readings of the book), but check out this morning’s News Journal story on the uninsured, which highlights the persistent problem of over 100,000 uninsured Delawareans, some of the efforts I am making to at least make some headway on the number of uninsured children, and the failure of the House of Representatives to pass the health insurance reform bills I have proposed. You can read it at http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070829/NEWS/708290345/1006/NEWS.

As I mentioned yesterday, the Jamboree is a once-a-year get-together for Democrats in Lewes, Delaware. Aside from the annual Jefferson-Jackson dinner, it is the largest single gathering of Democrats of the year. That always makes it an important event, but when there are primary elections—including, probabably, one for the Lieutenant Governor’s office—it becomes even more important to make a good impression on the party’s most faithful.

There are really only a couple of ways to do that. One is by making the rounds and talking to people. I tried to do that this year, but no one would talk to me because my son Zach was making the rounds with me and all they wanted to do was coo over him. (For the record, he supports me in the primary and, along with his brother, was wearing a custom-designed Denn for Lt. Governor t-shirt.) A second way of making an impression is by having people wear your campaign t-shirt. I don’t know when this became important at the Jamboree, but it has spiraled a little out of control, to the point where I am pretty sure we had a few t-shirt wearers at the Jamboree this year who, shall we say, may have gotten a little something for their efforts in addition to the traditional plate of fried chicken and bracing sea breeze. Nevertheless, my informal count indicates that the Denn campaign carried the day over every other campaign on volume, style (Mrs. Denn also sported a custom designed t-shirt), and ‘authenticity’ points.

Finally, if you are lucky, you get five minutes to talk. Five minutes only—they were quite clear about that. You can see my five minutes by clicking here

After going through the agonizing process of watching myself speak on film, let me answer the following questions in advance:
1. No, I do not know why I appear to launch into a strange jazz-style dance at one point when discussing the Republican party. I guess health insurance reform brings out the Mario Lopez in me.
2. Yes, I know I am talking really fast. I am talking so fast because (a) they really were emphatic that some sort of trap door would open at the five minute mark, and (b) although my kids were not eating sand, as I joked at the beginning, they were wilting in the heat and Michele was in the midst of a Quest for Fire style foraging expedition for suddenly-scarce drinking water that I needed to aid.
3. Yes, I am available for small childrens’ birthday parties, but I will not dress as a clown. Well, I will for $1,200, but that is non-negotiable.

Last Saturday was the annual Democratic Party Jamboree, a big event at Cape Henlopen Park for diehard Democrats statewide. We had actually planned to have a video of my remarks at the Jamboree posted today, but my videographer friend Greg Patterson has taken to YouTube about as well as Britney Spears has taken to non-alcoholic beverages. Or parenthood. Or hair. It will be posted soon, along with an insider’s account of the Jamboree that you won’t read anywhere else. I do want to say thanks to all of the Sussex County Democrats and Young Democrats (in particular ringleaders Jenifer Boles and Samantha Smith) who showed up wearing my t-shirts on Saturday–that was great to see.

In the meantime, we are back from the beach, and as you can see, the boys had a good time during the few times that the sun broke through.

The reason that the posts have been somewhat light this week is that Michele, the boys and I are spending a few days at the beach. It has given me time to read a couple of books.

First is Robert Shrum’s No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner. If you are interested in politics (and if you’re not, I am not sure why you read this blog unless you are my mother), this is a fascinating book by a guy who has been involved in managing Democratic campaigns from George McGovern all the way through John Kerry. I am sure that many of the people about whom he dishes will disagree with the stories–I have seen press accounts where John Edwards flatly denies some of them–and I am sure that others will dispute Schrum’s claim to have single-handedly written many of the most memorable speeches and one-liners in modern political history. But all that said, it was a lot of fun to read. Highlights for me include Shrum marching around Teddy Kennedy’s hotel room with Kennedy in 1980 pretending to be President Jimmy Carter so that Kennedy could get comfortable with lifting Carter’s hand in the air on stage at the 1980 Democratic Convention after Kennedy lost the nomination (Kennedy eventually couldn’t bring himself to do it on stage), and his recounting of a disastrous one-on-one meeting between John Kerry and John Edwards that nearly resulted in Dick Gephardt becoming the party’s vice presidential candidate in 2004.

The other book I am working on is Chuck Klosterman IV: A Decade of Curious People and Dangerous Ideas. As you might expect, it is written by Chuck Klosterman. The book is a collection of columns that Klosterman has written for GQ, Spin, The New York Times Magazine, and others. Some of them are a little rough–this book will not be bedtime reading for the Denn Boys, and for purposes of my campaign I denounce any potentially offensive portions and call for that portion of the book to be burned–but he writes about everything, most often music and sports. I am only about halfway through the book, and he has already covered Britney Spears, Bono, Val Kilmer, McDonalds food, Phoenix Suns point guard Steve Nash, a boat cruise with reunited ’70s bands, Robert Plant, Metallica, Wilco, the White Stripes, Billy Joel, and Johnny Carson. He is very funny, and gets great interviews with a lot of these people.

I promise, I will return to the Lieutenant Governor’s race in my next post.

President Bush has done so many things wrong, it is hard to believe that he is still able to come up with a steady stream of new, crummy ideas. Yet, he has done it again—this time on an issue that is the centerpiece of my campaign for Lt. Governor, the welfare of Delaware’s children.

Yesterday, the Bush administration imposed new regulatory burdens on states that participate in the CHIP program—the federal/state health insurance program that covers children whose parents earn just enough money to lose Medicaid eligibility, but not enough to buy health insurance. The new burdens will effectively make it impossible for families that earn more than 200% of the federal poverty level to get coverage for their children in the CHIP program—so, for example, a single mother with two kids who works full time but makes between $32,000 and $40,000 a year at a job with no health insurance will not be able to get coverage for her kids. I won’t go into the details—the New York Times article is here. But the result of the new policy is that many children across America will lose health insurance coverage. No families currently on the CHIP program in Delaware would be affected, but one of my priorities as Lieutenant Governor is to expand the CHIP program to enroll uninsured kids with families at higher income levels (an idea already proposed in the General Assembly by Representative Terry Schooley). Under the Bush plan, unless it is changed by Congress or a new President, this part of my plan to cover Delaware kids would be forbidden, and it would become that much more difficult to ensure that Delaware children have health insurance.

The morals of the story are:
1. President Bush is an astonishingly bad president who keeps getting worse.
2. We need our Congressional delegation to pass a federal CHIP bill that properly funds the CHIP program and allows states like Delaware the flexibility to cover more uninsured kids.
3. We need to elect a Democratic president in 2008.
4. And, of course, we need to elect me as Delaware’s next Lieutenant Governor, so we can make coverage of all kids a priority.

Well, I spent some time last week raising money for my campaign. For those of you who have never had the pleasure of doing fundraising for a statewide campaign, which will ultimately cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, here is a brief look inside.

[PHONE RINGS]
Matt’s Friend: Hello?
Matt: Hey, [fill in name of person who is Matt’s friend but rolls eyes and hides under desk when Matt’s name shows up on Caller ID within twelve months of an election]
Matt’s Friend: What’s going on?
Matt: Well, a little of this and a little of that. Hey, that reminds me, can I have a thousand dollars?
Matt’s Friend: No.
Matt: OK, how about nine hundred dollars?
Matt’s Friend: No.
[Continue until answer is “yes”]

The traditional wisdom is that once I receive a “yes,” I should slam the phone down and dispatch a youthful, earnest intern to drive at 60 miles per hour to my friend’s place of business to secure his funds before he has a chance to change his mind. But there are a few problems with this. First, my youthful, earnest interns don’t have cars. Second, because I rarely get to talk to my friends on the phone, once I have finished begging for money I usually end up talking to them on the phone at length about other, less painful subjects. Like how completely overrated the last three Bruce Springsteen albums were. (I apologize, I put in the last sentence to antagonize one friend in particular.)

The good news is that the fundraising is going very well, agonizing though it may be. In my race for Insurance Commissioner in 2004, I raised almost half a million dollars. I think that this race will be much more expensive than that, perhaps twice as much. But I am on pace to raise the money, and we have four in-state and two out-of-state fundraisers scheduled in September and October. You can always do your part by clicking on http://www.mattdenn.com/contribute.htm.

One of the ironies of this blog is that the more that is going on in the Insurance Commissioner’s office and on the campaign trail, the less time I have to tell you about it. So check in over the weekend for an update on the last few days’ activities.

As promised, a summary of the Denn family’s busy Saturday up and down the State of Delaware.

Zach, Adam and I started the day at the A Philip Randolph Institute meeting at the Longshoreman’s Hall in Wilmington. Zach and Adam have been to more than their share of APRI meetings with me, and they come prepared: we had a bag full of books and two glasses of milk, which kept them happy and occupied for the duration of our stay. My friend Peaches Whalen, the head of APRI in Delaware, let me get up and give my report early, and while I did John Flaherty, noted public interest lobbyist, kept an eye on the boys for me. John later said that they were better behaved than 90% of the members of the Delaware General Assembly.

After another stop in Wilmington, we headed home to pick up Mrs. Denn (who spent part of the morning at the salon, to ensure that she continues to look fabulous) (which she does) (hi, honey), and headed south. I had prepared a special set of CD’s for the boys to listen to in the car, containing a combination of Wiggles, Sesame Street, and Signing Time songs. I refer to it as the “Hara-Kiri Mix Tape.” Unfortunately, because Adam is consumed by the Wiggles, all it did was cause wild emotional swings in the back seat as the Wiggles brought Adam to the pinnacle of ecstacy, and then Grover and Ernie would send him crashing back to earth.

We made a brief stop at the AFRAM festival in Seaford, and then headed east (stopping only to look at some cows and pigs) to the Stonewall Democrats annual fundraiser at Jim D’Orta’s beautiful house in Rehoboth. As always, the Stonewall Dems put on a great event. The boys did everything they could to disrupt it. While speeches were being given, Adam picked up a stick off the ground, announced that he was a conductor, and proceeded to sing various nursery rhymes and use his conductor’s baton to command others to sing along. And that was actually less obtrusive than Zach, who ran through the entire crowd searching for Jim’s dog and yelling “doggie!”, then strode onto the stage where Lt. Governor Carney was speaking, and began spinning in circles behind him and exposing his belly button.

As the party was winding down, I was talking to Pete Keenan, the tough-as-nails, hard-working chairman of the 38th Representative District. Adam came up and handed him a balled-up Winnie the Pooh placemat, and said “can you hold Pooh?” Pete said “sure.” As we were both getting ready to leave (the Denns en route to the boardwalk), Pete said “is there somewhere to throw this”? I said, “it’s just a placemat, you can throw it in the garbage.” He said “no, there’s poo in it.” And it then occurred to me that Pete had been calmly standing there talking to me for at least a couple of minutes believing that he was holding a handful of human waste wrapped up in a plastic placemat. In the dictionary next to the word “unflappable,” you will find a picture of Pete Keenan.