While MattDenn.com takes a break, there are other ways to keep getting the observations and updates that made Matt’s 2008 campaign blog unique:

1. As Lieutenant Governor, Matt started the first-ever blog on the state government website in May 2009. You can find it at mattdenn.blogs.delaware.gov

2. Matt often posts his blog entries to his Facebook group. That page is at www.facebook.com/home.php#/group.php?gid=2379828032

3. Matt also sends periodic updates to the email list you can join at the right side of this page.

Top six things I haven’t done since Tuesday:

1.  Asked anyone for money.

2.  Fast-forwarded through six hours of taped cable television to see if there are new ads on tv calling me names

3.  Eaten any food items in my car.

4.  Forgotten to feed the dog

5.  Failed to read the sports pages

6.  Been to a supermarket for any reason other than the purchase of food

Top six things I have done since Tuesday

1.  Played with my kids

2.  Driven my friend Jack Markell nuts already

3.  Drank some very suspicious tasting punch at a Return Day party.

4.  Gazed adoringly at my wife (this blog is PG rated)

5.  Walked the dog

6.  Fined another insurance company

What a night.  President Barack Obama.  Speaker of the Delaware House of Representatives Bob Gilligan.  Governor Jack Markell.  And me, with 61.3% of the vote, elected Delaware’s next Lieutenant Governor.   It was a clear mandate, and a broad one—one of the things I was most pleased about was winning all three counties in Delaware.

I can’t begin to say how grateful I am to have the opportunity to do this job, and how grateful I am to the many, many people who helped with my campaign.  I promise that I will make you proud that you were part of it.

Now, it is time to go to work.  I will have more to report in the next few days. 

The results of Delaware public school mock elections were released today, and I am pleased to say that I won with about 64.5% of the statewide student vote.  Why am I so excited about this?  Because the political pros in Delaware, believe it or not, have always watched the result of this student mock election as an indicator of the public mood just prior to an election.

Things are looking up!

Amid all the ugliness of the campaign, I had a great experience on Monday.  One of the perks of serving as Insurance Commissioner is that I get to participate in the state’s Principal for a Day program.  The schools that I have visited over the last four years have had the good sense not to actually give me any principal-like responsibilities, but they have given me a chance to spend a lot of time observing classrooms and talking to teachers and administrators who are trying to make our schools better.

There were three things that really struck me about my school for the day, North Dover Elementary.  First of all, the teachers all seem to work very well as a team.  The day that I was there they were trying to explain the presidential election to first and second graders, and they had all come up with a lesson plan together and were sharing materials.  (I contemplated steering the discussion to the Lieutenant Governor’s race, but thought it probably violated the Principal for a Day Code.)  Second, there was one teacher I met—and I am embarrassed to have forgotten her name, because she made such an impression on me—who was teaching for the first year after spending many years working as a teaching assistant at North Dover.  I asked her how she was enjoying being a teacher, and she absolutely glowed—it was something she had wanted to do for years, and now that she had fulfilled the requirements and been hired by the same school where she had spent years as an assistant, she was having the time of her life.  It was great to see someone who was so visibly inspired by the opportunity to teach.  Finally, I walked into the cafeteria with the principal Suzette Marine, and she was literally mobbed by adoring students—students waved at her from their tables unprompted and called out her name, others ran up to her to hug her.  I told her it was like walking in with Elvis.

It was great to see teachers and administrators working so hard to help their kids.  North Dover, thank you for letting me visit—it recharged my batteries to fight for this last week to stand up for the kids of our state.

The election is one week from tomorrow!

Yesterday, we participated in the final parade of the campaign season, the Newark Halloween Parade. This one is the boys’ favorite, because all of the kids watching the parade are also dressed in costumes. For them, it’s almost like being on an amusement park ride. The boys were still sporting their firefighter uniforms, which at $50 a pop I am already lobbying for them to wear next Halloween as well. A few photos are on our Flickr page.

Zach and I also embarked on an interesting journey on Saturday afternoon—since it was raining out, we decided to visit every bowling alley from Dover north and greet the rainy day bowlers. We had to cut Dover off the list when Zach started to fall asleep in the car, and then we had to cut one more off when we realized that The Candidate had left the house without The Candidate’s Wallet. But all in all, it was a great trip—we met a ton of people, and as always Zach dazzled them.

I had my WHYY debate with my opponent last night.  It was fairly uneventful, but for the first time in my life I got a full make-up job from a professional make-up artist (John Edwards side note—this was at the television studio’s insistence and expense, not mine).  I asked the make-up artist if trying to make me look good in ten minutes was part of some reality show, like that one on the Food Network where they tell a chef to make a wedding banquet in two hours, but she insisted that I wasn’t even her worst job of the day, as she had apparently been required to doll up some ill-tempered music stars for a tv ad earlier.  She put cocoa butter on my lips, wax in my hair, and scolded me for not using a more gentle razor for shaving.  It took a good five minutes for me to get washed down afterwards.

The only other oddity from the debate was that I apparently kicked the black covering off the table base while I was moving my feet around, so while I was trying to listen to my opponent talk and using my best “active listening” face (John McCain I am not), someone came up behind me and crawled under my chair, grabbed my feet, lifted them up in the air for about 30 seconds, and then placed them back on the ground and patted them reassuringly.

I am sure that by now many of you have received the first personal attack mailing against me from my opponent.  I’m also sure there will be more, and they will all be as over-the-top and misleading as the one that arrived yesterday.

I wish I could say I’m surprised, but I’m not.  For those of you who are regular readers, I have been predicting this for months.  Unfortunately, from the Republican presidential ticket right down to this race, that is what typical politicians do these days when they are behind: try to smear their opponent.  Sometimes in the past it has worked.  But this year is different.  People are tired of the same old politics this year, and I they are going to reject the slash-and-burn tactics of my opponent and others like him.

You can still help us out by contributing to the campaign at http://www.mattdenn.com/getinvolved/contribute/.  

Last night, after a long day of doing my job and intermittently sitting in a dark room leaving messages for embattled potential campaign donors (sometimes I think can actually hear their assistants suppressing giggles when they say “he’ll get right back to you Mr. Denn”), I had a chance to attend a great event that Chris Tigani put on at his home for the Delaware Children’s Campaign.  The Children’s Campaign is the first full-time, well-funded lobby for kids that I have known since I have been advocating for kids in Delaware, and they will be a tremendous ally if I am elected in persuading our other elected officials to make kids a priority.  Many thanks to Chris for helping to build up this great organization.

This weekend, hundreds of Denn and Markell volunteers will be hitting the streets.  If you want to join us, drop us a note at www.mattdenn.com/getinvolved/.  Or if you need to spend your time carbo-loading for the Eagles and Phillies and just want to send us money, you can do that at the same place. 

Today is Mrs. Denn’s birthday.  Under normal circumstances, we would make a gala event out of the entire day, but because the final throes of the campaign have turned me into a delinquent husband, my mom has taken over responsibility for the birthday festivities.

Observant campaign watchers can actually see me shopping for Mrs. Denn’s present on the internet.  A week or so ago, Jack Markell and I joined State Rep. Bryon Short and future State Rep. Quinn Johnson for a press conference at the Grassroots store located in North Wilmington.  Grassroots also happens to be one of Mrs. Denn’s favorite stores.  Well, Channel 12 broadcast an extensive interview with Jack in the store, and in the background behind Jack his running mate can be seen rummaging through the sweater racks looking for a birthday present for his wife.  Fortunately the Denn boys were able to distract Mrs. Denn from watching the news that night through their usual evening tactics of refusing to eat dinner and practicing WWF moves on each other.

Mrs. Denn has asked that in lieu of birthday presents, you donate to the Denn campaign.  OK, she didn’t say that, but I know she’s thinking it.