Good Friday morning everyone.  Not a lot of time this morning, but I encourage you to read today’s News Journal article that focuses on my differences with my opponent on the subjects of oil drilling off the coast of Delaware (he thinks we should consider it, I don’t), and the Blue Water wind power project (I say he was wrong to oppose it, he says it was all a big misunderstanding and he should be absolved because he finally voted for it when it was a foregone conclusion).  You can read the News Journal article here. 

Yesterday was the Delaware Electrical Co-op’s annual meeting and chicken dinner, at the state fairgrounds in Harrington.  For a political candidate, it is a finely distilled version of the state fair.  No one is from Maryland, you get to say hi to people inside an air-conditioned building, and everyone stands in a single line for their food.  To get to their chicken the co-op members must run a gauntlet of about twenty politicians, but few of them seemed to mind—I was the last candidate they saw (I decided that if they could literally see and smell their chicken over my shoulder they would be in a good mood), and only one of hundreds of people wouldn’t shake my hand and give me a smile.  She said something about me being a Communist.

This was my fourth straight year at the Co-op dinner, and the great thing about it was that lots of people remembered me, remembered that I had been there every year, and told me how much they appreciated the job that I had done as Insurance Commissioner.  It reinforced my belief that the best argument I have made for the job I am seeking for the next four years is the job that I have done for the last four years.

I think you will agree that this is not a typical campaign blog, in that it does not consist primarily of claims that I invented fire or that my opponent was responsible for the Bay of Pigs invasion.  (I have yet to hear his alibi for the day that New Coke was created, but we will give him a pass for now.)  But every once in a while we have to take care of business here, and this is one of those days.

Folks, it’s time to contribute to the Denn campaign.  You can do so online or through the mail at http://www.mattdenn.com/getinvolved/contribute/.  We are entering the home stretch, and I am running against an opponent who will be able to fund much of his campaign by going to the ATM machine.  If you think it is time that kids had an advocate in the state capital, please help out today.

Next time, we will return to our normal programming.

Today, I am going to attend a bill signing ceremony for a bill that I wrote to help the Veterans Administration hospital in Elsmere hire more doctors, so our veterans do not have to go on long waiting lists or travel long distances for important medical procedures.

This is one that I am really proud of.  I found out about a problem, figured out a good solution to it, gathered a bi-partisan group of legislators together to address it, and got a bill passed that put our solution into place.  No blaming, no drama, just working to get the people’s business done.  And I have been amazed at how closely many veterans have followed the bill—I get asked about it more often when I am campaigning than almost any other subject.

Delaware’s veterans have earned this much and more from us.  

On Monday, I released the second part of my plan to improve our public schools.  The first part of the plan involved spending our education dollars more efficiently, to ensure that our education funds find their way into the classroom.  The second part of the plan discusses how to spend those dollars: by making our starting teacher salaries more competitive with surrounding states’ salaries, controlling class size, providing teachers with incentives to excel and teach in difficult schools, and emphasizing professional development.  My opponent responded by saying he also thought we should do all those things, but had decided that we couldn’t, so he proposed as an alternative to post school district invoices on the internet.

I think the idea that any problem can be solved by creating a web site is charmingly ‘90s—it makes me want to crank up the Backstreet Boys and over-invest in an internet IPO.  But we all know that making Delaware’s public schools the best in America will require a much more serious commitment than that.  I am a product of Delaware’s public schools, and I believe in them.  My opponent may have given up on them, but I will not.

We are having one of our usual, hectic Monday mornings at the Denn household, so the weekend update today will be somewhat abbreviated.

Unquestioned highlight of the weekend: after visiting the State Fair in Harrington and the Stonewall Democrats annual fundraiser in Rehoboth, the boys and I headed to the boardwalk where they enjoyed a nutritious post-dinner feast of Thrashers fries and soft ice cream and several games of Whac-a-Mole.  (Mrs. Denn stayed home to engage in similar recreational activities such as weeding the garden.)  Because I knew that I was going to change the boys into their pajamas before we got into the car to head home, I didn’t spend too much time trying to clean the food off their clothes.  So if you saw a guy last weekend in a Matt Denn polo shirt walking down Rehoboth Avenue with two three-year-olds whose faces and clothing were smeared with chocolate ice cream and french fry debris, that was me, and thank you for not calling social services.

As the Delaware State Fair winds to a close this weekend, I have had a great time seeing all the friends that I made in past years and making a lot of new ones. I have also pretty much checked off every item on the Delaware Political Candidate’s State Fair To-Do List.  Let’s review:

1. Wander through grandstand and gaze longingly at cool stuff that other campaigns are giving away which you wish you had thought of.  Check.  This year, though, I had no tchatchke envy.  Nobody was giving away anything too exciting.

2. Shake hands with at least 300 people who then blurt out “I’m from Maryland” and laugh hysterically as if they had just qualified for “America’s Top Comic.”  Check.

3. Eat corn dog.  Check.  Still the emotional high point of the fair. 

4. Serve drinks to diners in The Grange.  Check.  I always serve drinks on Thursday instead of attending the Governor’s Day banquet that is sponsored by Blue Cross, because every time I ate a bite of steak at the banquet I would know that it was paid for by overcharging someone for health insurance.  This year, they have a new requirement for serving drinks in The Grange: you must wear a hair net or a hat.  In spite of my vague recollection that one of the hip rap stars has popularized wearing hair nets, I went with a Rapa Scrapple hat.

5. Lose car in giant State Fair parking field.  Check.  Twice.

6. Shake hands with concertgoers who think that I work for the Fair and insist that I direct them to their seats. Check.

You can see photos from my visit to the State Fair Thursday here. The boys and I will be back this weekend for one more visit with the baby chickens.

Last weekend, we lost one of the magnetic “Matt Denn for Lieutenant Governor” signs from the side of Mrs. Denn’s Pacifica as we were zipping away from the end of Delaware City’s Delaware Days parade.  Kathy Beck saw it lying on Route 9 and picked it up for me.  After thanking her a thousand times, I asked her where I could come get it from her.  She said she would be helping with the monthly pancake breakfast at the Hockessin Fire Hall, and I could get it from her there.

I make breakfast for the boys a lot—waffles, pancakes, nothing complicated, but it had been an accepted fact of life for the first three years of their lives that daddy makes the best pancakes, daddy makes the best waffles, etc.  Any time we ate breakfast out, I would ask Adam if the pancakes or waffles he was eating were as good as daddy’s.  My waffles lost out recently to some giant Belgian waffles that State Senate candidate Harold Stafford’s friend made at a breakfast fundraiser several months ago.  But those waffles had a Roger Maris style asterisk next to the award, because I don’t have a Belgian waffle-maker.   Last Sunday, however, my pancakes bit the dust fair and square: Adam announced that Kathy’s buttermilk pancakes from the Hockessin Fire Hall breakfast were “a tie” with mine, and when I asked about the sweet potato pancakes, he simply declined to respond.  The good news for the Hockessin Fire Hall is that we will be back, Adam is already asking when the next pancake breakfast is.  The bad news is that I am no longer the undisputed pancake champion.  Soon the boys will be asking for the car keys and telling me they will be home “whenever.”

There has been a lot going on at the State Fair since I first went down on Friday—much of it has involved my sweating all over myself as the temperatures hover in the ‘90s.  The News Journal says that many people are coming at night this year in order to avoid the heat.  That may be true, but I have always thought there is something a little creepy about having a politician come up on you in the dark, so I have confined most of my politicking to daylight hours.

One major discovery that I wanted to bring to your attention.  Yesterday, Chad Robinson, a friend who I have dubbed the Prince of the Fair, and Donna Johnson, who knows so many people there I may have to give her a title as well, were taking me around to meet some of the many Delawareans who were showing animals and working at booths.  I said to Chad “what are we doing after this?”  He said “We are going over to a picnic that Abby Betts and her parents are throwing for a bunch of people in the grove.”  “Awesome,” I said, “what’s for dinner?”  “Boiled cabbage and ham,” the Prince of the Fair replied.

From the moment we had this conversation until the moment I sat down next to Senator Nancy Cook with my plate, I had a deep sense of foreboding.  Because when someone says to me “Matt, it’s over 90 degrees, what would you like to eat for your outdoor picnic tonight?” the response “boiled cabbage” would not have been in my top 1000.  But ladies and gentlemen, I am here to tell you this morning that boiled cabbage (topped, as I was instructed, with vinegar) is outstanding.  I ate every last bite, and might have had seconds if the Betts clan hadn’t decided to make my corner of the picnic table the resting spot for all of their homemade desserts.  If we could just figure out how to deep-fry the boiled cabbage, it might challenge corn dogs as my favorite State Fair food.

I talked all about the State Fair in this blog a year ago, so I won’t repeat my ode to corn dogs, but I encourage you to visit at least once.  I think the boys and Mrs. Denn are coming during the weekend, so the keepers of the baby chickens and the Whac-A-Mole vendors should be on yellow alert.

One tradition of booths at the State Fair is to have a guessing contest.  This year, I want to join the tradition.  I noticed that my opponent’s family just held a high-priced fundraiser for Republican Gubernatorial candidate Bill Lee at one of their estates, which is named “Granogue.”  I thought to myself, “why doesn’t my house have a name?”  So this year at the State Fair, I am challenging people to come up with a name for my house in Newark.  A few rules:
1. Proper names, such as Fred, are not permitted.
2. If you are going to give it a fancy French name, please provide me with a translation.
3. Taunting names such as “Money Pit” and “Time to Mulch” are not appreciated.
4. You cannot actually come to my house to be inspired to come up with the name.