Campaign item #1: my boys met Spiderman at Newark Community Day yesterday. Spiderman, who should have been paid big-time for running around in a superhero costume in 93 degree heat, high-fived the boys, gave them autographed comics, and they are still talking about it. This was just short of Sesame Street Live in terms of heart palpitatations.

Campaign item #2: we are running out of time to have campaign fundraisers, so we are squeezing in one at the home of my friends Bob and Kate Pincus. It is a week from Sunday, September 28th, from 5 to 7 p.m. (yes, we have scheduled it so that people can fill their bellies and get home in time for the Sunday night Eagles game). It is $200 to attend, which I know is a lot of money but we are in crunch time now, folks. You can RSVP by clicking here. And, of course, if you would like to contribute any other amount, you can do it at the same link.

Last night was the Hadassah debate at the Jewish Community Center, which has always been the official kick-off of the general election campaign.  It was the first time I have participated in a debate alongside Jack Markell as our candidate for Governor.  Other than Jack giving his parents a shout-out, which of course required me alter my remarks to give my mom a shout-out if I didn’t want to be written out of her will, it went great—dozens of people took lawn signs home with them, and we even recruited a few new volunteers.

It also appears that the great volunteers from my campaign have been training for the last two days at the Markell Academy for Overcaffeinated Young People—when I turned off Concord Pike to get to the debate, there was a cabal of Markell and Denn volunteers standing on the street corner yelling our names and waving signs in the air.  All kidding aside, one of the reasons that we are going to win this campaign is the incredibly committed volunteers who are helping us—so thanks to everyone who has donated their valuable time to our cause.  You won’t be disappointed.

As anyone who lives in Delaware knows, our primary elections occurred yesterday, and I finally know whose running mate I am: the next Governor of Delaware, Jack Markell.  Congratulations to Jack, Carla, and the whole Markell team.

Let me say something about Jack’s primary opponent, John Carney.  John is an extraordinary person, and I am confident that he is going to stay involved in public life in Delaware for a long, long time.  I stopped by to listen to John talk to his supporters after the results came in last night, and he was absolutely eloquent, especially in talking about what it had meant to him to have the privilege of serving as Lieutenant Governor.

I will be proud to run on the ticket with Jack.  He has a great plan for change for our state—as opposed to our opponents, who had no plans the last time I checked other than a health insurance “buyer beware” plan that should make you very, very afraid.  He is obviously a great campaigner.  And I think we will complement each other very well, both as candidates and as a team to help make our state everything it can be.

On to November!

I only saw about fifteen minutes of the Eagles game on t.v. yesterday because, you know, I’m running for Lt. Governor.  And I’m sure I’ve said this after at least a few Eagles home openers in the past.  But it looks like this could be a great season, and I am putting everyone on notice that after election day, the Denn household will not be answering the phone for at least three hours on most Sunday afternoons.  Being a political candidate, I must also take credit for predicting—in this very blog–that rookie wide receiver (and University of California alum) DeSean Jackson would be an awesome pick-up for the Eagles.  I got in the car and turned on the radio after his 60 yard punt return, and I thought they were going to have to defibrillate Eagles announcer Merrill Reese.

On a more serious note, we have a Democratic primary election coming up on Tuesday.  Primaries are really hard, and I speak as someone who had one back in 2004.  We will all be glad when this one is over.  But I want to note that whatever the outcome, one prediction that was almost universally made about our primary for Governor has not come true.  In mid-2007, all of the experts in Delaware predicted that our primary for Governor would be expensive, difficult, and ultimately nasty, resulting in a primary winner who would emerge on September 10^th as damaged goods, ready for a Republican assault.  Well don’t get me wrong, there have been some sharp elbows thrown here and there, but by national standards, by the more genteel Delaware standards, and as measured against the experts’ predictions, our primary for Governor has been remarkably positive, remarkably focused on the issues, and will result in a party nominee on Wednesday morning who will be our party’s most qualified candidate for Governor in a generation.  It has made us proud to be Delaware Democrats.

Good morning, Denn blog visitors. I apologize for not having an entry since Monday, a lot of my time this week has been consumed by campaign fundraising activities. If you would like to ensure that this does not happen again, you can do so by getting 400 of your best friends to send me $1,200 apiece, or by convincing my parents to reveal the secret family fortune that they concealed from me to date so it would not affect my work ethic. Or you can just click here.

Earlier in the week, I did unveil my proposal to ensure that each of the 22,000 uninsured kids in Delaware can get affordable health insurance by January 1, 2010. Universal coverage for all Delawareans has to be our goal, but getting there will take some doing—it’s not an accident that none of the other 49 states have done it yet either. Insuring our 22,000 uninsured children is very doable, fairly inexpensive (about $1 per Delawarean per month), and will immediately cut our uninsured rate by 20%. You can read my plan here.

Finally, I’d like to thank the Delaware State Education Association for letting me and the Denn boys march with them in Monday’s Labor Day Parade. The boys have become quite talented at finding new ways to get into mischief during parades (throwing shoes out of their wagon, using American flags as swords to duel with, Sumo wrestling while wagon is in motion, etc.), and having dozens of teachers and other educators helping me keep an eye on them was very reassuring.

Today is not only the day that we honor America’s working families, it is also the day that—six years ago—Mrs. Denn became my wife.  We have had company for most of that time.  Lenny arrived four years ago from the local pug breeder, and Zach and Adam arrived three and a half years ago from…well…Mrs. Denn.  She has been a great mom to all three, but from my selfish perspective, she has also been a wife and partner beyond compare.  I am not going to turn this blog into a Hallmark card, so I will just wrap up by saying Happy Anniversary Michele—I will be home later with the steaks & wine.

One drum that our opponents keep beating in their effort to stop us from truly reforming the health insurance system is that the real problem is “mandates”—that if Delaware would just get in line with the rest of the country when it comes to mandated coverages, we could reduce the cost of health insurance.  Let’s take a closer look at this claim.

The Council for Affordable Health Insurance is the health insurance industry’s research arm, and it publishes the claims on mandates that are parroted by our opponents.  Some of its information about Delaware is just wrong.  It claims that Delaware has an “autism” mandate.  We don’t.  It mischaracterizes Delaware’s law stating that care otherwise covered by your insurance can’t be denied because it is part of a clinical research trial as a “mandate.”   And most of the things the Lee/Copeland ticket and the insurance industry call “mandates” are things that you would consider the core of what you are buying when you purchase health insurance—they list cancer screening, the right to stay in the hospital when you have a baby, and emergency room treatment as “mandates.”  The list goes on.  But here is the punchline.  Even when you factor in all of the insurance industry’s misrepresentations, when they tally it all up Delaware has the fifth fewest health insurance mandates of any state in America—by the insurance industry’s own estimates!

As I have already pointed out, our opponents’ idea that we can fix Delaware’s health insurance problems by allowing people to simply buy insurance from any health insurance company from any other state, whether or not the insurance companies are licensed or regulated here, is wrong for a number of reasons.  First, most out-of-state insurers have no contracts with doctors in Delaware.  Health insurance doesn’t do you much good if you can’t go to the doctor.  Second, if the last 20 years have taught us anything, it is that insurance companies not subject to proper state oversight will take advantage of their policyholders.  I am not prepared to have Delaware health insurance policyholders afforded the same amount of consumer protection as someone who buys a bunch of lawn ornaments from a guy named Sid on Ebay.  But finally, the insurance industry’s own statistics show that there’s not even any reason to think that insurers in other states are any more prepared to rush to the rescue of Delaware policyholders than the ones already doing business here.

It is not surprising that our opponents’ solution to the health insurance crisis is to deregulate an industry that is one of the most notorious in America for what it will do to consumers if left to its own devices.  But even the insurance industry’s own rigged numbers don’t support their proposal.

Last Saturday was the annual Democratic Party Jamboree at Cape Henlopen   And, of course, this was a Jamboree like none before—Democrats trickled in late this year, because they wanted to first see our Joe Biden’s first appearance on television as the next Vice President of the United States.

Joe did not disappoint, and neither did the Jamboree.  All of the talk—or, I should say, all of it from anyone who had a lick of common sense—was about the amazing developments of what was then the past 24 hours.  When it was my turn to speak, I told everyone how Michele had shaken me awake at 2:00 that morning shouting “It’s Joe Biden!”, to which I had responded “why is Joe Biden in our house?”

Sunday was back to the campaign trail, but Saturday was a great day to celebrate.  There are some pictures of the boys & the lovely Mrs. Denn (Joe has made it ok to publicly say that your wife is a knockout) at the Jamboree posted at http://flickr.com/photos/10766064@N06/.  

This is going to be fun.

One of the themes of my campaign is that I have actually gotten some things done in Dover during my time there. Everyone agrees that our state has some serious problems that need to be addressed, the difference is that I actually have a track record suggesting I can take on those problems.

Yesterday’s announcement of another workers compensation premium cut in Delaware is another good example of that. I announced an 11.5% workers compensation premium cut yesterday, which combined with the 17-22% cut I announced in November, means that we have cut workers compensation rates by about 30% in Delaware in less than a year. The first cut was the result of our office’s intensive scrutiny of the insurance carriers’ accounting practices, yesterday’s cut was the result of bi-partisan legislation I helped craft to reduce the underlying medical costs of workers compensation. And we were able to do all of this with no impact on the awards injured workers receive, or on the quality of medical care they receive. It is a huge boost for our business community.

When I ran for Insurance Commissioner in 2004, the business community told me that workers compensation premiums were its highest insurance priority. I promised to address it, and I did. Now we have some concrete results to show for it—with more cuts expected before the end of the year. My opponent and I are both making a fair number of promises during this campaign. The difference is that I have a record of working across party lines to get mine done.