OPINION
Are the Democrats Dumb Enough to Run Law-Breaking Bethany Hall-Long For Delaware Governor?
Dear Friends,
Look at the Democrats, folks! All they have is a reported criminal to put up as their candidate for Governor of Delaware?! Delaware’s Department of Elections report found that Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long repeatedly broke state laws when filing campaign finance reports over several years.
The elections department hired Pennsylvania-based Forensic Litigation Consultants in January and their certified fraud examiner, who is a retired FBI senior executive, found fraudulent payments and that Hall-Long’s husband and former campaign treasurer, had written four campaign checks to himself but falsely reported that they had been written to someone else, according to an Associated Press story that I had in my column earlier this week.
I can only hope the Democrats are dumb enough to run this criminal, so that the Republican candidate can win the general election.
See the story below on the recap of the HORRIBLE week for Hall-Long. Please send your feedback on this, folks. It is always welcome and appreciated!
Respectfully Yours,
JUDSON Bennett–Coastal Network
Delaware’s topsy-turvy race for governor keeps careening down uncharted paths.
Consider all that’s happened, just in the last week.
The focal point isn’t views on education policy, criminal justice reform, tax plans or other issues that traditionally dominate races for state government’s highest post.
Instead, it’s the campaign finance scandal of Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long, the favorite of the state Democratic party and Gov. John Carney to succeed him.
With less than six weeks remaining until the Sept. 10 Democratic primary election, Hall-Long is reeling from a state Department of Elections report that found she repeatedly broke state laws when filing campaign finance reports over several years.
The report led two top aides to bolt from her campaign, her primary foes to call for a federal investigation or independent counsel and two fellow Democrats in the state House to take the rare, if not unprecedented, step of publicly demanding that she withdraw from the race against New Castle County Executive Matt Meyer and former state environmental chief Collin O’Mara.
The blockbuster 16-page report, released late Thursday in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from WHYY News, said Hall-Long violated the Delaware code from 2016 through 2022 by not disclosing $298,000 in payments to her husband and longtime campaign treasurer Dana Long, and by failing to record those advances to the campaign and payments the couple made on 16 different credits as loans.
The report also concluded that Dana Long had been paid $33,000 more than the couple reported loaning the campaign — a finding that stands in sharp contrast to Hall-Long’s contention that she had loaned her campaigns $101,000 more than she had been repaid.
Though Hall-Long had amended seven years worth of campaign finance reports in November after leaders and volunteers in her nascent gubernatorial campaign quit over the questionable payments to Dana Long, Elections Commissioner Anthony J. Albence is now ordering her to further amend the reports to bring them into compliance.
Albence did not fine Hall-Long and said he was not referring the findings to Attorney General Kathy Jennings for possible prosecution, however. Failing to properly disclose campaign loans and spending is a misdemeanor in Delaware.
Jennings, who had prodded Albence to release the report that Hall-Long asked him to keep from the public, said she concurred with the decision not to seek criminal charges. Jennings proclaimed, however, that “official explanations” by Hall-Long’s campaign about money paid to Dana Long “do not survive scrutiny.”
Hall-Long’s primary competitors immediately pounced on the findings of the forensic audit by former Philadelphia FBI senior executive Jeffrey Lampinski, saying they cry out for further investigation.
O’Mara said Hall-Long’s “black letter violations’’ of campaign laws were so disturbing that Jennings should appoint an independent counsel unaffiliated with Delaware’s ruling “Democratic apparatus” to continue the review. All nine statewide elected officials, including Carney and Jennings, as well as two-thirds of state legislators, are Democrats. Albence, also a Democrat, was nominated by Carney to the post in 2019 and confirmed by the state Senate.
Meyer then upped the ante, holding a news conference Monday in downtown Wilmington, where he blasted Hall-Long’s “nearly decade-long illegal conduct” and called for the FBI and U.S. Attorney’s Office to launch its own investigation.
“Laws don’t apply to some more than others,’’ Meyer said. “The report found that Ms. Hall-Long broke the law. The report provides evidence that she tried to cover it up and was still covering it up until the last moment when she asked our state election commissioner to keep the report detailing the illegalities confidential and not to release these findings to the public.”
Meyer followed up officially on Wednesday with a letter to David Weiss, U.S. Attorney for Delaware, saying the state’s findings “indicate potential violations’’ of federal law, including mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering, tax evasion and conspiracy.
A spokeswoman for Weiss declined to comment on Meyer’s request for a federal probe.