House Minority Leader Mike Ramone faces a potential rematch with Democrat Frank Burns in the 2024 election.
Burns announced his campaign for the 21st House District seat in the Pike Creek area Thursday. It’s his second bid to unseat Ramone - now a 15-year Republican incumbent.
Burns narrowly lost to Ramone in 2022 – the result was close enough that Delaware law dictated a recount, which revealed a mere 41-vote difference.
He argues Ramone isn’t acting in constituents best interests.
“The very small amount of political power that the Republicans have in this state seem to get used for things that the people in our district just are not in favor of," Burns says.
Burns specifically points to Ramone’s holding up the Bond Bill in the final days of this year’s session to force House Democrats to vote for a bill giving corporations and LLCs a vote in Seaford’s municipal elections. The bill never made it to the Senate.
Burns says he is running on pro-worker policies, gun safety, and combating climate change — something he says is on the minds of Pike Creek residents struggling with flooding during recent frequent rainfall.
Burns says as the lowest lying state in the country, Delaware needs to be at the forefront when it comes to building resilience to extreme weather – something he argues Ramone historically hasn’t backed.
“There may be some activatable group within the Republican Party who having a climate denier stand up there and tell you that, ‘you only think you’re getting more rain because they changed the rain gauges,’ and ‘it’s not really getting hotter,’ just isnt going to hold well off in the district,” Burns says.
Burns says he is confident he can win this time - noting that he is launching his bid much earlier than in 2022 when he started campaigning in August with little name recognition.
