A three-guest, four-segment edition of Money & Politics in Delaware, with Dace Blaskovitz running the table on education, immigration, and real estate heading into Memorial Day weekend.
Segment One
First State Educate executive director Julia Kelleher breaks down the May 12th school board elections. Turnout hit roughly 12,000 voters — short of her 30,000 goal, but a strong showing against a smaller candidate pool than last year. She notes the uncomfortable pattern that turnout spiked only in districts with controversy: Appoquinimink, still working through a financial mess flagged by a state audit, and Red Clay, wrestling with the McKean High question — both seeing incumbents ousted. Kelleher returns to her recurring theme that Delaware spends heavily per pupil (around $21,000/student) for some of the nation's weakest results, warns that a new public-education funding formula now on the legislative floor will make board financial literacy critical, and recaps her signature Vision & Voices 2026 convening.
Segments Two and Three
Delaware-based immigration attorney Rick Hogan (Hogan & Vandenberg) illustrates the system through two clients — a Haitian dialysis patient ordered to appear in Florida, and an asylum-seeker denied because cartel violence isn't "government" persecution. He unpacks the DHS course-correction first reported in the Wall Street Journal: after the Minneapolis backlash, enforcement is moving off-camera even as arrests stay high, with the administration eyeing Amazon-style warehouses for detention and counties pushing back on code and humanitarian grounds. Hogan explains Delaware's sanctuary-state status, the revoked Temporary Protected Status threatening Southern Delaware's Haitian poultry workforce (a potential 35–75% labor hit), why he says the Venezuela "fix" is optics-only, and the federal audit pressure on roughly 15 Delaware employers. His repeated takeaway: immigration is a purely federal problem Congress has ducked for 30+ years — and a wide-open political opportunity for Democrats willing to meet enforcement halfway.
Segment Four
Fill-in host Rusty Giles brings brother Jason Giles, president of Patterson Schwartz (celebrating 65 years, ~440 agents), for the monthly real estate update. New Castle County: closed sales down 12% but median price up 4%, inventory climbing toward a healthy three-month supply, days-on-market steady at 32. Sussex County: a discretionary-buyer market where days-on-market jumped 37% to 77. Jason plays "fact or fiction" on housing-crash headlines (verdict: no crash, just a normalizing market shadowed by Iran/oil/gas uncertainty), flags Delaware leading the nation in an 18% year-over-year rise in foreclosure filings, and points first-time buyers to Delaware State Housing Authority bond programs.
