Delaware will see a shakeup in the General Assembly this election cycle with several fixtures in the House and State Senate retiring from their positions.
State Rep. Debra Heffernan is leaving after 16 years in the House District 6 seat. Before that, she served on the Brandywine School Board for five years, including a stint as Board President.
When Heffernan announced her retirement, she said the role has been an honor of a lifetime and cited her accomplishments ranging from reproductive freedom protection to paid parental leave for state employees and climate legislation.
“We’ve also made meaningful juvenile justice reform, provided parental leave for State of Delaware employees including Delaware being the first state to include teachers,” she said.
Now, a trio of Democrats are vying to fill the soon-to-be-vacant seat.
Rae Krantz was the first to file. She said,“I'm running for state house representative in District Six, and I am running because I believe that we need a government that is as proactive and innovative as the world is around us.”
On her website, Krantz listed building streets for people, not cars as her top priority. She said a lot of people feel disconnected and lonely because they don’t live in walkable communities. That led her to co-found Strong Towns Wilmington.
She said, “To really push for that, you know, safety on our roads for people who are navigating those roads in any way, not just in a vehicle or in other types of vehicles besides just a car.”
Krantz was running unopposed when she filed in March. In May, two more Democrats filed in quick succession.
Ralf Santana was the second to file after Krantz. He said, “I've been living here for about almost 12 years. I'm a Marine Corps veteran, two-time combat veteran. I'm a dad, a regular guy, blue collar mostly… I started out as a concerned citizen in my neighborhood.”
Santana’s decision to run for his District’s seat came after reaching out to Heffernan, “I called the Rep. Deb Heffernan about 30 times and no answer. So when I got that situation, it just frustrated me, obviously. And I said, you know, I could probably do a better job reaching out and talking to people. I already do that in my neighborhood.”
Ed Mulvihill was the last candidate to file. Like Santana, his plan to run wasn’t years in the making.
He said, “This is special to me because it's the district I grew up in, and it's the district my family's lived in for 90 years… Honestly, it wasn't something that was on my radar. But as I've contemplated this decision, it's been about, you know, taking that kind of next step in, how do we serve the community in a new way?”
Mulvihill is the fourth generation to run his family business, Pico’s Liquor Store, which he said he’ll pass on to his kids.
As Democrats, Mulvihill, Santana and Krantz have several issues where their positions overlap. That includes prioritizing cost of living concerns if elected.
Mulvihill said he’s heard that, time and time again, when asking constituents what they want to see from their elected officials, “One constituent said the other day, ‘Oh, none of us are thriving. We are all just surviving.’ And it's so true. It's absolutely true. So some of these issues sound mundane, and they sound – I don't know – boring. But they're the most important issues that touch everybody's life every single day.”
Santana and Krantz discussed cost of living as a priority through other lenses.
In her decade of advocacy work, Krantz said she joined the “Fight for 15” to raise Delaware’s minimum wage to $15. When it came to discussions about cost of living now, she said, “These are the issues that I'm hearing people talk about the most: concerns with Delmarva and increasing the delivery fees to be higher than the cost of the electricity itself… How can we look at our daily lives and the things that are easy or hard in those daily lives and make them easier with grocery store pricing? We have to worry about surveillance pricing now.”
Krantz added legislators owe it to their constituents to lower electric and water rates using creative means, “A lot of times when advocating for work, we, I've been told, ‘you know, oh, that can't be done.’ And I want us to ask why not.”
Santana is also a fan of creative solutions. One of his major concerns is housing – and that’s on a lot of Delawareans’ minds, too.
Delawareans are worried for the next generation and aren’t confident young people will be able to afford to live in their communities in the future, according to a survey by the Delaware State Housing Authority published in June.
That survey found 73% of respondents believed their communities haven’t invested enough in affordable housing.
Santana wants to see legislation partnering the state with elderly home owners, “I'd like to see if I can legislate a situation where the state would basically, essentially, lock their property taxes up as long as they can, as long as they agree to… when they pass, that home gets given to the state, and then the state will give it to working families.”
He said that would also keep houses from being scooped up by predatory corporations looking to turn a profit on severely limited housing stock, “I know this is kind of crazy, but I wouldn't mind basically levying a tax on big corporations that just basically hold homes hostage, so that you know we can start putting people in there.”
Mulvihill is also in support of preventing private companies from buying up residential homes. Affordable housing is on his mind, too. “Any kind of legislation that we can do, that would somehow incentivize our developers to build affordable housing that first-time homebuyers can afford, that young families can afford; I think would be huge.”
Krantz praised other elected officials in Delaware who have made affordable housing a priority. She said efforts at the county and state level to mitigate inspection costs and shorten processing timelines are worth continuing, “Encouraging the building of, you know, more townhouses and more multi-family units, unblocking people from being able to build ADUs on property that they already own… There's a lot we can do.”
Krantz added she, like Santana, wants there to be more opportunities for seniors to age in place through resources like maintenance assistance.
All three candidates also pointed to ongoing concerns about data centers as an issue.
While New Castle County Council and Kent County Levy Court recently passed data center restrictions, all three candidates expressed interest in further limitations to their development.
Mulvihill said the federal government isn’t putting data center regulations in place, which creates a disadvantage for Delaware, “New York just said no new data centers right now. If we do that in Delaware, even if we do and take that action, unless all the other states on our PJM grid do the same, we will still have the impacts on our electric bill and the demand of our energy in Delaware.”
Mulvihill said that puts Delaware in a scary place he doesn’t think legislators are worried enough about.
Krantz explicitly said she supports a moratorium on data centers after her advocacy work, “We were told, ‘oh, you're being too demanding by asking data centers to be set back 1000 feet away from daycares, homes, and hospitals. And my response is, ‘why is that too much to ask?’... I don't see where that's going to stop, and so we certainly cannot allow data centers to continue to raise our electric rates.”
Krantz said it’s important state legislators continue to push for more regulations before allowing more data centers to put their roots into the First State. She thinks she’s the right candidate to tackle the data center question for House District 6.
“I work as a software engineer and have been doing that for over a decade, and I believe that is a crucial piece where I can bring my experience in coalition building and advocacy, and having already built decent relationships with existing legislators, and combine that with a lot of my subject matter expertise, which is that technology piece,” she said.
Santana said the looming future of data centers is a concern that in a way, literally hits close to home.
“We have a park. It's called Fox Point Park. Right there, we can't get to it. That's where they want to build the data centers,” he said, “To me, it just doesn't seem like it's worth it. If it's really that worth it, and it's really that good of an investment, then the billionaires that are suggesting that we build them here will build them off of their own money, and then retroactively we'll pay you.”
House District 6 is also where Port of Wilmington Edgemoor expansion is planned, a project that’s been in the works for years and cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars.
In the wintertime when the trees are bare, Mulvihill can see the river – and the proposed port site – from his home. He said, “I'm very much like right in the thick of the the port stuff… Just realistically speaking, I don't know that there's anything anybody's going to be able to do to stop this at this point, right? My focus is on how do we make sure that the port operators are true to what they said they're going to do, right? How would you mitigate the light, noise, and air pollution.”
Santana wishes the money was going toward something else like Delaware’s public schools and teacher salaries rather than developing a port he’s not convinced the state needs. “You're spending that money in the most cavalier way. It could be used to better our communities, much more than a couple 100 jobs while it's being built, and then after it's built, maybe 100 jobs. That, for me, I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze,” he said.
Krantz’s initial concerns lie in transparency when it comes to the port.
She said, “It is very difficult to get clear information about the port. Where is the development?... Why are we giving state money to a or sorry to a private company that's not based in Delaware? …And it's been, what, a decade now, and they still haven't broken ground. So that's a heck of a interest-free loan, right?”
Additional lawsuits added to the slate of complications the port faces. Krantz asked how long the public will be in the dark on a project funded with public dollars.
Overall, House District 6 Democrats will choose between three candidates with few key differences in stances. So each is working to make the case they are the best choice.
First up is Krantz:
“Right now, things are changing very rapidly, and we need a government that can respond in kind. And so I want to bring new energy, you know, fresh ideas to our state government because I think that's what we need in order to tackle these challenges around us that quite frankly are unprecedented and so we really need that innovative thinking.”
Here’s Santana:
“No one's holding me back. There's no leash on me. There's no restraints… there's no lobbyists. There's no PACs or anything that's controlling me… if elected, two things are going to happen. I'm going to do my best to make common sense legislation that'll help the people, right? And that's a fact. And number two, a light, a spotlight's going to be lit on the people who don't necessarily support that type of thing.”
And finally, Mulvihill:
“My name is Ed. I've lived here my whole life, I love this district. I want to serve this district. I think my unique perspective as a small business owner is helpful. There's not many small business owners at the state house right now, and a good common sense approach is warranted and needed… I think that's me, and I hope that I can earn their support and their vote.”
About 46 percent of the nearly 19,000 voters registered in House District 6 are Democrats and eligible to vote in this primary race. No Republican filed to run for the seat.
