Bipartisanship not popular, but some issues require cooperation

It was just before 8 a.m. and the spillover from the Surf Bagel parking lot was already creeping into Ace Hardware’s territory.

Inside, it was standing room only, the kind of crowd you might expect for a campaign announcement. And it was. Sort of.

“I’m Ernie Lopez and I’m not running for president,” the state senator said to cheers and laughter and a couple of calls of “Why not?”

In fact, Lopez, the Republican representing the Sixth District, isn’t running for anything - this year. Re-elected in 2014, he won’t face the voters again until 2018.

It’s a measure of the interest - or perhaps revulsion - surrounding this year’s presidential campaign that its national effects almost beg to be acknowledged, even in the most local of political settings.

“There’s too much anger out there,” Lopez said, both addressing and dismissing any more talk of the weirdest presidential campaign in living memory.

(And maybe ever. When a presidential candidate’s opening statement begins with him holding up his hands to indicate that he, um, measures up to the job, we have boldly gone where no campaign has gone before.)

Lopez made it plain he wasn’t even going to say whom he’d vote for come November. This meeting was limited to local concerns.

Lopez began with comments about the state’s efforts to stem the loss of manufacturing jobs, the most recent issue being the merger of the two chemical giants, Dow and DuPont, which resulted in 1,700 layoffs in Delaware.

These were highly paid positions, Lopez said, about half requiring doctorates.

“We took a big hit,” he said.

Which affects the whole state, including us here in Sussex.

Lopez said he heard not only from local DuPont retirees, but also from current employees who commute from the Milton area to either the DuPont Experimental Station or Chestnut Run offices in Wilmington.

But the hit could have been a lot worse. There was no guarantee that any of the three DuPont spinoffs would remain here.

Instead, Lopez said, state officials fought and managed to retain two of the operations, the composites specialties group and the agriculture group.

And here’s the amazing part.

“The combined economic impact those two groups will be making on Delaware’s economy going forward is $8 billion a year more than DuPont made as a company standing alone,” Lopez said.

“What we saw over the last month was a bipartisan, collaborative, thoughtful effort to get together,” he said.

The result: Delaware kept a lot more of the old DuPont here than we had a right to expect. For the agriculture group, for example, tiny Delaware was competing with big farms states like Iowa and Oklahoma.

Agriculture plays an outsized role in the Delaware economy, but it’s not in the same league as those states.

In 2014, Delaware farmers produced $1.2 billion in crops and livestock. Iowa’s corn crop alone, in 2010, was valued at nearly $9.5 billion.

If you’d asked me beforehand which state was more likely to wind up with DuPont’s ag group, Delaware or Iowa, I would have said we were toast.

A few years back, when efforts to bring Fisker Automotive to Delaware crashed and burned, state officials were hammered for their foolishness. It’s only fair to give them credit when things turn out better than expected.

Lopez referred to the Sixth District, which includes Milton, Lewes and Rehoboth, as the fastest-growing Senate district in the state.

And not just because of retirees moving here.

“This area,” he said, “is the engine for economic growth in Delaware.” It includes not only tourism but also the largest dairy operation in the state, Hopkins Farm Creamery.

He mentioned other promising signs. “Our markets are improving, banks are lending, credit is improving,” he said.

Not all the news is good, of course.

Last week, Lopez said, the Department of Heath and Social Services announced that it would need $22 million more than it had estimated only three months ago, in December.

That, to put it mildly, was a surprise, “a kick to the gut,” as Lopez put it.

The problem is the rise in the state’s Medicare and Medicaid costs, a trend Lopez finds “very troubling.”

He said he’s glad they’re working on the issue now rather than at the end of the session, but admitted he didn’t have an answer.

It looks like another case where Democrats and Republicans are going to have to work together to come up with a solution.


Don Flood is a former newspaper editor living near Lewes. He can be reached at floodpolitics@gmail.com.