An unchanged balance

There wasn’t a whole lot of hype about this because the winner will be the lamest of ducks, but there was a special election upstate in New Castle County last Saturday. The election became necessary when embattled Rep. Gerald Brady resigned in February, and despite the fact the district would be disappearing in the newest round of redistricting someone has to fill out the term and that someone is Democrat Charles “Bud” Freel. In this case, it was the perfect spot for Democrats to talk Freel out of retirement after serving 24 years as a Wilmington City Council member, stepping down in 2021. Given that resume, I don’t think this election is a referendum on the party in charge.

Thanks to that name ID, Freel easily defeated Republican Ted Kittila by a count of 2,210 – 1,015. Moreover, Freel’s 68.4% of the vote compared favorably to Brady’s 70.02% of the tally in retaining the District 4 seat back in November 2020 over Republican Jordan Nally – so it’s a sure bet that state Democrats are sad to see that district’s demise.

It’s probably unfair to compare a special election on a Saturday that drew barely 3,000 voters to a Presidential balloting where over 13,000 district residents made their preference known, but it is worth pointing out that this special election served as a return to normalcy in one respect but dawned a new era in another.

Out of a total of 3,230 votes cast – including five write-in votes – only 439 (or 13.6%) were absentee votes this time, compared to the 41.8% absentee for the district in 2020. So that aspect dropped by 2/3, a sure signal that the pandemic is over. The new wrinkle, though, was early voting, and although this may end up being an apples-to-oranges comparison, the fact that only 215 cast their ballots that way probably means having early (and often) voting won’t be the turnout boost proponents seem to think it will be. This only added about 6% to the total.

However, one thing which was proven once again was that Democrats are lazy. Well, maybe it’s better to say that they like the so-called convenience of voting from home or on non-election days since the Freel margin on those two columns was 559 to 93, or 85.5% of the vote. Margins like that mean Democrats aren’t getting rid of either method unless a court or a sane GOP legislature forces them to.

Basically all I have left from this race is to speculate whether Freel will retire with any points on the monoblogue Accountability Project after his cup of coffee this spring. The more things change, the more they stay the same.