I have said before that one of the things I have going for me in my run for Lieutenant Governor is that I got some important things done as Insurance Commissioner.   That work as Insurance Commissioner continues even as I campaign for the Lieutenant Governor’s post.  Yesterday’s News Journal had an article about a new bill I have put together to try to address the shortage of surgical care for our veterans at the Elsmere VA Hospital—you can read the article here.  This is one that we need to get done.

The boys and I will be in the Wilmington Memorial Day Parade this evening, look for me trudging up “Heartbreak Hill” on Delaware Avenue pulling their red wagon, while they kick back, wave flags, and eat raisins.

Last night was our fundraiser at Craig and Amy Sternberg’s house. We had a great turnout, but as each person came through the front door, I had to refuse to shake his or her hand because I was sick as a dog. A bunch of the attendees were doctors, including the head of Christiana Hospital’s emergency room, and the thought of smearing my germ-covered hands all over them and then sending them back out to treat patients was too much. Dr. Brian Galinat, an orthopedic surgeon, was one of the last to arrive but demonstrated to me that I could give a Jimmy Rollins-style fist smash to people without spreading germs, so gentlemen got a fist smash on the way out. Fist smashing the ladies seemed wrong.

We only got a few pictures at the event, which are posted here. My favorite picture is this one of me and “Nick the Hat” who is City Councilman Charles Potter’s loyal ally on the campaign trail. I am not entirely sure what Nick the Hat’s last name is—when Charles called to tell me that he would be coming to a prior fundraiser in the city, I asked for his name so we could make a name tag for him, and Charles insisted that he was known simply as Nick the Hat.

Bottom line: great party, made a lot of money for the campaign. Thanks again, Craig and Amy!

OK, we have some serious campaign business to attend to today.

First, two of the young phenoms of the Denn Campaign, campaign director Alyssa Koser (a college junior) and ODG (Original Denn…um…Guy) Tim McBride (a high school junior) have put together a great video for the campaign. We are going to put it on the home page soon. In the meantime, you can preview it below.

Second, don’t forget my fundraiser this Wednesday night from 5:30 to 7:30 at the Sternbergs’ house in Wilmington. We don’t do too many of these, and when we do they are great. You can get more information about the fundraiser by e-mailing Alyssa at Alyssa@mattdenn.com.

Finally, the official three-county announcement tour is less than two weeks away—Saturday, June 7th. The times and locations are on our home page here. Please come out and join us.

And now, the premiere of “Meet Matt Denn”:

Yesterday, I took some time off the campaign trail to attend the boys first ‘music recital.’ It consisted of them banging sticks together, marching in a circle and pretending to be a bumblebee, and then engaging in some sort of random free-style dance. Parents were encouraged to participate, and when the free-style dance came up I felt the same sense of gnawing fear washing over me that I did at the 9th grade dance at H.B. Dupont when I finally got a girl I liked to dance with me and the D.J. chose Stairway to Heaven. The boys excelled—as I have written previously in this blog, they spend 40% of their awake time banging things together, so the wooden stick thing was right in their wheelhouse.

One other interesting development yesterday. The web site has a volunteer sign-up function (which, by the way, you should use), and it allows you to say what you want to do for the campaign as a volunteer. Most of the people who sign up volunteer to do the usual things that have to get done on a campaign, and for that we are very grateful. Yesterday we had someone volunteer to be my bodyguard and security. So for all the women who have been lining up at my various appearances and grabbing at me, this is a heads-up: the Denn campaign now has its own muscle.

First, more good news from the campaign front. Over the last few days, a number of local Democratic party committees—including the four committees that make up the City of Wilmington Democratic Committee—have endorsed my candidacy. As a result, a majority of the state’s Democratic committees have now endorsed me. That might not seem like a big deal since my primary election opponent withdrew from the race last week, but it is. This is going to be a very competitive general election, and the Republican party is going to throw an enormous amount of money into the race against me. It appears from the initial tone of what they are putting out that most of it will be spent on negative campaign ads. So it is important that I have a unified Democratic party formally behind me as soon as possible, so the party can help me spread my positive message about helping Delaware’s kids to succeed. Having these committees declare their support is a big part of that.

I will return to local campaign news in my next post, but I wanted to point out to you one of the many reasons why we need a new President. Sure, we all know the big ones—war in Iraq, economy in crisis, tax structure out of whack. But the President also appoints all the heads of all of the federal government agencies, and in the case of this President, his wacky world view has trickled down into the agencies that are supposed to oversee our basic health and safety. I have previously written about the evisceration of the federal agency that oversees the safety of children’s toys. Today’s Washington Post brings the next chapter: news that, as a result of European boycotts of our beef, the federal government is finally seeking an absolute ban on the introduction of downed cows—cows that are so sick that they can’t stand up—into the food chain. Previously, the ban had been a flexible one, in order to account for cows that might fail the first time but somehow struggle back to their feet in time for a re-inspection—the cow equivalent of Willis Reed coming out of the locker room in the 1970 NBA finals. If you are like me, after reading the story (here), your first reaction will be “oh my God, I just ate a burger yesterday,” and your second reaction will be “thank you, Mister President!”. Only George Bush could spoil for me the simple pleasure of eating a burger.

Finally, in honor of the felled cows that the President has allowed into the food chain, let me direct you to a couple of vegetarian dips that we make around the Denn house. Dips are big at our house, because by the time I am home and the boys are fed, it’s often late enough that we don’t feel like eating a real dinner. The first is Olivada, it is a dip combining black olives, pine nuts, garlic, and olive oil. If that sounds really good to you, you will like it; if not, you won’t. The recipe, originally from the famous Moosewood restaurant cookbook, is online here. The second, also from the Moosewood restaurant, is Borani, a dip with spinach, feta cheese, yogurt, and dill. Recipe is here. (By the way, in preparation for the general election campaign, if the owners of the Moosewood restaurant have engaged at any time in the past in any hippie-style anti-government activism, let me say for the record that I renounce their actions and love America.)

Finally, in defense of the beloved Delaware chicken, let me also direct you to the Denn boys’ favorite chicken recipe: it is basically Shake-n-Bake chicken but the coating has ground flaxseeds, parmesan cheese, and tasty spices in it. You can find that one here.

Not a lot of campaign stops yesterday due to the rain, but Saturday we traveled down to Milford & started off our day at Bob Walls’ kickoff of his re-election campaign for the Delaware House of Representatives.  The Denn boys turned in a tour-de-force.  First, they stuffed their faces with donuts.  Then they wandered into the tent where the speeches were starting and began chattering at each other, which meant retreating out of the tent and into the sun, which meant the one thing that I had been hoping to postpone: application of sunscreen.

My boys react to the application of sunscreen the way that the bad witch in the Wizard of Oz reacts to water.  As I put them successively in hammerlocks and tried to smear it on their faces, concerned Walls supporters began coming out of the tent where Bob was having his announcement to see if I needed help.  It’s just what every candidate wants at his announcement.  Fortunately, Bob was unfazed—in fact, Bob is always unfazed.  That is one of the reasons why we love Bob.

Kent County Democratic Chair Abby Betts was the MC at Bob’s announcement.  At Bob’s announcement two years ago, she announced that her nickname for me was “Precious,” leading to two years of derision.  This year, she forgot to introduce me altogether (or perhaps was simply trying to pretend that the commotion in the back wasn’t happening), and when Bob got up and asked if she had remembered to introduce me, she shouted back “whatever.”  She will need to show the Lieutenant Governor more respect.

My Democratic primary opponent Ted Blunt suspended his campaign yesterday, and I wanted to use this space to say something about Ted.  This is not the usual ‘nice stuff you say about your opponent when it doesn’t matter’ routine, nothing I say here is anything I haven’t said about Ted in his presence, in front of audiences, out on the campaign trail.

Ted has had a truly extraordinary life story, growing up in difficult circumstances in public housing in Philadelphia, putting himself through school as a student athlete, and serving for decades as a civic leader and public official.  And yet when he and I had joint appearances during the campaign, the thing about which he was the most animated was his family, and in particular his three daughters.  Ted’s daughter Lisa—a long-time friend of mine—has served in a variety of cabinet posts in Delaware and will undoubtedly run for office some day herself.  Marla has become a seasoned and respected political professional, heading up constitutent services for Senator Biden and doing a great job running her dad’s campaign and helping with Barack Obama’s campaign in Delaware.  And Thea is a successful engineer.  All three of them are dedicated to their own families and respected in their communities.  I said it on the campaign trail and I will say it here: if I could look back forty years from now and talk about the way I raised my kids the same way Ted does today, I would consider myself to have had a successful life no matter what happens in my career or in politics.

Ted is going to be playing a leadership role in our state for a long time, and I look forward to working with him as I have in the past to make this state a better place for our kids.  

First, some brief campaign news.  More endorsements rolled in since Wednesday: one from the 7^th Representative District Democratic Committee in Brandywine Hundred, and one from the University of Delaware College Democrats.  The 7^th District endorsement means that 16 out of the 16 representative districts that have officially endorsed candidates have endorsed me.  That is obviously pretty good.  The College Democrats endorsement is also a big deal, because those College Dems are the die-hard workers of the Delaware political scene.   

Additional campaign news: our lawn signs were successfully unloaded on Wednesday with no injuries. Teamsters vice president Michael Ciabattoni had planned to help his members unload the signs, but instead supervised the process from his home while reclining in his kimono and bunny slippers.

Finally, some non-campaign news.  I was reminded again last night why I love doing the work that I do.  I was speaking to a group of adoptive parents at Simpson United Methodist Church, and after the meeting was over as I was getting to leave, a woman came up to me and asked if she could introduce herself.  She had been in another part of the church wrapping items for a fair the church is having this weekend, and she had heard I was in the auditorium.  She has a young child who wears hearing aids, and she wanted to thank me for my help with a pending bill to require private insurance companies to do what the State of Delaware already does for its employees—help the parents of hearing-impaired children pay for part of the cost of a new set of hearing aids every three years.  Policyholders who don’t have hearing-impaired kids won’t even notice the difference—the impact on health insurance premiums will be between six and twenty cents a month.  But for people like the woman who came out to thank me at the church, it means the difference between buying the hearing aids her son really needs to succeed in school and having to buy a less expensive set.  Almost every day I run into someone who has been affected by something my office does—a person we helped resolve a claim with an insurance company, someone who is now able to keep their young adult child on their health insurance, or someone like the lady at church last night.  It makes all the sign-unloading worthwhile.

Today I must undertake one of my least favorite tasks on the campaign.  No, not quite as bad as pursuing wealthy corporate lawyers through Rodney Square at lunch with a butterfly net in search of campaign donations–but close.  Today is the arrival of the lawn signs.  I am not sure if it must be this way or if the folks who have helped me with my campaigns simply tell me it must for their own amusement, but the metal portions of the lawn signs (which, cumulatively, weigh about the same as an ICBM) are delivered by a courier that requires the campaign to actually lug them from the truck into the building.  I, of course, feel a moral obligation to help my friends at the Teamsters union who have volunteered to help unload them.  So we have arranged for an early morning delivery, and while all of you are reading the paper or debating who got voted off American Idol last night, I will be stopping off on my way to work to lug giant boxes of steel bars through a parking lot.

The judges on American Idol always say that if you are a good singer, you could sing the phone book and it would sound great. Maybe, but only a true diva can sing the ABCs gospel-style backed by a bunch of puppets. See Patti LaBelle on Sesame Street.