Analysis: Delaware faces a future of outsized campaign spending

Why Should Delaware Care?
Delaware has seen rapid growth of outside campaign advertising, which can hide who is sharing a message and for what reason. The money is also complicating campaigns as even down-ballot races are reaching costs never seen before.

This summer’s primary election season in Delaware was marked by millions of dollars in advertising campaigns, relitigated political fights over the state’s corporate franchise, and piles upon piles of advertising mailers. 

But it also raised questions about the sheer volume of money flowing into Delaware’s political ecosystem through candidates’ own campaigns, political action committees (PACs) and so-called third-party advertisers, which have become the predominant vehicle for the spending. 

And while Election Day quickly approaches next week, some of the most consequential statehouse and statewide elections were essentially already decided during September’s high-spend, at times heated, primary races.

Well-known incumbents easily prevailed in Democratic races at the top of last month’s primary ticket, but progressive statehouse candidates backed by the Working Families Party also knocked out five incumbents and captured an open seat.

Spotlight Delaware spoke to candidates, political consultants and representatives from PACs to better understand the aftermath of Delaware’s primary elections. 

What emerged from those conversations was a more nuanced picture of what exactly goes into winning an election in the First State in 2026.

The cost of doing business?

The sheer amount of money in this year’s primary elections — at times reaching well past $100,000 between candidate committees and outside advertisers —  represented a significant jump from spending levels in previous Delaware election cycles. 

The rise in outside election spending was first seen on a statewide scale during Delaware’s 2024 gubernatorial race, when outside political groups raised millions of dollars from developers, unions and a single New York company with a longtime grudge against Delaware. 

But that expensive gubernatorial race — at least by Delaware standards — also took place during a presidential election cycle, which typically means more attention for races up and down the ballot.

A Spotlight Delaware analysis of the last midterm election in 2022 found that roughly $1 million was spent by outside groups seeking to influence voters. This year, spending between the primary and general elections has already surpassed $3 million in support of candidates.

Some experts told Spotlight Delaware, however, increasing spending by PACs and other third-party advertisers is a trend that is not going away. 

“It’s here to stay everywhere because attention is so expensive today,” said Matt Krayton, a political consultant who has worked with both Delaware candidates and PACs.

That price of attention can also help to explain the piles of political mailers that residents in competitive districts received, sometimes totaling more than a dozen pieces of mail per candidate.

In terms of direct candidate spending, Delaware Senate Majority Caucus Communications Director Sarah Fulton said she attributes the rise to inflation. The cost of running an effective campaign — from hiring a team, to printing signs and other materials, to buying ads — has gone up, she said. 

During this year’s primary election cycle, candidates who raised more money than their opponents, both in direct campaign donations and through spending by outside PACs, oftentimes won their race — with a few key exceptions.

In what became arguably the three most-watched statehouse races, incumbent Sen. Dan Cruce (D-Wilmington) and Reps. Krista Griffith (D-Fairfax) and Nnamdi Chukwuocha (D-Wilmington) each won out over their challengers. 

But those wins came with total spend price tags of $332,000; $322,000; and $192,000, respectively.

Outsized spending did not always equal electoral wins in this year’s primaries though.

In the uniquely competitive Democratic primary race for state treasurer, outside advertisers poured nearly $1 million dollars into Michael A. Smith’s campaign, only for the economist to come in a distant third place of a three-way race.

And in one of the more surprising upsets of this year’s primary season, longtime incumbent state Rep. Bill “Lumpy” Carson lost his reelection bid against a Working Families Party-backed political newcomer, Tyeisha “Tye” Grier. 

Carson had raked in more than $100,000 between direct campaign contributions and support from outside advertisers, while Grier only saw about one tenth of that financial support.

Grier told Spotlight Delaware that because she was outmatched in campaign funding, she leaned on volunteers and her personal network to knock on thousands of doors in the Smyrna-area district.

“We measured our success in all kinds of unorthodox ways,” she said, noting that the presence of video doorbells means residents are less likely to converse with candidates on the doorstep. “When we would go back to the neighborhoods and we weren’t finding our pamphlets still sitting outside, we considered that a win. Then when we came back weeks later, we saw some people had taped the materials up in their windows.” 

While experts agreed that increased political spending is likely here to stay, the underlying source of that spending may ebb and flow, Senate Majority Caucus Chief of Staff Jesse Chadderdon said. 

If certain industries or professions are feeling embattled, he said, their interest groups may engage politically in unique ways that do not necessarily mean that spending will remain a fixture election after election.

This year, Delaware’s corporate franchise was seemingly that embattled industry.

SB 21’s lingering impacts, or lack thereof

The 2025 restructuring of Delaware’s corporate franchise, known as Senate Bill 21 or simply SB 21, was a talking point that challengers attempted to leverage in some of this year’s most closely-watched primaries.

The bill was drafted after reports that several companies, including DropBox and Meta, were considering moving their incorporation out of Delaware. It also followed a yearlong assault on the state’s corporate franchise by the world’s richest man, Elon Musk.

The legislation included several significant changes, but in effect, SB 21 made the process of suing a corporation by its minority shareholders more difficult.

Both challengers themselves and third-party advertisers, including the Working Families Party, used SB 21 as a litmus test for the strength of a candidate’s progressive bonafides, saying incumbents had failed to stand up to billionaires by enacting corporate franchise reform.

In many cases, however, leveraging SB 21 turned out to be a losing strategy. 

Dr. Rob Bahnsen’s campaign to unseat Rep. Griffith in Delaware’s 12 House District is a prime example.

Bahnsen himself was never formally endorsed by the Working Families Party, but he embraced progressive causes and spent a large portion of his campaign criticizing Griffith, who led the bill’s rushed passage through the House of Representatives, for what he said was a failure to compromise on such a consequential piece of legislation. He even filmed a six-part interview series on the topic with one of the bill’s most-prominent local critics.

But Bahnsen’s strategy of leaning into what he considered to be the failings of SB 21 was unsuccessful. Griffith easily won the primary, advancing to next month’s general election with nearly 70% of the vote.

And while SB 21 was a particularly visible part of Bahnsen’s campaign, it also played a pivotal — though maybe less prominent — role across other competitive primary races, including Sen. Cruce’s race against professor and advocate Adriana Bohm, and Rep. Chukwuocha’s against Wilmington City Councilwoman Shané Darby.

In these races, and others, PACs backed by corporate law firms that supported SB 21 spent nearly $1 million to keep incumbents who voted for the corporate franchise changes in office. 

And while the funding for these PACs came from supporters of SB 21’s changes to the state’s corporate franchise, the messaging itself was often far more vague. 

For at least one PAC that operated as a third-party advertiser in many of this year’s most competitive primary races, choosing to avoid messaging directly about the corporate franchise was a choice backed by data.

Good Growth Dems, described by co-founder Ty Strong as a pro-capitalism, center-left organization, began operating in Delaware about seven months ago. The PAC has worked to elect candidates in Pennsylvania, New York, North Carolina and Maine, and Strong said he was drawn to Delaware to take part in what he called a center-left versus far-left policy debate over the future of the state’s corporate franchise.

Good Growth partnered with Krayton, the political consultant, to better understand what was driving Delaware’s primary electorate. And despite some messaging, Krayton found that voters were largely not motivated by the typical establishment-versus-progressive framing that underpins primary elections more broadly.

According to Krayton’s polling, Democratic voters in Delaware were unwilling to give up the economic benefits of the corporate franchise for the sake of “taking on billionaires and big corporations.”

Even residents who said they planned to vote for a challenger over an incumbent favored ensuring the corporate franchise’s stability over taking on billionaires by a margin of 58% to 42%, according to Krayton’s polling.

The polling seemingly calls into question the strategy of some candidates, as well as outside advertising from the Working Families Party, that leaned into the narrative that incumbents had capitulated to billionaire’s demands when enacting SB 21. 

But Karl Stomberg, chair of the Delaware Working Families Party, disputed that as too broad a takeaway, and said certain strategies landed differently depending on an audience’s demographic. Messaging about corporate influence resonated more in multiracial, working-class communities, but it did not land as well in wealthy, predominantly white areas, he said.

The polling helps provide insight into the way this year’s primary races ultimately shook out. 

While the Working Families Party picked up five statehouse seats, unseating two incumbents, corporate franchise-minded PACs were able to stave off challengers to keep Sen. Cruce, and Reps. Chukwuocha and Griffith — incumbents in three of the most closely watched races — in office.

But in Stomberg’s view, his organization’s wins are no less valuable because they took place outside the wealthiest parts of Wilmington. He also said those places where Working Families Party candidates lost are where Delaware’s wealthy corporate lawyers tend to live.

So, what does it all mean?

Karl Stomberg, chair of the Delaware Working Families Party, has claimed this year’s primary campaign season to be an all-out success. But Strong, from Good Growth Dems, has not conceded Delaware’s future, and said his more centrist flank only plans to increase its operations in the state. 

An influx of five new Woking Families Party-aligned lawmakers is likely to change the dynamics inside Legislative Hall during the upcoming General Assembly, though the specifics of exactly how remain to be seen. 

The task of legislating has historically put campaign promises to the test, and some candidates who have been supported by the Working Families Party have moved more to the center after joining the legislature.

The first likely example of the looming intra-party struggle could be the decision inside the House to choose its next Speaker, which will take place shortly after the general election. Madinah Wilson-Anton, perhaps the most vocal progressive in the House, has already announced plans to challenge incumbent House Speaker Melissa Minor-Brown.

But regardless of how these new political dynamics take shape, Chadderdon, the Senate Majority Caucus chief of staff, said finding a way to effectively govern is paramount.

“The same people that were demonizing SB 21 and suggesting it was bad for our state and the same people that were defending it to the hilt now have to figure out how to pay for our schools, and pay for feeding our families and figure out how to make Delaware more livable,” he said.

Editor-In-Chief Jacob Owens contributed to this story.

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