Yesterday (Friday, August 28) the Metropolitan Wilmington Urban League ran a day-long series of debates for some of the local offices being contested. Oddly, the challenging candidate for New Castle County Executive was a No Show (Incumbent County Executive Matt Meyer did appear to speak to voters at this event.) And, according to host Eugene Young, was completely nonresponsive to all attempts to reach her and make sure she knew of this event. (You can forward the You Tube video to about 6:46 for the start of the NCCo Executive section.)
The MWUL has a membership and communication network that has a good reach into the Black community here in Wilmington and NCCo, at least. This is a solid group of Black voters who speak to other Black voters. It’s a prime opportunity to speak to an important constituency in New Castle County. And it is a prime opportunity to counter concerns that her campaign does not speak to Black voters.
Because Maggie did not show up, the debate was shortened and the incumbent, Matt Meyer, was asked a limited number of questions. He did bring forward some interesting information — that Maggie Jones left the Democratic Party (and registered as a Republican, I think) in 2008, after Barack Obama was elected President. She then flipped back and forth between the Ds and the Rs in 2010, 2018 and registered again as a Democrat in February 2020.
A decision to join a party that ran out Mike Castle in favor of Christine O’Donnell doesn’t look like a good one. Flipping back and forth to a party that literally leads with its racial grievances and currently stands with a man who stokes those grievances and nationalist ideologies to make sure the GOP is protecting the 1% matches up with no Democratic values I know of. This is basically a version of the Scott Walker strategy — flipping around parties in hopes of finding someone, anyone to vote for him. Except in this instance, it seems that Ms. Jones was not a fan of President Barack Obama and went to the GOP where she had company.
This is what is on Ms. Jones’ FB page:
As your New Castle County Executive I will support the shared vision of the community and county government through building strong partnerships and support ethical operations.
There are no “strong partnerships” to build or “ethical operations” to support without including New Castle County’s Black Democratic voters, Ms. Jones. Ignore or write off these voters at your peril. Your campaign failed to show up for an endorsement meeting held by the County Dems, and now fails to show up to a debate sponsored by the MWUL. I’m not sure who her campaign speaks to, but it definitely is not Democrats or Black voters.
She didn’t show up to the New Castle County Democratic Executive endorsement meeting. She said she had an emergency, which is fine, but she didn’t have anyone pitch in her stead.
Well family first always and I don’t know if she was a Republican or not she needs to address this