House Bill 90 will make life easier for mothers and fathers who wish to run for office. This bill permits a candidate committee established by a candidate for public office to pay reasonable and necessary expenses for the care of a candidate’s child or children when care is necessary in connection with the candidate’s campaign activities.
Running for office, and raising money so that you can run for office, is a very difficult thing. Trying doing it when you are also taking care of your children day and night. We should make it easier to run for office so that we can attract more and better people to run for office.
| House Bill 90 Sponsors | Yes Votes | No Votes |
| Brady Longhurst Moore Minor-Brown | ||
| Gay Townsend | ||
| Current Status: House Administration 1/27/21 |
Having children is a choice. If we pay for their childcare while they run for office, next logical thing is to cover their childcare as they carry out the equally time consuming duties of serving in office.
I think an important distinction is that while being an elected official means you most often will draw a salary, being a candidate is unpaid. I would say that even if you don’t believe that elected officials should make more money (which is another debate for another time), it also shouldn’t cost people money to run to serve their community. Reimbursements for expenses are totally appropriate and I hope it will help to expand the candidate pool to get a greater diversity of views in our elected offices if this passes.
lol, this is the Qanon argument. Diverting campaign contributions to personal childcare expenses makes total sense. What if you have to be at a rally or event at 2100 and your kid needs to be in bed to get to school on time…..opposition will only come from republicans.
This is a great idea. I know that the Delaware Democratic Party voted for a resolution to support this bill. It is important to remind candidates that if they plan to pay for childcare from their campaign funds, they need to include this as a line item to their campaign budgets and raise funds accordingly. If you raise money and use it for childcare *instead of* voter outreach that’s not going to be a great reason for a lackluster campaign.
What if, now hear me out, we just guaranteed childcare for every family?
lol, great answer
Sounds nice, but the real problem is that actual working people — the kind who get paid hourly and have to show up five days a week — have no way to run for office at all. That’s why our legislatures, at every level, are filled with self-employed people and business owners: Wage slaves have to quit their jobs to run, which nobody with a grain of sense who’s living paycheck to paycheck can afford to do.
This is a band-aid on a missing limb.
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