A long-time Republican activist says Delaware could emerge as a hotly contested state when the Presidential primary is held on April 24th.
Priscilla Rakestraw, a Republican National committeewoman said even frontrunner Mitt Romney could even make a stop. Newt Gingrich has already made appearances here and Rick Santorum is also expected to drop in as he seeks a win in neighboring Pennsylvania. Ron Paul is yet another possibility.
Rakestraw made the prediction at an election roundtable Wednesday night in north Wilmington sponsored by the Delaware Press Association.
Even though the First State has a fraction of the delegates of neighboring Pennsylvania, the arcane rules surrounding state primaries and caucuses make winning a bloc of delegates an attractive proposition, Rakestraw and other panelists said.
Other states, by contrast, award delegates based on formulas that include the proportion of votes received.
Terry Madonna, director of the center for politics and public affair at Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, Pa. and head of Franklin and Marshall Poll (formerly Keystone Poll) agreed with Rakestraw that it would be hard to come up with a worse process than the one currently in place.
Coverage of the marathon, according to Madonna, focuses on gaffes made by the candidates, and not their fitness to govern.
Madonna also cautioned that Delaware will not see the same amount of attention in the general election, since it is no one of the dozen or more “battleground” states that will determine the outcome. Neighboring Pennsylvania is likely to be one of the battleground states that will receive attention from Vice President Joe Biden and Obama.
Much of the roundtable focused on social media and all agreed that the presence of bloggers and campaigns using Facebook, Twitter, Email and other tools hover over this election like no other.
Brian Selander, an advisor to Gov. Jack Markell, said Delaware has a unique social media environment, thanks to its #netde community. The term #netde refers to a hash tag added after Twitter posts that makes the post widely available to those using the social media tool.
The danger, according to Selander, who has championed the use of social media by the Markell administration, is that partisanship has moved to the point that there are fewer chances for dialogue.
Instead, the tendency is to seek websites that offer “confirmation” of that individual’s point of view, rather than opposing beliefs.
Rakestraw says she reads blogs and listens to radio talk shows with opposing points of view, even if some of the views expressed make her angry.
How social media will play a role in the election that now appears to be a race between Romney and President Barack Obama remains to be seen.
But panelists said campaigns have learned a lot since 2008. Rakestraw noted that Obama was able to use social media to outspend opponent John McCain by soliciting $5 contributions via online and email.
Madonna also noted that Obama was able to grab a far larger vote from younger people than other candidates, with social media player a role. Despite that success, voting by younger people, in particular, remains at a low level, he said.
Conducting the roundtable was WDEL radio afternoon news anchor Allan Loudell. Madonna has been a frequent guest on Loudell’s radio shows. – Doug Rainey
