Why Cohen is Wrong on Bonini
Oct 30th, 2009 by David Anderson
The editor of Delaware Grapevine loves to dump on Senator Colin Bonini’s supposed frequent candidacy in off years. The truth is less entertaining than the soundbites.
I really like Celia Cohen. She is smart, witty, loves politics, and is a civil war enthusiast? What more do we need to enjoy Delaware Grapevine. I do feel a need to take issue with The Election That Cried Wolf” post. Here are some of the lowlights.
The election for treasurer could be a race between a candidate who did not plan to run, but is, and a candidate who always plans to run, but has not.
There is is a significant amount of backing and filling here. Even for politics. Somewhere the Little Boy Who Cried Wolf is high-fiving.
Velda Jones-Potter is the un-lame duck who was not supposed to run. She is the Democrat who was appointed treasurer by Gov. Jack Markell to replace himself for the last two years of the term he left behind.
Colin Bonini is the human teabag who is constantly putting himself in and taking himself out. He is a Republican state senator who has been eyeballing statewide office almost as soon as he got to the Delaware General Assembly in 1994.
Bonini is his own complication to a campaign for treasurer. This comes from fantasizing twice about a race for the U.S. Senate — against Biden in 1996 and Carper in 2006 — and once for lieutenant governor when it was open in 2008.
All candidacies Walter Mitty could love.
This time Bonini insists he means it. The circumstances are favorable. He is in the middle of his term and does not have to resign to run, and there is no telling when the Republicans will ever again have such strength at the top of their ticket with Congressman Mike Castle running for the U.S. Senate.
What she characterized as weaknesses were strengths. He cared more about the party than his own ambition. He may have had interest in those campaigns, but others also had interest. In the 1996 senate race, he lost the straw poll of the Republican State Committee to Mr. Ray Clatworthy. The feeling was that he was not ready yet even in his district. He took it to heart after consulting with friends, such as me, who advised him to build a reputation in the senate and get reelected. He choose not to block Mr. Clatworthy from raising money by having a highly contested race. He did not drop the bid because he felt like it.
In 2006, he was solicited for office. I know because some party officials asked me to find out if he was interested in filling a slot. He thought about it dutifully, but did not launch a campaign. He said that he was enjoying being state senator too much. That hardly was his going around starting a campaign. He just asked around for advise, but felt that 2006 would be a bad year. It was. That showed his political shrewdness not timidity. He did not declare for anything so how is that crying wolf? As in 1995-96, others sought him out.
In 2007-2008, he really wanted to run for Lt. Governor, but he was told that the party wanted Mr. Levin to pick his choice. We saw how well that worked out. He had grassroots support, but money was slow to come. He had to make a call by January. By the time it opened again he had already committed to reelection. Jumping into a statewide race to lose would not be wise even if it satisfied my friend, Ms. Cohen.
This will be his first run for statewide office and hopefully a successful one. Much is made of his opponents MBA. I would point out that the Senator is equally qualified with a Master’s in Public Administration (or something like that). He has private sector sales experience, he and his wife run a micro enterprise with the farm, and add the fact that he has 14 more years of experience in office then one starts to appreciate what he brings on a practical level.
The real qualifier is one that even Ms. Cohen recognizes, “He is a cheery backbencher who competes with Bob Venables, a Laurel Democrat, as the most conservative state senator, with Bonini known more as a free-marketplace, fiscal conservative and Venables as a social conservative. If there is one vote against the state budget, Bonini is bound to be the senator who cast it.” I would ask, who has history proven right on the budget, Bonini or the others?
