UbiquitousPoliticalCommentaries

From The News Journal …

DOVER — After a 27-year career in the state Senate and a life in public service that started in 1943 when he enlisted in the Marine Corps at the height or World War II, Sen. James T. Vaughn announced Wednesday he was retiring from the Senate. Vaughn, D-Clayton, one of the Senate’s most powerful and outspoken leaders, said he was leaving because his health would not allow him to continue serving with the energy that marked his time in Legislative Hall. Vaughn, 82, who refused interview requests, resigned his seat in a letter to Lt. Gov. John Carney Jr., the Senate’s president.

“My constituents have been my No. 1 priority and they continue to be today,” Vaughn wrote. “My mind and my heart are as committed to them as ever — but in recent months my body has not been as cooperative as my mind.”

Carney has 30 days from the effective date of Vaughn’s resignation — Friday — to call for a special election to fill the seat. The election must he held within 11 days of the end of that period, probably in early November. The news of Vaughn’s resignation was broken by Senate President Pro Tem Thurman Adams Jr., one of Vaughn’s closest political and personal friends.

“This is a sad day for me, personally, for the Senate and the state of Delaware,” said Adams, D-Bridgeville “Sen. Vaughn was one of the most knowledgeable and best informed members of the Senate, and he always spoke his mind.”

Vaughn’s stamina was sapped by a string of illnesses that began in the spring of 2006. He didn’t miss a legislative session or a meeting of the Joint Finance Committee while undergoing chemotherapy for throat cancer. But he was hospitalized and then sidelined during his 2006 re-election campaign. And he did not attend a day of this year’s six-month General Assembly session, weakened by two serious bouts of pneumonia.

I am surprised by the timing of the resignation but I cannot say that I’m sorry to hear of it or to see him go. I wish him the best of health and hope that he is able to make progress in his recovery to where he is able to get around, however Sen. Vaughn was absent for the entire first half of the 144th Session of the General Assembly. His constituents had no representation in the Senate regardless of the claim that he was working from home while recovering from his illness. His constituents would have been better served had he not run for re-election in poor health. He served not one day, having never been sworn in at Leg Hall and now the state must pick up the tab for it’s 4th Special Election of the year.

Vaughn is what you would call a Dixie-Crat, a conservative democrat, one of a dying breed in Delaware as the majority of Democrats in the legislature are anything but conservative.

I’ll try to remain optomistic in the hopes that Republicans can pick up the seat, but chances are that’s a long shot. The Democrats have already selected their candidate for the special election in Representative Bruce Ennis of the 28th district. For all intents and purposes he is an incumbent in much of the area which gives an advantage, but there is a chance that folks in that area are ready to make a change. This Democratic Administration isn’t something that people are proud of and again, I’m hopeful that we can make a change. If Ennis does win the seat there will be a 5th Special Election of the year to fill his vacated seat in the House of Representatives, a point that the R’s should focus on when hitting the steets, in their literature, campaigning and knocking on doors. How can the Republicans do that you ask, simple, Ennis is more of the same, an insider and a politcial oppotunist at best. If his heart was really in the Senate seat he could have run for it anytime, why wait until you’re almost certain to have it handed to you? Why vacate your House seat after one year thus causing another Special Election for the taxpayers to pick up the tab?