2017 Delaware's 10th state senate district special election
Democrats both inside and outside the state saw the contest as a chance to respond electorally to the presidency of Donald Trump, which had led to widespread protests since his inauguration the month before, and while Hansen and Marino primarily campaigned on local issues, she touched on national concerns in her advertising and speeches.Senator Joseph Biden, whose term as Vice President had ended at the same time Trump was sworn in, not only appeared at Hansen's fundraisers and in her campaign ads but went door-to-door with her as well.The state's electoral votes for president have gone to Democrats ever since Bill Clinton was elected in 1992[7] and no Republican has served as governor since Dale E. Wolf's brief tenure at the beginning of the following year.While it is a mostly ceremonial post, with the president pro tempore exercising the practical powers and authority of the job, one of those responsibilities that falls to the lieutenant governor is setting the date for special elections to vacated seats."[17] Later she told The New York Times that many of her encounters with Democratic voters began with "venting sessions" where they expressed their anger about the actions of Trump and the Republicans in Washington.Supporters of both Hansen and Marino dominated the audience at the event, sponsored by news radio station WDEL-FM, whose Alan Loudell served as moderator, at Middletown High School, cheering and booing responses.The two major party candidates differentiated themselves on abortion, with Marino opposing it as "ripping a child out of a mother's womb" while Hansen and Lanzendorfer both said it was a decision that should be left to a woman and her physician.In return she said that his active opposition to a successful December 2016 referendum on a capital improvement project for the Appoquinimink School District made him seem hypocritical when he claimed to support public education."If we want to be able to keep the federal Republican agenda from settling in our living room, we have to be able to have our own fortification here at home", Hansen reiterated as to why voters should retain the Democratic majority in the Senate.[28] Two days before the election, Marino was endorsed by the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) Delaware Political Action Committee, based on his answers to their candidate survey.Martin O'Malley, who had sought the Democratic presidential nomination the preceding year, came over the state line from Maryland, where he had served as governor for two terms, to campaign for Hansen.He said the great interest Democrats nationally were showing in the race was a sign that they were "waking up to the reality that we've got to rebuild our party" at the state level, having grown complacent about those elections during the years when Barack Obama was president.Between January 27 and February 17, when the forms had to be filed, Hansen's campaign reported raising over $300,000 from Democrats not just in Delaware but around the country,[34] from all 50 states,[35] around 14,000 of those donations amounting to less than $100 each,[4] of which she had spent just under half.A political action committee (PAC), First State Strong, that also entered the race on her behalf, had spent almost $400,000; it is, however, not required to disclose its donors until January 2018."[35] The cash flowing to her campaign also meant that Hansen, unlike most candidates, did not have to devote any of her time to making fundraising calls herself to potential large donors.The PAC, he claimed, had sent out mailers that attacked Marino, while a plumbers' union local that belonged to the building-trades council had distributed door hangers supporting Hansen and urging a vote for her during a weekend canvassing event."[37] Raser-Schramm called the claims "absurd", noting that it was hypocritical of Copeland to make the allegations when he himself had raised money for many PACs promoting conservative causes while continuing to serve as state party chairman.As to the door hangers, Building and Construction Trades Council president Jim Maravelias called Copeland's complaint "alternative facts", noting that election law permits unions to engage in express advocacy when communicating with their own members.The door hangers, on other hand, did engage in express advocacy, but a visit by Hansen to a meeting of a different branch of the building-trades council did not suffice to establish there had been coordination between the union group and her campaign.[37] On Hansen's side, Maravelias, also Delaware's AFL–CIO president, made a similar allegation against FirstStateFirst,[34] arguing that since sitting Republican state senator Gregory Lavelle served as treasurer for both the PAC and Marino's campaign, using his home address to solicit donations for both.Hansen called a claim by Marino's campaign that she sought to increase the state's gas tax, based on something she had said in April 2015, "disingenuous", adding that it was not the time to do so in any event.A rumor that sitting Vice President Mike Pence would appear on Marino's behalf led Hansen's campaign to ask Joseph Biden, his Democratic predecessor, a six-term Delaware U.S.State senator Gregory Lavelle, who served as Marino's campaign manager, said this was "outrageous" and filed a complaint of his own when he heard of it by noon that day."On Saturday ... the voices in the streets turned into votes in the ballot box," the Huffington Post wrote, alluding to the protests against the Trump administration that had dominated the national news during the campaign.[36] However, Republican sources "on the ground", not named or directly quoted, who talked to Roll Call after the election offered more praise for Democratic efforts.[13] For Roll Call and the national media generally, the question was what this meant for Democrats going forward, particularly in the 2018 midterms, when the party might be able to retake control of Congress.The party expected a competitive race given the higher stakes than usual in most special elections for state legislative seats, and thus "flooded the zone" to win.Gonzales speculated that this may have been because Delaware has only one at-large U.S. House seat and thus national Republicans saw no possible advantage to be gained by control of the state's senate in redistricting following the 2020 census.However, Democrats would have to make that strategy work in tougher terrain than a Democratic-leaning state senate district in Delaware if they wanted to regain the 24 seats needed for a House majority in 2018.Much depends on whether the Democrats can maintain a consistent level of engagement among its base over the next 20 months, as the Tea Party did for Republicans during the early years of the Obama administration.