LETTER TO THE EDITOR: A disheartening view of the Delaware political process

As a 16-year-old constituent and student at Polytech High School, I was given the honor of joining Sen. Lawson to witness a Senate session on Jan. 26 and 27, mainly debating the minimum-wage bill, Senate Bill 39. I must say that I am appalled as a citizen of Delaware. After witnessing major agricultural businessmen, senior citizens, and even the Chamber of Commerce testify, I couldn’t fathom how they could be so completely dismissed by the majority party. The people spoke, and the majority party failed to heed the testimony. Time after time, the concerns voiced from business owners over the rise in minimum wage, that would lead to an estimated loss of over 400 employees, just from two testimonies, were met without a single ounce of consideration or reassurance coming from the Democratic Party, assuming they were even listening. I don’t even want to mention the grotesque insults that were heaved at the restaurant industry. Along with this, it was implied that business owners’ statements of lost jobs were incorrect, even though the majority of Democratic electorates have not run a private business, and the most insulting moment came when Sen. Lawson was making a statement on how this affects the youth of Delaware, and a man’s phone went off, leading the majority of the Democratic Party to converse and laugh among themselves, in the middle of Sen. Lawson’s statement, but they probably were disregarding it in the first place. That is just one of the many disrespectful moments from the Democratic senators. As constituents, citizens, and Delawareans, we must remind our, not only whom they represent, but why they were elected in the first place, for not just the current, but also future, generations of Delawareans, for in this case, they must have forgotten. But, hey, what would I know? I’m just a 16-year-old kid from what Sen. Peterson refers to as “That other side of the room” (her description of the Republican legislators).

With disdain, Stephen Baione Felton