Collin O'Mara

Photo Courtesy of the O'Mara for Delaware Campaign

Candidate Name: Collin O’Mara

Office you are seeking: Governor

Party: Democratic

Age: 45

Hometown: Bear (Near Lums Pond)

Political experience: Cabinet Secretary of Natural Resources and Environmental Control (DNREC, 2009-2014)

Professional experience: CEO of the National Wildlife Federation (2014-present)

What uniquely qualifies you for this office?

As Secretary of DNREC, I had the honor leading one of the largest state agencies, where I learned how to bring people together to get big things done and how to work with the General Assembly to pass large pieces of legislation. As CEO of the National Wildlife Federation, I’ve had the opportunity to work with President Biden, Vice President Harris, and the Congress to pass historic federal infrastructure and climate legislation and to defend our environmental protections against attempted rollbacks by former President Trump. This combination of managing large, complex organizations, combined with working in every community Delaware and all across the country, has provided me with the unique skillset of bringing new bold ideas while having an inside understanding of what it takes to make transformative change in Dover.

What are the top three issues for this office in your view? 

1. Transform public schools with equitable funding, universal pre-K, free school meals, increased compensation, and improved teacher working conditions to prepare Delaware's children for success.
2. Make Delaware more affordable by increasing the production of affordable housing, reducing healthcare costs and expanding access, supporting aging in place, limiting the impact of property tax increases, and improving the quality and affordability of childcare.
3. Ensuring that every Delaware has access to clean water and healthy air by protecting open space, restoring our natural resources, reducing pollution, leading on environmental justice, bolstering our resiliency, and leading on climate change and clean energy.

What would be your top priority if elected?

Reducing child poverty and fixing our public education system must be priority #1, because we cannot be a strong state or have a strong economy without healthy children,  strong public schools, and a well-prepared workforce.

If you could change or protect one state policy or law, what would it be?

As Frederick Douglass once said, it is easier to build strong children than repair broken men. If we can ensure that every Delaware child can read by age 6, it would be the most transformative change that we could make.  This requires revolutionizing 0-5 early childhood development and continue that progress throughout our public schools. This starts with improved maternal health services, higher quality and more affordable childcare, and lifting children out of poverty through a refundable Child Tax Credit and an improved Earned Income Tax Credit. We must also enact universal pre-K to ensure every child is receives high quality instruction and socioemotional support, so they’re prepared for kindergarten. One of the primary reasons why more than half of 4th graders cannot read at grade-level is that only 7% of our students attend pre-K. We must ensure that every 3 and 4-year old has the opportunity to attend pre-K by the beginning of the 2027-2028 school year (ramping up over three years). We must also faithfully implement the child literacy legislation developed by Senator Laura Sturgeon to ensure evidence based reading instruction based upon the best available science, including using phonics instruction that ensures that all students can recognize the graphemes (letters) and phonemes (sounds) – and ensure that all future educators are trained in these techniques. Studies are also clear that providing free breakfast and lunch for all students increasing their focus and retention in the classroom and reduces behavioral challenges, all of which improve academic achievement and learning conditions. Similarly, providing wrap-around services for physical and mental health are essential. We must also support our educators, because improving educator working conditions, improves student learning conditions. This includes ensuring competitive pay for all educators, restoring teacher autonomy, improving classroom ratios to reflect student needs, and ensuring sufficient time for lesson planning. By doing all of these things, we can ensure that every student has the opportunity to read grade-level, which will improve their performance in all other elements of schools and beyond.

What can Delaware do about its workforce issues?  

One of the top economic development priorities for the next Governor must be completely transforming Delaware’s approach to workforce development. Right now we have 20,000 people looking for work and 30,000 jobs available, yet unemployment is higher than the national average because many of the job seekers have not developed the skills necessary for the positions needed by employers. We must reorganize Delaware’s workforce development ecosystem to ensure efficient coordination across the Workforce Development Board, apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs, technical certifications and degrees, university offerings, and employer-led programs – to ensure all workers have access to the jobs of the future. I will also elevate the Workforce Development Board into the Governor’s office, as opposed to it being buried today in the Department of Labor.  

How would you protect or change state employee benefits?

Strong healthcare and retirement benefits helps attract and retain a high quality state workforce and I am committed to maintaining such benefits. I do believe that costs saving are possible through a collaborative focus on wellness and improved health outcomes and I would work with all of the bargaining units and the state retirees and outside experts to find cost savings that do not reduce the quality of benefit. I believe we also have a moral responsibility to provide the full benefits that retirees earned during their careers in public service. We must comply with state law and ensure that required funding of retiree healthcare benefits and the post-retirement fund are included in the governor’s recommended budget. Medicare retiree premiums should reflect the actual costs of retiree healthcare, so individuals are not overcharged. My administration will be much more collaborative and transparent and will oppose attempts to force changes like the ill-conceived proposed switch to Medicare Advantage, which would have been a disaster.

What would you do to improve the quality of education in the First State?

My top priority will be addressing the massive funding inequities in our schools by ensuring an additional $600 million to $1 billion annually reaches the classroom to ensure students experiencing poverty, multilingual learners, and students with special needs have every opportunity to succeed. We will overlay an equitable funding foundation based upon need atop the existing headcount-based funding formula. My administration will also enact universal pre-K, free school breakfast and lunch, adopt student-educator ratios based upon need, restore teacher autonomy, continue increasing pay for educators, and invest in wrap-around services. We will both improve the learning conditions for students and the working conditions for educators. Please check out my full education priorities at collinomara.com/education-1.

What issues do you strongly support and would not compromise?

I believe that government has a fundamental responsibility to protect civil liberties. Several fundamental rights in Delaware are only protected through the State Code and should be enshrined in the State Constitution to ensure they cannot be infringed upon, including access to reproductive healthcare, anti-discrimination protections on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, voting rights, civil rights in criminal justice, and a right to clean air and water.

How do you improve civility and thoughtful dialog in Delaware politics?

The never-ending negative attack ads of this election are absolutely toxic to our state and unlike anything we’ve seen in decades.  I’m proud that we’ve run an entirely positive race and that has focused on the real issues and how we build people up, not tear others down. I would govern in the same way: set bold priorities and then bring together the best thinking from across the state and around the country from individuals of all backgrounds and experiences, including different political ideologies, so we can find the absolute best solutions for Delaware. God gave us two ears and one mouth more a reason. We need to create a collaborative environment where we truly listen to those with different opinions and draw upon the wisdom of the collective to enact real change.

How do you perceive the “Delaware way” today?

Delaware’s well-below average outcomes in education, health, affordable housing, child poverty, and criminal justice are reflective that the Delaware Way is not working. The role of money and special interests in Dover too often prevents the General Assembly from taking the bold actions necessary, which is why I’ve proposed the most aggressive package of government reforms in Delaware history (see: collinomara.com/reform). We’re also not listening enough to diverse opinions to find the best solutions, especially as Democratic majorities have grown and Republican votes are not needed for passing most bills. The state has suffered from this lack of collaboration, as reflected in the poor outcomes.