In some ways, the landscape in Washington D.C. will be familiar for some in Delaware’s delegation when they return to a new session, this time with a Republican governing trifecta.
Many of the issues that the United States has faced in the past decade will once again bubble to the surface. Government spending bills will have to be negotiated and the debt ceiling will have to be extended after January. Tax credits designed to head off health insurance premium hikes and tax breaks passed in 2017 are both set to expire.
But in other ways, Delaware’s Delegation, which includes U.S. Sen. Chris Coons, U.S. Sen.-elect Lisa Blunt Rochester and Rep.-elect Sarah McBride will face a different set of challenges. Though Republicans secured slimmer victories in 2024 than in 2016, the party may be more unified than ever behind President Donald Trump, propelling the president-elect’s vision forward.
None of this causes the Delaware Delegation to stumble. Blunt Rochester, the first Black woman to serve Delaware in the U.S. Senate, is looking at the future with clear eyes. Coons, now the most senior member of the three, looks at his role differently. McBride, who has already faced pushback from her Republican colleagues, holds a lot of optimism. When DBT spoke to the three in separate interviews, each emphasized that a legacy of bipartisanship lives on.
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U.S. Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, right, talks with members of Delaware's delegation in the House of Representatives, months after the 2024 election created slim Republican majorities in both the House and the U.S. Senate. PHOTO COURTESY OF PHI NGUYEN/OFFICIAL PHOTOGRAPHER U.S. HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES[/caption]
That Delaware Way
This is the first time since 2001, U.S. Sen. Tom Carper will not be headed to Washington D.C. to serve Delaware. Coons rose in the wake of Carper and President Joe Biden forging Democratic politics in the state. Blunt Rochester was Carper’s intern when he was a Congressman and later his Labor Secretary when he was governor.
Now as the senior senator in the Delaware delegation, Coons sees things a little differently.
“Bipartisanship is harder, but it’s possible. And look, you just have to be willing to keep trying,” Coons said.
He met the DBT at his offices in the I.M. Pei Building, one week after the 2024 election, on which he campaigned vigorously in swing states for the U.S. President Joe Biden as one of his campaign chairs and later for the U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris.
As he sat in a conference room overlooking the courtyard of the building, moments after he taped a video message to voters on the 2024 election, he was bracing for a series of caucus meetings to understand why working Americans, across almost every demographic, moved away from the Democratic Party’s message.
“I remember looking at the polls and two-third and three-quarters of the country said we were on the wrong track, and they trusted Trump more than Harris with the economy, Coons said. “And I could spend a lot of time talking about the strong record of the Biden-Harris administration in terms of manufacturing and infrastructure investment. What was it about our message that did not resonate?”
Since he was elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010, after rising through the ranks in New Castle County, he became one of the most visible faces representing the First State. That’s not only because of his friendship with Biden, but through his work in foreign policy in matters such as assistance in Ukraine, competition with China and more. He’s met foreign dignitaries and spoken many times at events on a worldwide stage.
“I’ve had some surprising successes in the past couple of years- drafting bills, and getting
them moving in ways that actually produce positive results- with folks that you’d think I have nothing in common with. But boy, it’s not easy,” Coons said with a small chuckle.
He’s one of Blunt Rochester’s biggest supporters, encouraging her to run in 2016 and sometimes texting in session to keep each other up-to-date on what each chamber is doing when she was in the House of Representatives. Coons anticipates lending a helping hand in the smaller Senate, which he describes as intimate and relying more on interpersonal relationships. But even so, he’s seen a stark difference from when he was first elected 14 years ago.
“There’s less to learn in a sense, because there’s less that we do. Fourteen years ago, it was much more functional and we were legislating a lot more, and now we’re moving fewer bills and moving fewer amendments,” Coons said. “But over the last decade, we’ve been seeing more what I call ‘gotcha amendments’ that are cleverly crafted to make a perfect attack advertisement, but they don’t represent the underlying issue.”
Coons is still able to move a couple bills to Biden’s desk, but even that can be an uphill battle - and the conditions can easily turn on a dime with the next election. For example, Coons was able to forge friendships with U.S. Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) and Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) that saw many bills co-sponsored and passed into law. Portman and Blunt were eventually replaced by Vice President-Elect J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) and U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).
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U.S. Sen. Chris Coons was sent to Capitol Hill in 2010, and has since seen a major shift in how politics have been done. | DBT PHOTO BY KATIE TABELING[/caption]
“I don’t think I ever got anything successfully passed with those two, and I met with them and talked and made offers,” Coons said. “[Blunt Rochester’s] going to find this is a Senate where if you want to get anything done, you have to work across the aisle. And it’s just not easy. But it doesn’t mean you stop trying.”
His strategy in handling tenuous negotiations can be summaries with three things: patience, humility and international travel.
Earlier this year, Coons was one of the handful of legislators that represented the nation in high-level discussions with the Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, Republic of Korea President Suk-yeol Yoon and other business and political figures in Asia. The trip to Japan and Korea was led by Sen. Bill Haggerty (R-Tennessee), Sen. Katie Britt (R-Ala.) Sen. Eric Schmidt (R-Mo.) and others.
“It’s true that we’ve got more in common than divides us, especially when you’re looking at the perspective of the United States - and in that case, we were talking most about China,” he said. “That and having spouses with us helps break down the preconceptions. [Britt’s] husband played for the Patriots really hit it off with us, and he and my wife text during Notre Dame games.”
Ambassadors for Delaware
Persistence in the face of adversary is something McBride is very familiar with. In her time in Delaware politics, she brought state lawmakers from both parties together to pass Delaware’s first paid family and medical leave, lead remediation programs and gun control measures.
But now on a national stage, she’s now tasked with using those skills in a crowded chamber where she’s already been pushed in the spotlight. McBride is the first transgender represented to Congress ever, and already, she’s been spotted on programs like “Face the Nation” and other interviews on NBC, CNN and more since her landmark victory at the polls.
“It’s one of those occupational hazards of being in politics, where your image and words are everywhere. It’s a different level, but part of the job is blocking out the noise and focusing on the work in front of you,” she said.
McBride met with DBT days before Thanksgiving at the Trolley Square Brew-Ha-Ha!, where she often gets a cup of coffee or holds a low-key meeting. Many customers interrupted the interview to congratulate McBride, offer compliments on her latest national interview or even just to say hello.
But her high-profile is also drawing some targeted attacks even before she’s sworn into
office. In November, Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) introduced legislation that bars transgender women from using the women’s restroom, and Speaker Mike Johnson announced he would enforce it.
For the most part, McBride doesn’t believe that the “small number of members” of the Republican caucus reflects the chamber on whole - or even those Republicans willing to work on policies, even if they don’t see eye-to-eye.
“Unfortunately, the professional provocateurs have captured much of the Republican caucus and certainly undermine their ability to be a serious governing party,” she said. “But I do believe that there are Republicans …who recognize that I am a duly elected member, and who will seek to do what I have loved getting to do over the last few weeks, which is to see in my colleagues what voters valued in them, and work from there.”
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Delaware's 2024 election was historic in many ways, as voters chose to send U.S. Rep.- elect Sarah McBride, the first transgender woman in Congress, and U.S. Sen.-elect Lisa Blunt Rochester, the third Black woman in the Senate, to represent the state. | PHOTO COURTESY OF THE MCBRIDE CAMPAIGN[/caption]
That line of thinking directly mirrors McBride’s message of respect she unveiled at the end of the 2024 race. Fifteen-second videos that discussed how people deserved a government that respects them flooded the Northern Delaware and Salisbury, Md. markets, emphasizing McBride’s track record in raising the minimum wage and paid medical leave.
She plans to focus the first six months on setting up her office both in Washington and here in Delaware to maintain the top-notch constituent services that Blunt Rochester had long established, as well handling her future committee assignments.
But McBride plans to also slowly, but steadily, work to make inroads on the issues she cares about such as affordable housing, health care and child care. She’s also paying close attention to the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would strengthen worker’s rights to join a union and possible Medicare expansions to cover vision, dental and hearing as well as child care.
“The other thing is that we’re ambassadors for Delaware,” she said. “Earlier I was meeting with financial tech entrepreneurs, some of whom have a presence in this state. It’s part of the job to work together with the state government to foster economic development, from bringing investment from the federal government and businesses around the country to make the case that Delaware is where they should be.”
Campaigning on bright hope
Blunt Rochester will join the higher chamber familiar with adversity. After all, she was first sent to Washington D.C. when Trump was first elected - and just two years after her husband Charles Rochester suddenly died after he tore his Achilles tendon during a basketball game, causing blood clots to travel to his heart and lungs.
“It took me a few years to realize it was a hard transition. Not just because we were in the minority, but because I was still in pain,” Blunt Rochester told DBT. “One of the reasons I first ran after Charles passed is because I had the feeling, ‘I don’t care, I have to do this.’ In the past, I had so many reasons not to, but after that moment, I realized you just have to bloom where you are.”
It wasn’t the last time Blunt Rochester has had to keep going after personal tragedy. Her father, celebrated Wilmington City Councilman Ted Blunt died earlier this year after a fight with Leukemia. She describes his presence as her superpower, a new well of strength as she forges on in uncertain waters.
But she thinks back to standing on the steps of the Capitol as a graduate student, as Carper’s intern.
“I do think that every moment…led me to where I am,” she said. “Take the issue of clean drinking water. Twenty years ago, I met with people in unincorporated areas of our state with no access to that. It’s all connected, and to me, connecting those dots on issues really makes a difference.”
In a state so small it can be crossed in two hours at the most, it’s easy to forge connections that help get things achieved.
Those connections help form Blunt Rochester’s policies, like visibly seeing how Bethany Beach neighborhoods were being impacted by climate change and how a mistake in maps prevented homeowners from using federal flood insurance programs. That pushed her to draft the Strengthening Coastal Community Acts, which was signed in 2018. Years later, she still thinks about how floods can hit Delaware first, as evidenced as the floods in Southbridge Wilmington during Hurricane Ida.
But when she thinks about what lies ahead with Republican control of both chambers, she still sees a chance to work together to find solutions for all, be it expanding child care tax credits as well as other provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act. She anticipates challenges, but knows there are principles the party will continue to fight for, she said.
When asked about her status as a barrier-breaker, she reflected again on her father. He had business cards, and would write “what you see is what you become” on the back of them.
“When we do these things, we don’t do them for the sake of making history, we do them to make a difference,” she said. “But it’s important for people to see a Black woman, who’s a widow, serve. But it is more important that when I go to Washington, we all go. I want to represent all of Delaware.”
“I do think that every moment, starting when I was a graduate student standing on the steps of the Capitol, led me to where I am,” Blunt Rochester said.
But with the new Delaware delegation, connections have taken on a new meaning as that’s taken on a new meaning as Coons now steps into the most senior-ranking role in the trio, aiding Blunt Rochester and McBride navigate their new roles. Blunt Rochester jokes tha Coons is the first politician she organized a meet and greet for, something she never did for her own father. McBride recalled that after her husband died of cancer, Coons called personally and offered a profound message that she still remembers to this day.
“There’s people you serve with and you figure out how to work with, and there’s people you actually enjoy their company with,” Coons joked. “I think she’s going to be a great partner and contribute significantly.”
“It’s important to remember what our priorities are and how we can build things in a bipartisan way that we have always worked on. At the same time, there are principles we will continue to fight for,” Blunt Rochester added. “When I was a freshman [congresswoman,] there were probably 70 attempts to repeal, replace and modify the ACA and it couldn’t be done. And that’s not just because we fought for it, but the American people fought for it.”
