Karl Baker
| Spotlight Delaware
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Mike Ramone, the GOP-endorsed candidate for governor, is proud of his multiple, and sometimes controversial, businesses and investments.Ramone also appears proud of his ability to veer outside of conservative orthodoxy, highlighted at recent political debates where he expressed support for legal abortions and for higher salaries for public school teachers.But, whether Ramone’s brand will appeal to a modern Delaware Republican party – and ultimately launch him to become the state’s first GOP governor in 32 years – is unclear.
This story was produced by Spotlight Delaware as part of a partnership with Delaware Online/The News Journal. For more about Spotlight Delaware, visit www.spotlightdelaware.org.
Delaware House Minority Leader Mike Ramone, the party-endorsed Republican vying to be the state’s next governor, is proud of his multiple, and sometimes controversial, businesses and investments.
At candidate forums, in campaign literature, and in interviews, he frequently points to his ventures – including a swim club and property management companies – as the reason he believes he has the skills to be an effective governor.
Ramone also appears proud of his ability to veer outside of conservative orthodoxy, highlighted at recent political debates where he expressed support for legal abortions and for higher salaries for public school teachers.
“I’m not deep blue, and I’m not scarlet red,” he said of his political leanings during a candidate forum at Canaan Baptist Church in New Castle. “I’m Delaware yellow, and I’m in the middle.”
Ramone’s socially moderate, pro-business brand – which fits the mold of prominent Republicans from Delaware’s long ago past – has served him well within the state’s political class most recently dominated by Democrats.
It also has been key to his repeated victories over the years in his left-leaning Pike Creek legislative district.
Ramone even called his knack for winning elections in the northern Delaware district his greatest accomplishment as a lawmaker. Today, he is one of just two Republican state lawmakers representing an area north of the C&D Canal.
It is an area that accounts for roughly half of Delaware’s population, and has been key to Democrats’ years of dominance in state politics.
But, whether Ramone’s brand will appeal to a modern Delaware Republican party – and ultimately launch him to become the state’s first GOP governor in 32 years – is unclear.
Weighing on the minds of some in the party are high-profile instances from the recent past of Delaware Republicans strikingly rejecting their party-endorsed candidates in favor of political outsiders and novices, whose platforms and rhetoric more closely align with those of former President Donald Trump.
In the upcoming Sept. 10 primary, Ramone faces two such challengers, and each has already begun criticizing his platform, particularly on the issue of abortion.
Jerry Price, a former New York City police officer who retired to Rehoboth Beach, told Spotlight Delaware that Ramone is “soft” on social issues.
Bobby Williamson, a contractor and businessman from Bridgeville, said Ramone doesn’t have the “right flavor for the state.”
Each also claimed that a Ramone victory in the primary would lead to Republicans suffering defeat in another Delaware statewide general election.
“There’s the GOP, and then there is actually the Republican people. And, the Republican people are not being heard,” Williamson said. “And, that’s why we keep losing over and over and over.”
When reached for comment, Jim Weldin, vice chair of the Delaware Republican Party, said the GOP endorsed Ramone because he is well known by party members throughout the state, noting his 16 years of service in the Delaware House of Representatives.
“Everybody pretty much had an idea of who Mike Ramone is,” Weldin said.
Weldin further stated that Williamson failed to pitch his own upstart candidacy to fellow conservative across the state prior to the May party convention. As a result he was a political unknown at the event.
“I didn’t know anything about Williamson until I saw it (his candidacy) on Facebook. And, I said ‘Who’s this guy?’” he said.
For his part, Ramone says he is not changing his politics for the sake of expediency, stating in an interview with Spotlight Delaware that he’s “not here to convince anybody of anything.” He said he’s running for governor to give voters the option to choose a candidate with experience from the business world.
“I don’t message to win a primary or to win elections,” Ramone said.
Still, Ramone stressed that a Republican gubernatorial victory in the general election would bring what he called “balance” to the state, as it would prevent Democrats from controlling all branches of government.
It would also bring an economically conservative, pro-business platform to the state’s highest elected office. As governor, Ramone said he would work to eliminate the state’s tax on business revenues, known as the gross receipts tax, which Republicans have long decried as a “secret sales tax.”
He also called for potential budget surpluses to be directed to Delaware’s state worker post-retirement liabilities, rather than to new spending.
Last year, Delaware’s Democratic-controlled legislature directed hundreds of millions in surplus state dollars to what lawmakers called “one-time spending on deferred maintenance and capital projects that otherwise would not have been undertaken for several years.”
In all, Ramone said his policies would limit an “overzealous expansion of government.”
“I will make sure we pay our bills. I’ll make sure we become fiscally stable,” he said
Ramone’s family businesses have names such as Aquatic Management Systems, Ramone’s Landscaping, the Delaware Swim School, BNR Investment, and Ramone Real Estate Holdings.
Some, such as Ramone’s swimming-related companies and the landscaping business, are well-known in Delaware with prominent front-facing websites and Facebook pages.
Many also advertise within a string of little-known, hyper-local newsletters, published with alliterative names, such as the Brandywine Beacon and the Hockessin Herald. The newsletters, which have appeared in recent months at suburban Delaware cafes, often feature editorial content in line with Ramone’s personal platform.
State business records for the company that runs the newsletters, DispatchDE LLC, show that it was formed in January by Ramone’s daughter, Brittany Ramone Gomez.
In 2022, Ramone Gomez followed her father’s lead and ran for a seat in the Delaware House of Representatives, ultimately losing to Rep. Paul Baumbach (D-Newark).
Asked about his role in the company, Ramone said he provides guidance and mentoring. When asked if he owns equity in the company, he said he purchases advertising in the various newsletters.
Ramone said he knows little else about the company’s operations – only that there is a “cluster of people” involved and they are led by George Rotsch, a marketing executive who separately works with Delaware Live News.
“I only know that I answer what George asks me; ‘You want to write this?’ ‘You want to write that?’” Ramone said.
When reached by Spotlight Delaware, Rotsch said Ramone was key to DispatchDE’s launch because he had been the sole advertiser for the newsletters during its first few editions.
Rotsch said the origin for the venture came during the last election cycle when he had published a print newsletter for the state Republican Party. Last year, Ramone said he had appreciated the work Rotsch had done then, and encouraged him to start a news venture separate from the party.
“Mike Ramone goes, “I like that newspaper,” Rotsch recounted. “You guys, ought to do that again.”
More questions of Ramone businesses
Spotlight Delaware’s questions about the curious newsletters is the latest outside scrutiny that Ramone has faced involving his business activities – but not the first.
In 2018, his swim club suffered a bout of salacious press after a liberal blog revealed that Ramone had periodically rented his Delaware Swim and Fitness Center on New Castle Avenue to an adult organization that hosted pool parties for nudists.
The report and follow-ups stories from local news outlets prompted the group to stop hosting the parties. In response, Ramone lamented to The News Journal that it caused people to be “outed and now aren’t comfortable with their privacy or safety.”
“My general reaction has been, honestly, it’s amazing how many people have come to me and stated why this is anyone’s business,” Ramone said to the News Journal while also noting that he did not participate in the parties.
Months after the pool party revelations caused a minor public commotion, another – more weighty – business controversy emerged that would plague Ramone for several years.
In late 2018, Democratic Party operatives began to criticize Ramone for his vote the previous year for a bill that eased regulations on the blockchain technology that underpins cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin. He made the vote while he was also invested in a government-backed startup company that at the time claimed to be in the blockchain industry.
Democrats speculated then that Ramone’s investment stood to benefit from the new law, and therefore called on him to publicly answer questions about it.
Ultimately, Ramone said the controversy has been fodder for political opponents in the years since.
‘I know you think I’m BSing you’
The Delaware Board of Trade’s story began in 2015 when an investment team consisting of financial industry veterans and a longtime aide to Joe Biden convinced then-New Castle County Executive Tom Gordon to loan them $3 million to launch a startup stock exchange company in Wilmington.
When it received the government loan, the company was only an idea, with no operations and no revenues. Over the subsequent year, its team struggled to launch new trading operations.
To survive, they sought out various new investors, according to internal company emails.
By 2017, the company had attracted several investments, including from Ramone and from John Hynansky – president of Wilmington’s Winner Group and an individual who Biden had described as his “very good friend.”
While the investments provided lifelines to the struggling venture, Ramone’s and Hynansky’s ownership of the company would be short-lived.
In late 2017, a Chinese company called Seven Stars Cloud acquired a 27% stake of the Delaware Board of Trade, also known as DBOT.
At the time of the acquisition, a company official described DBOT as a “place to allow you to tokenize securities and trade on the blockchain.”
To this day, the terms of the deal are not entirely clear.
A securities filing at the time stated simply that Seven Stars Cloud purchased equity in DBOT using about 1.6 million shares of its stock, rather than cash.
But internal company emails show a complicated transaction in which Ramone, Hynansky and two others exercised stock options in the Delaware Board of Trade, then immediately sold them to Seven Stars Cloud in exchange for shares of that company.
Ramone would get 500,000 shares of Seven Stars Cloud, valued at $2.42, in exchange for 500,000 of DBOT shares valued at $1.55. It is not clear whether his original investment in the company was impacted by the stock option deal.
Six months later, Ramone cast his vote in the legislature on what would become a controversial blockchain bill.
And six months after that, the CEO of Seven Stars Cloud, a prominent billionaire in China named Bruno Wu, filed with the U.S. federal regulators as a foreign agent for the Chinese government.
The filing described Wu’s work facilitating “dialogues, negotiations and visits amongst public & government officials, think tanks, scholars and businessmen,” as the reason for his classification as a foreign agent.
By 2019, Seven Stars Cloud – which then had been renamed Ideanomics Inc. – bought a bigger stake in DBOT – this time acquiring all but a 2% sliver of the Delaware company.
In a press release at the time, the companies’ valued that latest purchase of DBOT shares at $18 million.
It is not clear if Ramone owned any shares of DBOT just prior to the 2019 deal. After the announcement, Ramone told The News Journal he believed he ultimately lost money on his investment of between $1 million and $2 million in the DBOT startup.
But, he wasn’t certain the amount of the alleged loss.
“I know you think I’m BSing you but I really don’t know how many shares I have,” he said. .
When asked this month how much money he made on his DBOT investment, Ramone turned defensive.
First he called it all a mess. Then, he said he “probably lost a bunch of money.”
“I’m happy to talk to you about being a governor, not about something that’s been brought up in my last three elections to try to get me out,” he said.
Lesson from the Castle campaign
Despite the handful of controversies, Ramone remains happy to gush about his businesses.
And, with their endorsement, Republican leaders appear to be betting that his business acumen will be a key to statewide victory for their embattled party in Delaware.
Still, the party’s recent history suggests that a Ramone victory in the primary is not an inevitability.
Before Ramone was a long line of party-endorsed Delaware Republicans who sought statewide offices, but lost to upstart challengers in their primaries.
There was James DeMartino who lost to the firebrand candidate Lauren Witzke’s in the 2020 Republican primary for Delaware’s U.S. Senate seat.
There was Lee Murphy who lost to the eccentric Scott Walker in the 2018 primary for Delaware’s U.S. House seat.
And, perhaps most famously, there was former Delaware Gov. Mike Castle, who lost to Christine O’Donnell in the 2010 race to become the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate.
Castle, an elder statesman of the party then, was seen as a near shoe-in to become Delaware’s next senator if he had advanced past the primary election. Instead, then-New Castle County Executive Chris Coons defeated O’Donnell in the general election.
Coons has served in the U.S. Senate ever since.
Ramone’s friend and colleague Rep. Mike Smith (R-Newark) worked for Castle during that disastrous campaign more than a decade ago. When reflecting on the experience, Smith said the challenge then, and today, is convincing voters to look past a narrow primary battle and choose a candidate who can win a general election.
He said Republicans failed to do that in 2010, pushing a 20-point favorite out of the race in favor of a 20-point underdog.
“And, they got absolutely blown out in the general election,” said Smith, who serves as the only other northern Delaware Republican in the General Assembly.
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Publish date : 2024-08-30 22:55:00
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