Didn't Lose. I Led.

Didn’t Lose. I Led.

Because silence got us here.

​What Really Happened in the Brandywine School Board Race—And Why It Matters More Than Ever

 

No one had filed.

Ten thousand students. Zero candidates. Not one name on the ballot.

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No alarm. No questions. Just silence.

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And silence like that isn’t benign. It’s the sound systems make right before they fail.

When no one steps up, no one pays attention.
And when no one’s watching, things break.

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That’s when I knew: I couldn’t stay out. Not this time.

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I had already served—eight years as President of New Castle County Council.

I helped oversee more than $3.4 billion in public funds. Sponsored 705 pieces of legislation. Cast over 3,000 votes.

Took on fights that mattered.

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Like the 15% property tax hike in 2018. I voted no. Not because it was hard—but because it was wrong.
Residents were told the county was out of money. That we had no choice. That essential services would be cut.

That we couldn’t touch the reserves.

But that wasn’t true.

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Behind the scenes, the reserves were used anyway. And the tax hike moved forward.
They didn’t pick one. They picked both.

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The numbers tell the story:
In 2016, the County had just under $96 million in reserves. By 2018, we still had tens of millions across four separate reserve accounts.

And by 2024? The Tax Stabilization Reserve alone had grown to $63 million.
Triple the level it was at the time of the tax hike.
So if the question is “Did we need the increase?”—the answer’s already in the books.

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I believed that chapter was closed. I was ready to build something new. Start a business. Tell a different story.

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Then I saw the article.
Several school board races in Delaware had no candidates. One of them was Brandywine District B.

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No press release. No public outcry. Just silence.

But Delaware was ranked 45th in the nation for education. Thousands of students were falling behind. And still—no one stepped forward.

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So I did.

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Quietly. No fanfare. No team.
Not for a title. Not for a headline.
I ran for the kids.​

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I Filed to Serve—Then Discovered Something Worse​

I wasn’t running to uncover a scandal. I expected challenges. Bureaucracy. Budget strain. Policy drift.

What I found was something else.

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Before I knocked a single door, before I made a single call, I did what I’ve always done. I started with the facts.

I pulled budgets. Watched board meetings. Read minutes. Reviewed audits, licenses, assessment data, demographic reports, lawsuits, and enrollment trends.

Not with a press team. Not with consultants. Just me, doing what I always do: look beneath the surface.

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And what came into view was staggering.

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• Brandywine spends $24,901 per student—among the highest in the state.

• But just 24% of high schoolers are proficient in math. Only 40% in reading.

• More than 3,000 students have left the district in the past decade.

• A school therapist with fake credentials stayed on staff despite warnings—until he was arrested and charged with child rape.

• Unlicensed teachers were placed in classrooms, violating state law.

• A high school principal was appointed without a posting, without a process, without input—by his stepmother, the superintendent.

• Critical infrastructure—HVAC, security systems, roofs—was neglected for years, risking student safety and exposing the district to ballooning liability.

 

This wasn’t oversight.
It was concealment.

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And suddenly, the question I’d heard so often—"Why don’t more companies invest in this part of the county?"—had an answer.

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They’d looked at Brandywine.
They’d seen what I was seeing.
And they walked away.

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There was no one ringing the alarm.
So I did.

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Then the Backlash Began

 

At first, it was quiet.

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Then, four people filed for the race.

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Then three dropped out.

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No explanation. No debate. Just vanished.

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I didn’t need a consultant to tell me what that meant. With five names on the ballot, the votes would split. I had a path to win. And someone else had done the math.

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We put up ten large campaign signs across the district—thirty days out.
Three were gone within days.

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That wasn’t politics. That was a message.

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Then the calls started—from people I’ve known for years.
At the doors, something was happening.
It wasn’t about issues.
It wasn’t about qualifications.
It was personal.

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"She’s a bad person." Not “here’s why.”
Not “here’s what she believes.”
Just that.
Repeated. Deliberate. Designed to stick.

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I hadn’t released a plan.
There were no town halls, no phone banks, no press releases.

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But someone decided I was a threat anyway.

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They twisted my views. Lied about my record.
Said I didn’t support teachers—when in truth, I completed all the coursework to become one. Life took me in another direction, but the respect never left.

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And when the smears didn’t work fast enough, something darker showed up

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A week before the County Executive primary, my car was stolen.
Two weeks before the school board election, two men tried to steal it again.
This time, neighbors caught them on camera and called police.

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And in the middle of it—two elected officials, a Delaware State Representative and a New Castle County Councilman—used the moment to attack me publicly. Not my plan. Not my record.
Me.

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They attacked a twice-hit crime victim.
Made-up lies.
Spread hate.

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That wasn’t campaigning.
That was cruelty.

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And the message was clear:
Sit down. Stay quiet. Disappear.

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But I’ve never responded to fear with silence.

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I kept going. I told the truth.
Because when the facts are this urgent, and the stakes are this high—you don’t walk away.

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You lead.

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I Didn’t Drop Out. I Doubled Down.

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At the candidate forum, I listened. Carefully.
No one mentioned the 3,000 students who had left.
No one brought up the fake therapist.
Nothing about the spending.
Nothing about unlicensed teachers.
Nothing about nepotism.

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It was like none of it had happened.

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That’s when I made the decision.

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I wouldn’t campaign the way people expected.
No glossy mailers. No robocalls. No yard sign blitz. No big campaign team.
No distractions.

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I’d give voters something else.
Something no one else was offering: the truth.

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So I did what I always do. I got to work.

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I sat down at my desk. Alone.
Just me, a deadline, and a mountain of notes.

Budgets. Board minutes. Audit trails. State laws. Staffing patterns. Capital project delays. Safety reports.
Facts—none of it spun, none of it softened.

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I spent three days pulling it all together.

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Some asked, "Why only three days?" Because I wanted to show what could be done when truth is the goal—not bureaucracy, not politics, not protecting anyone’s image.

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Governments pay consultants $50,000 to $100,000 for reports like this—and they often take six months to a year. Mine took 72 hours. Because the facts were already there. Someone just had to be willing to put them together.

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When I was done, it was 78 pages long.
Twenty-eight chapters.
A full diagnostic. A full proposal.
A roadmap.

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I called it Building Brandywine’s Future: A Roadmap to Success.

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And I released it on May 12th, 2025—the day before the election.

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Not to win.
To be heard.
To make sure no one could say, “We didn’t know.”

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It wasn’t a campaign document.
It was a warning flare.

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Because when the truth is buried, and the stakes are this high, the most dangerous thing you can do is say nothing.

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So I said everything.

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The Press Tried to Define It. But I Already Did.

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The morning after the election, WDEL ran their headline: “Former New Castle County Council President soundly defeated in school board race.”

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No mention that District B had one of the highest turnouts in the county.
No mention that a 78-page Blueprint—researched and written in three days—had been released the day before the election.
No mention that the race began with no candidates and became a reckoning for the silence that had reigned for too long.

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Just the kind of headline that tells you more about the writer’s agenda than the voter’s reality.

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But WDEL’s angle wasn’t new.
They’ve been running this play for years—since 2017.
Half-truths. Distortions. Mistruths packaged as headlines.
Not because I failed. But because I wouldn’t fall in line.

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Because when you demand transparency, challenge power, and speak the uncomfortable truths, there’s always someone waiting to shape the story for you.
To reduce leadership to a headline.
To define purpose as defeat.

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But here’s the problem with that headline:

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It wasn’t wrong on numbers.
It was wrong on meaning.

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I didn’t file to win.
I stayed in to be heard.

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And I was.

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I exposed what no one else would say out loud.
I released a 78-page Blueprint—researched, sourced, and written by one person, in three days.
I gave the public what no consultant, no campaign, and no board majority ever had:

The truth. Unvarnished. On the record. In writing.

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And the moment that truth was released, the story was no longer theirs to write.

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Let them print their version.
Let them push their narrative.

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But let history note this:

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The Blueprint is public.
The data is undeniable.
The silence was broken.

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They tried to report the loss.

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But all they did was prove the win.

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The Truth About the Turnout

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And then there’s the data—because numbers don’t lie.

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Across the Brandywine School District, 3,594 people voted in the May 2025 school board election.
3,361 of those ballots—more than 93%—were cast in District B, the race I was in.

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Let that sink in.

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There were three contested school board races in the district.
Yet almost every voter showed up for just one.

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That doesn’t happen by chance. That’s not a normal turnout curve.
That’s the result of a political system getting triggered.

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Let’s be clear about what actually happened:
This election became a battleground the moment I filed to run.

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Before I entered the race, no one had filed.
Not a single person had stepped up to represent over 10,000 students in a district facing falling proficiency, serious leadership issues, and rising dysfunction.

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Then I filed. Quietly. No announcement. No fanfare.

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After that, multiple candidates jumped in—then dropped out.

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What followed was organized and coordinated:
Signs stolen. Lies spread. Elected officials weaponizing social media against me.
And 3,361 people—some mobilized to support me, many motivated to stop me—showed up to vote.

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They didn’t show up because the district suddenly cared about school board elections.
They showed up because I disrupted a comfortable silence.

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And here’s what matters most:

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I didn’t campaign in the traditional sense.
I didn’t send mass texts or run voter outreach operations.
What I did was inform.

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I researched. I connected the dots. I wrote.
I published blog posts and shared what I found through social media—linking public records, audits, state data, staffing decisions, and spending patterns—so residents could see what had been hidden in plain sight.

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And I didn’t speak only to parents.
I spoke to the whole community—because when a school district declines, the consequences go far beyond the classroom.

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It affects home values.
It weakens public safety.
It drives away investment.
It dims opportunity.

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When schools break, neighborhoods unravel.

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So I focused on informing, not persuading.
On showing people the scale of the problem—so they could begin to see how it touched their own lives.

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It became clear: I wasn’t in the race to win.
I was in it to make sure someone—finally—spoke the truth out loud.

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And that truth made a lot of people uncomfortable.

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So no, I didn’t run a turnout operation.
But I became the reason people turned out.

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If I had withdrawn, the silence would have returned.
People would have tuned out again. The Blueprint wouldn’t exist.
There would’ve been no election-day surge, no exposure, no public reckoning.

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Instead, what happened was this:

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• A race that started with no candidates became the most voted-in race in the district.

• A campaign with no fundraising, no field program, and no glossy mailers turned out 3,361 voters.

• And a candidate who didn’t ask for votes managed to shake the system enough that it fought back—with everything it had.

 

That’s not failure.
That’s impact.

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I didn’t run to win a seat.
I stayed in to make sure the silence broke.

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And it did.

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What Happens Now

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This didn’t end with the election.
It started something much bigger.

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Because once the truth is out there—once the numbers are public, the systems exposed, the silence broken—there’s no going back.

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So here’s what happens now:

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I’m releasing the Blueprint—chapter by chapter—so no one has to wonder what’s broken, or how to fix it.
Every fact cited. Every solution proposed. No political filter. No special interests. Just the truth, in plain English.

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I’m building a public scorecard to track school board decisions in real time—so residents can see who’s leading, who’s silent, and who’s just taking up space.

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I’ve launched First State Forward, a political action committee to support candidates who aren’t afraid of hard truths, who value transparency over party lines, and who are willing to lead when it’s not easy, convenient, or popular.

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And I’m hosting real listening sessions—no scripts, no talking points, no filters.

Just honest conversations about what’s happening in our schools, our neighborhoods, our state.

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Because this was never about a seat.
It was never about ego or ambition.
It was about responsibility—and whether we still have the courage to speak up when it counts.

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Delaware is at a crossroads.
New Castle County is no longer leading. It’s falling behind.
Not because we lack talent or resources—but because too many people in power are more focused on protecting positions than producing results.
They wait their turn. They keep their heads down. They follow the map someone else drew.

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But we don’t need map readers now.
We need pathfinders.

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We need elected officials who level up. Who do the work. Who welcome accountability instead of fearing it.
We need a new standard—not just for who we elect, but why we elect them.

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Because if all we ever protect is the status quo, then all we’ll ever get is decline.

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I didn’t lose. I led.

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And now I’m building something bigger—because the truth didn’t cost me the seat.
It gave me a mission.

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And I’m just getting started.