Why the governor of Delaware is downsizing to a mayor’s office

John Carney is scheduled to step down next month after eight years as governor of Delaware (pop. 1.03 million). On Jan. 7 he begins a four-year term as mayor of Wilmington (pop. 70,000), the little state’s biggest city, after beating city Treasurer Velda Jones-Potter in a close September Democratic primary. No Republican ran.

It’s a rare career move: California Gov. Jerry Brown and Virginia Gov. Doug Wilder also went on to serve as urban mayors, but only after more than a decade out of office.

Carney held Delaware’s lone U.S. House seat for six years; before that he was lieutenant governor, finance chief for then-Gov. (later U.S. Sen.) Tom Carper, and an aide to then-Sen. Joe Biden, after graduating from Dartmouth and quarterbacking the St. Mark’s Spartans to the Delaware state championship in 1973.

During his two terms as governor, the state boosted aid to employers and struggled with COVID closures, port management and school funding, legalizing pot and restricting guns.

Democrat Matt Meyer won Delaware’s 2024 gubernatorial election against Republican opponent Mike Ramone and will take office on January 21.

Carney spoke recently with The Inquirer about his hopes for Wilmington, which is both “America’s Corporate Capital” as a legal business center, and also a postindustrial community — in many ways like Philadelphia, but only 1/20th the size — facing poverty and trying to lure a new generation of corporate employers

This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.

I’m 68, I’ve got a couple of rodeos left. I thought, for two minutes, about running for that open U.S. Senate seat (instead, Democrats chose U.S. Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, now Delaware’s junior Senator-elect.). But I already spent six years in Congress. I didn’t feel I had the impact on the people back here.

When I worked for Gov. Carper, and later when I was Lt. Gov., I worked on Wilmington’s Christina Riverfront redevelopment. I hired Mike Purzycki as executive director of that effort, who went on to be mayor these past two terms. (Purzycki, who turns 79 this year, didn’t seek reelection.) I felt the impact we had, bringing employment back into the city.

Running for mayor we knocked on thousands of doors. It was hot. My feet hurt.

A lot of people knew me from being the governor. … People would say, “I voted for you, but not this time. But I appreciate your service.” That’s affirmation; service is its own reward.

People were concerned about education and crime. But that wasn’t all they were thinking about. They brought up the dead tree down the street. Or the power company digging up the North Side.

We got on this one porch, in front of St. Francis Hospital. The lady said, ‘I have this dead tree in my neighbor’s yard, a storm’s gonna knock it into my house.’ … It took us a month and a half, we got that tree cut down. This woman couldn’t have been happier.

That’s when I decided to do this job: you can have a real impact, instead of getting on the Amtrak (at Wilmington’s Joseph R. Biden Station) and being frustrated in Washington, where nothing is done on big, powerful issues.

The state has provided the vast majority of the resources for the riverfront. And when we invested in housing in every neighborhood of the city, that’s partly a function of the federal money made available. Now we need to improve our neighborhood commercial corridors, to fill restaurants and bars and social activity.

If one part of the city fails, it takes the whole city down. And we have terrible problems, of youth and young adult gang violence, similar to Philadelphia and Washington.

We have a significant homeless problem, even with the county shelter they don’t have enough beds, and some have mental health and substance abuse issues. We got encampments on the overpasses on I-95, and we had to move those out. We have to have social services and law enforcement, working together.

We have a terrible record with respect to the schools in the city of Wilmington, going all the way back to the days of segregation. We need to make sure the kids have the tools to be successful, and not go down the road of violence that ends at Gander Hill or Howard Young (state prisons.)

We aren’t going to get the resources we have had the last few years. It wouldn’t have mattered who the president was, those resources that came during and after the pandemic were not going to continue.

And not only federal, but state government, will have fewer resources as the economy flattens out. We have to keep home ownership in our neighborhoods that are on the brink The city can’t afford to lose people.

Nobody has asked me. I hope I’m not confronted with that dilemma. We have a lot of noncitizens who work hard. We were able to maintain a status quo through the last Trump administration. I’m a law-abiding citizen. I don’t intend to pick a fight with the federal government. I want to try in a compassionate way to help these noncitizens in their daily lives. Most of them have had have permits to work here. It gets dicey when they start stereotyping people as here illegally, when they’re not.

We are a small city, with only so many locations where you can put a business. As you convert office buildings to residences, you are shrinking the availability of employment centers. We have to continue to strike a balance. But landowners make those decisions.

We want to encourage more small business development in our neighborhood commercial corridors — North Market St., Union St., Maryland Ave. The Longwood Foundation’s plan (to move colleges to empty bank buildings on Rodney Square) and (locally based biotech developer) Incyte’s growth for the next three or four years means you’ll have some really exciting happenings on Rodney Square.

The du Ponts and (their early CFO John) Raskob made it Rodney Square. I’d like to create a Joe Biden-centered square. I can’t think of a better way to honor the first Delawarean to be President of the U.S., who has served our country for 50 years.