Former Del. Gov. John Carney reflects on time in office, accomplishments

DELAWARE. – From congress to the Governor’s office, John Carney has surely had his fair slice of political pie.

After 3 terms as a US Representative, he wanted to serve people in a different capacity, winning the role of Delaware’s 74th Governor in 2017.

Tackling the COVID-19 Pandemic

In his two terms as the First State’s leader, he’s set himself apart from others. Being the first governor in the state to tackle the COVID-19 pandemic head on, he described it as one of the most trying times of his career.

“It was a very stressful time, during the pandemic. Basically, our challenge was to figure out what the right thing to do was, based on the science and all the information we were getting,” said Governor Carney.

On a regional level, Governor Carney worked hand-in-hand with other state leaders, like former Governors Tom Wolf of Pennsylvania, and Andrew Cuomo of New York, among others, establishing partnerships in leading their states out of the pandemic.

At a state level, he worked to establish trust between politics and people, to keep deadly COVID-19 outbreaks at bay.

“When you ask people to do something that they don’t want to do, like stay home, like don’t go to the grocery store, and when you do, wear a mask; like don’t congregate on holidays and that type of thing, they’re not going to do it unless they believe and trust what you do,” said Governor Carney. “I think they gave us the benefit of the doubt; we were able to work our way through it.”

Policies 

Pandemic in the rearview, Governor Carney shifted his focus to putting education, the economy and other pressing policies at the forefront.

From Increasing educators’ pay by 9%, to turning a $400 million state budget deficit into an almost $1 billion surplus, he’s proud of what he achieved in office.

But not everything he calls a win. Arguably, one of the most divisive battles was that of recreational marijuana legalization.

“Is marijuana the worst thing in the world? No. But should we be encouraging our young people to do it? Should we be putting these places in the city,” Governor Carney asked.

The governor was a strong advocate for decriminalizing marijuana, but believed the First State could do without a recreational market opening up.

“I can’t tell you how many people come up to me and say, ‘I really appreciate you standing up for that, even though I might not agree with you,” said Governor Carney.

Former Governor’s New Role

Now, with nearly three decades of political experience, Governor Carney decided to take a slightly different political career path.

“I’m towards the end of my working life and I wanted to do something that was impactful, that made a difference,” said Governor Carney.

“When you work hard and go to work every day, you want to see the impact of your efforts, and I felt the best place to do that was in the city of Wilmington,” he added.

He assumed his new role as the mayor in Delaware’s largest city on January 7th, where he hopes to address the homelessness issue, spearhead efforts in lowering crime and address literacy rates in the city’s schools.

While this chapter closes for the former governor, he hopes his constituents can remember him for the promises he made eight years ago, and his commitment to keeping them.

“I want to be remembered as somebody who kind of rolled up their sleeves, tried to get some work done to improve our state in lots of different ways– community development, environment, the schools and education, the economy, the fiscal strength of our state– and I think we did a pretty good job,” said Governor Carney.