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Last Updated June 22, 2005
Democrat Thomas Carper was elected Delaware's junior senator in 2000, after already serving 24 years in statewide elective office. Carper grew up in Southside Virginia and Ohio and went to college in Ohio. He first came to Delaware as an ensign in the Navy, then returned to get his M.B.A. after service in Southeast Asia, where he served as a mission commander piloting submarine-hunting planes. In 1976, he was elected state treasurer, at 29; he ran for Congress in 1982 and beat a scandal-tarred incumbent. In the House, Carper had a moderate voting record and worked to let banks into the securities business and to prevent ocean sludge dumping, both causes supported by Delaware constituencies. In 1992, when Republican Governor Mike Castle had served his two allotted terms and ran for Congress, Carper ran for governor and won the general election with 65% of the vote. As governor, Carper pursued an agenda in many ways more conservative than liberal. He continued his Republican predecessor Pete du Pont's policy of cutting taxes, reducing income tax rates about 10% and also cutting small business and utility taxes. Revenues kept gushing in from Delaware's strong economy, and he increased the ''rainy day'' fund and boosted the state's credit rating to an historic high even as state spending rose 40% in eight years. He inherited Castle's standard-based education reform, raised standards, started testing students in 1998 and provided public school choice, instituted charter schools and passed a teacher accountability bill in 2000. He was re-elected by 70%-30% over then-Treasurer Janet Rzewnicki. Barred from a third term, he was an obvious candidate for the Senate seat held by Republican William Roth since 1970. This was a battle of positives. Both candidates had very high approval ratings, and both were familiar figures to many voters; they brought a combined total of 58 years in statewide office to the race. Roth had a record of achievements that paid direct benefits to people in this generally affluent state: The Kemp-Roth tax cut of 1981, the Roth IRAs enacted in 1997, the reform of the Internal Revenue Service passed in 1998, $2.3 billion for Amtrak capital improvements in 1998 and $10 billion in bonds in 2000. Roth's main problem was that he was 79 in 2000. When Carper announced his candidacy in September 1999, a poll showed him ahead 48%-38%. He was careful not to campaign negatively against Roth or to attack him for his age, but his slogan "A Senator for Our Future" spotlighted the contrast between their ages. Carper's 16-hour days of campaigning at factories, bowling alleys and parades was a contrast with Roth, who stayed in Washington legislating much of the time and made a dwindling number of campaign appearances with his trademark St. Bernards. As Roth unveiled initiatives--Amtrak funding, a program to aid states to pay for prescription drugs for low-income seniors--Carper suggested that Roth's tax cuts were too large and his prescription drug plan too stingy. Roth, able to raise large sums as Finance chairman, outspent Carper by $4.3 million to $2.5 million, but the Democratic Party spent some $4 million of soft money in Delaware, more than evening the score. In October, Roth fainted twice on the campaign trail, once in full view of cameras. Polls showed the race close to even in September and October, but in November Carper won by a solid 56%-44% margin. In the Senate, Carper has a moderate voting record and supports centrist proposals. He voted with Republicans on farm spending and the tax cut in budget resolution votes in April 2001. With five Republicans and five other Democrats he moved unsuccessfully to condition the Bush tax cut on deficit reduction. In June 2001 he and Judd Gregg got $125 million for public school choice programs and $400 million for charter schools. He voted with Jim Jeffords to impose on old power plants the standards of the Clean Air Act. But he also put forward, with Lincoln Chafee, John Breaux and Max Baucus, a milder bill that would not impose those standards on old plants when remodeled and require 2001 levels of carbon dioxide by 2012. He has worked for reauthorization of the 1996 welfare act, with higher work requirements, funding for transitional jobs, funding for abstinence programs and more funding for child care. Since September 11 he has pressed for more spending on rail security, and he has sought $30 billion in bond financing for railroad projects. Carper has taken the lead on several issues. One is Postal Service reform, where he and Governmental Affairs Chairman Susan Collins collaborated on a bill to allow more flexibility on rates and worksharing with private firms, but only on a profitable basis; it did not pass in 2004 but seemed likely to come forward in 2005. He worked with Lamar Alexander, another former governor, on the extension of the moratorium on Internet taxation, to preserve existing state taxes on DSL and Voice Over Internet Protocol. He also collaborated with Alexander on a bill to limit emissions not only of sulphur dioxide, nitrous oxide and mercury (as in the Bush Clear Skies bill), but also carbon dioxide, with a cap and emissions trading. He worked with Mary Landrieu to add amendments to the D.C. school voucher bill, to ban schools from charging additional tuition and limiting eligibility to students in failing schools. He strongly supported the bill limiting class actions and was angry when Majority Leader Bill Frist refused to allow non-germane amendments in July 2004; that killed the bill for the year, but it was passed in February 2005. He declined to vote on the tobacco buyout because he owns tobacco-growing land in North Carolina. Delaware is the only state without a National Park Service facility, and in August 2004 Carper proposed a Coastal Heritage Park, to consist of four interpretive centers in Wilmington, Port Penn, Little Creek and Lewes. Carper has been "bitterly disappointed" by the reduction of the number of centrist Democratic senators after the 2002 and 2004 elections. In November 2004 he speculated that centrist Republicans might be readier to collaborate after the reelection of George W. Bush and said that passage of an asbestos bill would help. "A victory like that, early on, on a contentious issue … where our views have moderated the finished product will help set the tone for progress on other contentious issues." On Social Security, in December 2004 he said, "I don't think it's sufficient for Democrats just to say no." But in January 2005 he added, "The better part of valor [would be] for the administration to present their proposal. Let us read it and understand it. … I don't rule out at some point having private accounts." Carper comes up for reelection in 2006, 30 years after his first statewide election victory. In mid-2005 no serious opponent had emerged.
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