By Joe Rogalsky,
Delaware State News
WILMINGTON - A July 12 hostage incident at the Delaware Correctional Center led the discussion at a debate between the three gubernatorial candidates that WHYY television aired live Monday.
The Delaware chapter of the American Association of Retired Persons and WILM radio co-sponsored the hour-long event, which was held at WHYY's Wilmington studios.
Democratic Gov. Ruth Ann Minner's response to the incident, in which a prisoner took a counselor hostage and raped her before he was shot to death, has become a top issue in the race.
Republican William Swain Lee and Independent/Libertarian Frank Infante have repeatedly criticized a comment the governor made about the incident.
During another portion of the debate, Gov. Minner sought to declaw her opponents on the three-tiered diploma issue.
She took credit for delaying the system for one year, even though she said in the spring she "was not happy" about efforts to put the controversial system on hold. Her foes have said they would get rid of the system immediately.
Prisons
In a July 16 Delaware State News article where Gov. Minner defended her Department of Correction leaders, she said "There are problems at every prison. This isn't something that is unique to Delaware. In prisons, you almost expect this to happen. The people who work in our prisons are doing an outstanding job."
The statement that "in prisons, you almost expect this to happen" has drawn fire from political opponents and representatives of Cassandra Arnold, the victim in the July 12 incident at the facility near Smyrna.
Though Minner administration spokesman Gregory B. Patterson, now the governor's campaign manager, initially said the governor was saying prisons are a dangerous place, Gov. Minner has insisted her quote was taken out of context.
She said Monday that the quote came in response to a question about why the Department of Correction emergency response team instead of the Delaware State Police team handled the incident.
Gov. Minner started running a radio ad last week that seeks to clarify her quote, but also includes a statement that she never made the remark, which has drawn fire from Mr. Lee.
"The governor made the comment in the State News, two days later her press secretary - now her campaign manager - said the governor was talking about prisons generally," Mr. Lee said during the debate.
"In debates the governor defended the statement. I was a little shocked when she said the statement had not been made."
On Monday night, Gov. Minner repeated her defense. She admitted making the statement but reiterated she was talking about training issues.
"We were talking about whether or not we should have the team from the state police go in," Gov. Minner said.
"The prison team had been trained for that situation."
Mr. Lee didn't accept the governor's response.
"I think we are talking about spin or revisionist history here," Mr. Lee said.
"I believe what the governor is saying does not ring true. The commercial that she has suggests she never made the statement at all. The governor's explanation seems to change every other day."
The Republican National Governors Association paid for radio and television ads that started last week that seize on Gov. Minner's quote and accuse her of "arrogance and incompetence."
Gov. Minner has criticized Mr. Lee for twisting her quote to score political points.
"There are some people that appear to think they know more about what I said than I do," she said.
Mr. Lee also noted that Gov. Minner's radio ad states that she made the "difficult decision" to send in a Department of Correction tactical unit that ended the hostage standoff by shooting to death serial rapist Scott A. Miller.
"If that was the case, I wonder why the governor's lawyer threatened Ms. Arnold's lawyers with sanctions for naming the governor as a defendant," Mr. Lee said, referring to a federal lawsuit filed earlier this month by Ms. Arnold.
The governor said Thursday that she approved decisions made during the hostage incident by Department of Correction commissioner Stanley W. Taylor.
Education
Gov. Minner has found herself under fire on several education issues, most notably the Delaware Student Testing Program and the three-tiered diploma.
Gov. Minner has defended the DSTP, saying it has improved students' scores and teaches problem-solving skills youngsters need to succeed in a complex job market.
Though she has tried to downplay the significance of the three-tiered diploma system in past debates, on Monday Gov. Minner praised herself for delaying the system's implementation by one year.
A panel of experts is studying the tiered system and will recommend whether it should continue.
"My opponents say they would do away with the three-tiered diploma, well I did it," Gov. Minner said during the debate.
"It was supposed to go into effect but I signed a bill to delay it by one year."
Though Gov. Minner sought to take credit for derailing the diploma system, in May she opposed legislation to delay the system for two years.
Once all 62 lawmakers signed on as sponsors of the bill to delay the system for a year, Gov. Minner said she would rather keep it in place while a panel of experts studied the tiered approach.
"If the General Assembly is dead set on the one-year moratorium, I'll accept that," she said in the May 12 Delaware State News.
"I am not happy about it because I would like us to be moving forward."
Mr. Lee has been vocal on the education issue throughout the campaign, and has called for elimination of the three-tiered diploma program. He would replace the DSTPs with standardized tests at the beginning and end of each school year.
"We need to get rid of the three-tiered diploma and have a test that is fair," Mr. Lee said.
"The tests we have now are IQ tests. You can't teach IQ. They call it problem solving, but it's an IQ test. Anyone who has ever taken an IQ test will tell you that."
Mr. Infante said he would scrap the three-tiered diploma system without waiting for the panel's report and change the Delaware Student Testing Program. Instead of one DSTP test a year, he said, there should be one at the beginning, one in the middle and one at the end.
"We have to understand some people just don't test well," Mr. Infante said.
"Are we going to say a student with good grades is a failure if they don't do well on one test? We have to look at the overall picture. It is absurd to say we are going to have one test."
Mr. Infante was the most aggressive of the three candidates in Monday's debate, several times talking over his opponents.
"Why don't we get to a plan and I'll lay ours out for you," he said to Mr. Lee during the education discussion.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.
Comment on this issue at newsblog.info/0407.
Staff writer Joe Rogalsky can be reached at 741-8226 or jrogalsky@newszap.com.
Reposted with permission from newszap.com www.newszap.com
