Posted: April 13, 2010 

A POLITICAL PREQUEL

By Celia Cohen
Grapevine Political Writer

S.B. Woo was a one-term Democratic lieutenant governor when he went for broke to run for the Senate. His campaign in 1988 never got him to Washington, but it did fine as a political startup.

The staff was a collection of Delaware futures, namely Jack Markell, Matt Denn and Chris Coons.

Markell was 27. He was the deputy campaign manager. Denn was 22. Coons was 25. They took care of policy research and field work.

Woo's campaign had the eventual Democratic governor, lieutenant governor and New Castle County executive. It was like the Mary Tyler Moore Show with Lou Grant, Rhoda and Phyllis for political spinoffs.

"All these talented people, and I lost. That must show what a lousy candidate I was," Woo quipped.

It seems to be a good time to revisit the campaign, now that Coons is trying to go statewide, too, by running for the Senate seat Joe Biden left to become vice president.

In state politics in the 1980s, Woo was a human cliffhanger. Before electronic voting machines, his races were a recurring recount.

A Chinese-born American who fled the Communist takeover with his family as a 12-year-old in 1949, Woo was a University of Delaware physics professor when he ran for lieutenant governor in 1984.

"Woo who? Woo who?" his fellow Democrats chanted cynically. But he won a party primary and then squeaked into office with a recount and a winning margin of 429 votes.

With his term up in 1988, Woo decided to run for the Senate seat that had belonged to Bill Roth since 1970. There have been wiser decisions. Roth, a Republican, was a household name because of his sponsorship of a famous  Reagan-era tax cut, called Roth-Kemp in Delaware and Kemp-Roth everywhere else. Besides, it was a Republican year.

Again Woo had a primary, and again there was a recount, a bizarre one. The Democratic nomination appeared to go to Sam Beard, the civic-minded heir to a railroad fortune, but there was a data entry error at the election department. It was caught two days later, and Woo won by 71 votes. He had used up his share of political miracles, though, and got clobbered by Roth.

Out of this political crucible popped Markell, Denn and Coons.

It was not surprising they should come together. Markell and Denn were the sons of other faculty members. Coons grew up in Hockessin. The Markell and Denn families were friendly.

Throughout Denn's childhood, his mother held up "Jackie" as a model son, the sort of boy who would eat his vegetables and do his homework without being told. "My mother may be the original Markell supporter," Denn said.

Markell was the first to join the campaign. He already had an MBA from the University of Chicago and left an $80,000-a-year job working for a business consultant to take a $24,000-a-year fling at politics -- mostly because of the ideals his parents instilled in him.

"I came to the conclusion when I was pretty young that life was bigger than what I was living," Markell said.

Coons was looking to come home from New York, where he worked at the National Coalition for the Homeless. Mandy Grunwald, later a political consultant for the Clintons, was creating public service announcements for the homeless coalition and told Coons she had a political client who needed staff in Delaware. It was Woo.

"I actually interviewed with Sam Beard and S.B. Woo, and S.B. hired me on the spot. Jack was in the room," Coons said.

Denn wanted a summer job in between his graduation from the University of California at Berkeley and his start at Yale Law School. He expected to be given grunt work, but it quickly changed as he showed up during a campaign disaster.

Woo planned to campaign at the Greek Festival in Wilmington with volunteers attracting attention to him by carrying masses of silvery Mylar balloons. An intern driving a truck with the balloons inside neglected to notice the clearance under a railroad bridge in Newark and sheared off the top of the truck.

"Two hundred balloons floated away. It was not funny at the time," Markell said.

It led to a staff shakeup that had Denn pressed into an assignment writing policy. He pulled an all-nighter to provide a brilliant analysis and received a promotion.

It was vintage Denn. He showed more of that side of himself during staff basketball games. Other players paced themselves, but not him.

"It was probably the best introduction anyone could have to Matt. He was very effective for seven minutes, and then he had dry heaves on the sidelines," Markell said.

Denn left when the school year began. He was around for the primary, which he thought Woo lost, and no one from the campaign remembered to tell him otherwise. "I sullenly returned to campus, and a week later, I found out he had won," Denn said.

The campaign went on, the staff working long hours but also taking breaks for parties Coons held at his family home on Drummond Hill Road. Markell particularly liked them. He had his eye on a campaign volunteer named Carla who had gone to Newark High School with him. Today she is Delaware's first lady.

Coons possibly could have met Annie, his wife, during the campaign but did not. She was working for Sam Beard. They did not become acquainted until years later at a charity event.

Woo got walloped in the election, and the staff dispersed.

Markell took a job at a new telecommunications firm that grew to be Nextel and set him up financially to run for office. In 10 years he was state treasurer, and in 20 years he was governor.

Denn and Coons both went to Yale Law School, pursued nonprofit work and the law and made their way in public life, Denn as insurance commissioner in 2004 and lieutenant governor in 2008, Coons as New Castle County Council president in 2000 and county executive in 2004 and 2008.

Along the way, Coons wanted to be a law clerk. He applied for an opening with none other than Jane Roth, the federal judge whose husband beat Woo. Yes, it came up in the interview, as Coons recalls very well. She asked him what his role was in the campaign, and he told her.

"You really didn't do a very good job of it, did you?" she needled him. Then she hired him.

Woo recently hosted a reunion dinner for Markell, Denn and Coons.

Normally a political figure, win or lose, endures after the campaign has faded, but in this case, the campaign was what lived on, beyond even the question, Woo who?

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