Millsboro resident and longtime Indian River School Board member Gregory Hastings beat three other candidates Saturday to win a special election for Delaware’s 41st representative district.
The Republican received 1,770 votes Saturday – 124 more than his Democratic opponent, Lynn Bullock. Independent candidate John Burton received 225 votes. Former Representative John Atkins – whose clouded resignation prompted Saturday’s special election – received 556 write-in votes, fewer than many had predicted. It was thought that Atkins’ campaign might hurt fellow Republican Hastings’ chances to win the seat, but the strong write-in campaign was not enough to truly split the Republican vote.
“It’s just about what I had envisioned, quite frankly,” Hastings said of the election results this week. “That’s what we were hoping for.”
Bullock blamed low Democratic turnout in the conservative district for his loss. Fewer voters voted Saturday than in either of the last two elections for the Dover seat, in 2004 and 2006. According to state officials, only a quarter of the registered voters in the 41st voted Saturday.
“I expected it to be close,” Bullock said earlier this week. “We had a problem getting the Democratic side to turn out. Otherwise, we would have probably made it closer or possibly won. It was an off-year election. It wasn’t high priority for a number of people, apparently.”
Hastings, a husband and father of two sons, served on the Indian River School Board from 1993 to 2005, and in his two-year stint as president oversaw the approval of the largest capital improvement referendum in school history, to build new Sussex Central and Indian River high schools. He also owns a home-design business in Ocean View, G.A. Hastings and Associates.
Hastings was expected to be sworn in at 2 p.m. on Tuesday, in the House of Representatives’ Dover chambers.
Before Saturday’s election, Hastings called pollution the biggest issue facing the 41st district and he said Tuesday that he hopes to promote alternative energy sources from his representative seat. He plans to start small, though, he said, helping the 41st’s residents follow through on overdue paving and street construction projects.
“My door is always open, no matter if they voted for me or not,” Hastings said, calling himself “anxious” to begin work in Dover.
Atkins resigned his House seat in March after two Oct. 29 incidents that prompted a Dover investigation and could possibly have led to his expulsion from the House.
In a House Ethics Committee report issued Feb. 23, Atkins was determined to have broken House of Representatives rules and put the House into “disrepute” by using his legislator identification card to attempt to avoid a drunk-driving charge, disregarding officers’ instructions not to drive a car that night, as well as being charged and eventually pleading guilty to “offensive touching” against his wife, and attempting to sway a Millsboro police officer and the House Ethics committee itself.
The committee recommended censuring Atkins and many believe the four-year representative was forced out of Dover, facing possible expulsion from the house. Atkins has not returned several calls to his Millsboro home in the last two weeks seeking comment.