2: Paragraph 10 In October 1968 the U. S. Supreme Court invalidated as unconstitutional an Ohio statute that prevented write-in votes and required all parties except the two major ones to submit petitions to get a candidate on the ballot. In 1974 the U. S. Supreme Court invalidated as unconstitutional a California statute that kept an independent candidate from being on a ballot without a political party's endorsement. Those rulings ['Williams v. Rhodes', 393 U.S. 23 (1968); 'Storer v. Brown', 415 U.S. 724 (1974)] meant Delaware's whole election law, in effect since 1955, was unconstitutional.
2: Paragraph 11 Sordid as it is — and that was just the, you should pardon the expression, high points of what happened — that story by itself might not prove how the Establishment pulls together to disenfranchise Delawareans, but then it happened again:
2: Paragraph 12 In the spring of 1976 Joseph F. McInerney was unsuccessful in getting the Democrats' nomination for the U. S. Senate, so he started the Delaware Party, and in May it nominated him and other candidates for that November's election. In June the General Assembly passed, and the Democratic governor signed, a bill changing the law so as to make it harder for the Delaware Party to get its candidates on the ballot. The Party then asked Democratic AG Richard R. Wier Jr. for a ruling on the constitutionality of that law, and on August 30 he issued a written opinion to the state election commissioner citing 'Williams' and 'Storer' and ruling the new law valid; remember that in Delaware the AG's opinions have the force of law.
2: Paragraph 13 On 31 August McInerney sued the election commissioner and other officials, in federal court in Wilmington, to put him on the ballot as the nominee of the Delaware Party. AG Wier, representing the defendants, conceded without argument that the new Delaware statute was unconstitutional. On September 14 the federal court invalidated the statute and ordered the elections officials to put McInerney on the ballot. Two years later AG Wier ran for re-election, and that's where Craven's book ended.
2: Paragraph 14 In the 1982 election, two Democrats were elected who figure prominently in this book: Oberly became AG by a margin of 1177 votes over the Republican, with the American Party candidate and the Libertarian Party candidate totaling 1565 votes, and Thomas R. Carper became the Congressman, with Roth elected to the Senate.
2: Paragraph 15 That was around the time Carper divorced his first wife. I haven't heard any rumor that he beats his current wife, but several people who were their neighbors have told me he used to beat his first wife, and in their written settlement agreement he paid extra for her promise not to mention it anymore, and they said they knew that from their own observations and from what she told them. During the 1990 campaign, Carper's opponents' campaign managers told me that was true and that they had documentation that as early as his college days he beat up on the women he dated before he was married.
2: Paragraph 16 When I was checking dates for this section, I couldn't find the date of that divorce, so I called the public library in Wilmington and asked. That library's research desk is superlative — they take inquiries over the phone, and they've often answered such obscure trivia questions for me that I was almost embarrassed to ask them. After researching the question for most of a day, they called back to say Carper's divorce was between 1982 and 1984, but they couldn't find any reference to it anywhere, and they'd even called the local newspaper.
2: Paragraph 17 I hadn't really cared at first, but that made me start wondering: 'Who's Who' includes divorce dates in its listings (mine's in there), everybody knows Carper's been divorced, he's held high federal office since 1982, and he's already announced he's the Democratic candidate for governor this year, so he's a public figure whose biographical statistics are in the public domain — why the mystery? So I called his office here and asked what year he divorced his first wife, and his staff got all bent out of shape. They asked for my name, and I wouldn't give it, but I told them I was a registered voter who wanted to know. That drove them crazier. When one of them asked why I wanted to know, I said it was biographical info for an article I'm writing about the candidates in this year's election. Not only wouldn't they tell me when the divorce was, but then they wouldn't even talk to me anymore and said I couldn't talk to anyone but Carper's press secretary in Washington! Now I'm very curious about what Carper is trying to hide.
2: Paragraph 18 Anyhow, in 1986 Oberly was re-elected AG with 915 votes more than the Republican, and American Party candidate David S. DeRiemer got 1133 votes. DeRiemer is a colorful character, a businessman from the southern part of the state who feels so strongly about his rights that in 1988 he went to jail rather than agree the state could require him to have its permission, in the form of a driver's license, to drive a car. He's not a lawyer, and he doesn't drive anymore. His platform was to do away with the Federal Reserve Bank, but he never explained how Delaware's AG could affect the Federal Reserve; he has himself told me all the federal courts in the country are illegal because they're supposed to be the judicial branch, but they've gone over to the executive branch, as evidenced by the fact that they all have U. S. flags with gold fringes around them, and only the executive branch is allowed to have gold fringes on its flags.
2: Paragraph 19 After the 1986 election, DeRiemer joined the Libertarian Party, and he wanted to be its AG candidate in 1990. I didn't know about that in late 1989 when the Delaware Libertarian Party asked me to be its AG candidate, and I'd already agreed before I found out. Meanwhile, Oberly had decided to run for a third term: No Delaware AG had ever run for a third term, although nothing in the state constitution or laws forbids it; before Oberly, the only three who had run for a second term were: Buckson, who cashed in on the 1966 Republican landslide; Wier, who lost to Richard S. Gebelein in 1978; and Gebelein, who lost to Oberly in 1982 and is now a Superior Court judge.