Julianne Murray and John Carney faced off during last night’s 2020 Candidate’s Forum put on by the Jewish Federation of Delaware.
During his opening statement, Carney told viewers that he has been focused on confronting the threat of Covid-19 and was working to keep Delawareans safe. He went on to say that the stories of people losing their businesses break his heart. Something he has repeated at his weekly lockdown press briefings over the last several months.
Murray, who is running against Carney for governor, came out of the gate slamming Carney for the state’s continued shutdown.
“I believe politics absolutely played a roll in what happened here, I do think Governor Carney Is vulnerable”, said Murray.
“When you look at how this rolled out, the essential businesses versus the non-essential businesses and the fact that big business was allowed to be open, the big box stores were allowed to be open who coincidentally have lobbyist and are able to push their special interest and small businesses that had similar vocations, a furniture store, a clothing store were shut down because they were not a big box store.”
So I think politics absolutely played had something to do with this, it may have started out as a public health thing but politics absolutely played into it and In my opinion, is continuing to play into it as we are sitting here in Phase 2 and are not moving forward, Murray continued.
Murray was asked when she thought the state should move into Phase 3, she replied “I think we should be open now frankly”.
“The whole conversation of stopping the virus needs to shift to the stopping the spread of the fear.” We need to be looking at our hospitalizations and our deaths hear in Delaware, not the positive test results. We are out of balance, we need to be reopened.
People need to get back to life. We have learned a lot through this. “I think we need to let responsible people act responsibly.”
Carney responded by saying let’s be clear on the CDC recommendations. They recommended that states not reopen their economies. States should wait until you had improving conditions on the ground for fourteen consecutive days and we did that. Carney said he did that in Phase 1 and Phase 2, however, he blamed beach, restaurant, and bar-goers for a spike in positive case.
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