Collin O'Mara

Collin O'Mara

Prior offices

Delaware Secretary of Natural Resources and Environmental Control

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Elections and appointments

Last election

September 10, 2024

Education

Bachelor's

Syracuse University

Graduate

University of Oxford, Dartmouth College

Contact

Campaign website

Campaign Facebook

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Collin O'Mara was the Delaware Secretary of Natural Resources and Environmental Control. He assumed office on March 1, 2009. He left office on July 1, 2014.

O'Mara (Democratic Party) ran for election for Governor of Delaware. He lost in the Democratic primary on September 10, 2024.

Biography

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Before becoming secretary, O'Mara was clean tech strategist for San Jose, CA, and the primary architect of the city's "Green Vision," a plan to combine economic development with environmental sustainability. He was previously a city management executive in Syracuse, NY, where he oversaw efforts to modernize city services.

Political career

Natural Resources and Environmental Control (2009-2014)

O'Mara was appointed as Delaware Secretary of Natural Resources and Environmental Control by Governor Jack Markell in March 2009 and confirmed by the state Senate in April. As the secretary serves at the pleasure of the governor, O'Mara was not subject to periodic reappointment. He resigned in July 2014 to accept a new position.

Elections

2024

See also: Delaware gubernatorial election, 2024

General election

General election for Governor of Delaware

Matt Meyer defeated Michael Ramone in the general election for Governor of Delaware on November 5, 2024.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Matt Meyer (D)	56.1	279,585
		Michael Ramone (R)	43.9	219,050

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	There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 498,635
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

• Danny Ace Valentine (Nonpartisan)

Democratic primary election

Democratic primary for Governor of Delaware

Matt Meyer defeated Bethany Hall-Long and Collin O'Mara in the Democratic primary for Governor of Delaware on September 10, 2024.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Matt Meyer	47.0	40,518
		Bethany Hall-Long	36.6	31,588
		Collin O'Mara	16.4	14,142

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	There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 86,248
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
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Republican primary election

Republican primary for Governor of Delaware

Michael Ramone defeated Jerrold Price and Bobby Williamson in the Republican primary for Governor of Delaware on September 10, 2024.

		Candidate	%	Votes
✔		Michael Ramone	72.3	26,414
		Jerrold Price	16.3	5,971
		Bobby Williamson	11.4	4,153

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	There were no incumbents in this race. The results have been certified. Source	Total votes: 36,538
= candidate completed the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection survey.
If you are a candidate and would like to tell readers and voters more about why they should vote for you, complete the Ballotpedia Candidate Connection Survey.
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Withdrawn or disqualified candidates

• Julianne Murray (R)

Endorsements

Ballotpedia did not identify endorsements for O'Mara in this election.

Campaign themes

2024

Ballotpedia survey responses

See also: Ballotpedia's Candidate Connection

Collin O'Mara did not complete Ballotpedia's 2024 Candidate Connection survey.

Campaign website

O'Mara’s campaign website stated the following:

“	Collin's Top Priorities 1. Fix our Public Education System Guarantee universal pre-K for all 3- and 4-year-olds to ensure every child can read by age 6-7. Provide universal free school breakfast and lunch to ensure every child is ready to learn. Enact the recommendations of the Assessment of Delaware Public School Funding report to adopt an equitable school funding formula based upon student needs (students experiencing poverty, multilingual learners, or students with disabilities). Increase pay for all educators and remove disincentives from working in historically under-resourced schools. Invest in community schools with wrap-around services, including healthcare and trauma-informed mental health services at all levels, intensive tutoring support, and before/after school programming. Ensure all public schools have safe drinking water (no lead pipes), clean air (no mold, asbestos, or particulate matter), and modern equipment for science and technology. Protect all students from any form of discrimination and ensure that all schools prohibit discrimination based upon sexual orientation and gender identity. 2. Build an Inclusive 21st Century Economy Modernize Delaware’s infrastructure to compete in the 21st century, including multi-modal transportation systems, clean energy, clean water, school upgrades, ports, and statewide high-speed broadband – and ensure that at least 40% of all investments are in historically underserved communities (Justice40) and that public investments utilize project labor agreements. Attract and leverage the historic federal investments of the Biden Administration to create 40,000 well-paying jobs in sectors where Delaware has a comparative advantage, including clean energy, financial technology, life sciences, biopharmaceutical manufacturing, semiconductors, agriculture, tourism. Build an inclusive culture of entrepreneurship by retaining and attracting talent and investment that will leverage our existing strengths in private-sector and academic innovation, including unleashing our universities to commercialize cutting-edge research. Be purposeful and support the creation of Black and brown owned businesses and ventures that will build wealth in historically marginalized communities, including revitalizing communities in which government has historically underinvested across Greater Wilmington, including Route 9, Riverside, Southbridge, East Side, West Side, and Claymont. Retain and attract young talent through placemaking that enhances recreational, ecological, and cultural amenities, expands accessibility and mobility, embraces diversity, and improves land use decision-making to create an authentic sense of place. Prepare large brownfield sites for redevelopment to attract clean manufacturing or industrial uses, rather than more warehouses. Reorganize Delaware’s workforce development ecosystem to ensure efficient coordination across the Workforce Development Board, apprenticeship and pre-apprenticeship programs, technical certifications and degrees, university offerings, and employer-led programs – to ensure all workers have access to the jobs of the future. Improve permitting efficiency and predictability, while ensuring transparency and robust public input. Ensure returning Delawareans have access to job training and gainful employment by reconstituting the Department of Corrections as the Department of Rehabilitation. 3. Support Working Families and Older Delawareans Increase the availability of affordable housing by building 25,000 additional housing units and stabilizing rent increases. Reduce costs and expand access to affordable quality healthcare by attracting more healthcare providers and doctors to reduce wait times, increasing transparency, investing in wellness, containing costs to mirror Medicare reimbursement rates, increasing market competition among providers and through a public option (Medicaid buy-in), ensuring equitable maternal and infant health outcomes, and empowering more Delawareans to age in place. Improve access to affordable quality childcare by updating reimbursement rates (enacting Universal Pre-K will also help relieve some pressure on our childcare system). Significantly reduce child poverty through an expansion and refundability of the child tax credit, childcare tax credit, earned income tax credit, and standard deduction for lower-income families. Ensure all Delawareans can earn and use paid sick leave and safety leave, while also making sure that all families can access the benefits of paid family policy starting in 2025. Support workers right to organize and join labor unions and oppose efforts to impose right-to-work, weaken collective bargaining, or undermine prevailing wage. Index the minimum wage to ensure it keeps up with the cost-of-living and eliminate loopholes. Eliminate food deserts, banking deserts, and medical deserts to ensure all communities have access to healthy food, banking services, and healthcare facilities. Become the First State to achieve universal access to high-speed broadband. 4. Lead on Climate and Environmental Justice Act on climate by becoming the First State to achieve 100% clean electricity by deploying offshore wind (1.5+ GW) and solar (500+ MW). Confront ongoing environmental injustices to achieve clean air, clean water, and healthy soil in historically overburdened fenceline and frontline communities, prevent new sacrifice zones by evaluating cumulative impacts in permitting decisions, and enact the Justice40 recommendations. Be the First State to achieve net-zero by deploying green hydrogen and electrification technologies to repower the difficult to decarbonize industrial, heavy transportation, and agricultural sectors. Restore our natural defenses to bolster the resilience of communities to flooding, extreme weather, and sea-level rise. Significantly expand access to parks and wildlife refuges, accelerate habitat restoration projects, and conserve more open space to enhance communities and recover full diversity of wildlife and native plants. 5. Protect Fundamental Rights through Constitutional Amendments Protect reproductive rights through the State Constitution to ensure that all Delawareans and visitors can access comprehensive healthcare services without fear of criminalization or invasion of privacy. Prohibit discrimination based upon sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. Enshrine voting rights, including early voting, mail-in voting, same-day registration, and permanent no-excuse absentee voting. Adopt a Green Amendment to codify every Delawarean's right to clean water, healthy air, and safe soils. Eliminate cash bail to decriminalize poverty and ensure that mental health and substance abuse challenges are addressed through treatment, not incarceration. 6. Campaign Finance Reform We need to reform our state government. Right now, too many lobbyists, developers, corporations, and special interests are using campaign donations to buy access to policymakers and block policies that would support working families. Our campaign finance system has far too many holes and allows career politicians to take untrackable donations with no identifiable source and virtually no oversight on how they’re spent. This leaves us in a system where too many politicians are working for their donors - not for you.	”
—Collin O'Mara’s campaign website (2024)

Campaign finance summary

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Note: The finance data shown here comes from the disclosures required of candidates and parties. Depending on the election or state, this may represent only a portion of all the funds spent on their behalf. Satellite spending groups may or may not have expended funds related to the candidate or politician on whose page you are reading this disclaimer. Campaign finance data from elections may be incomplete. For elections to federal offices, complete data can be found at the FEC website. Click here for more on federal campaign finance law and here for more on state campaign finance law.

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Collin O'Mara campaign contribution history

Year	Office	Status	Contributions	Expenditures
2024*	Governor of Delaware	Lost primary	$254,874	$253,544
Grand total			$254,874	$253,544
Sources: OpenSecrets,  Federal Elections Commission ***This product uses the openFEC API but is not endorsed or certified by the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
* Data from this year may not be complete

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Footnotes

Political offices
Preceded by -	Delaware Secretary of Natural Resources and Environmental Control 2009-2014	Succeeded by -