Matt Meyer, a proud son of Delaware’s small Jewish community, is a front-runner in Tuesday’s Democratic primary to be the state’s next governor. Meyer is the county executive in New Castle County, which includes Wilmington, the state’s largest city, and would be the second Jewish governor in Delaware history.

In a recent interview with Jewish Insider, Meyer, 52, said that growing up in a small Jewish community, “makes you a little prouder of your Judaism,” comparing the experience to his time living in New York.

“If I don’t do something to retain the connection to my family’s own history and our community’s own culture, it will be lost,” Meyer, who was a leader in Jewish youth organizations, explained. He mentioned, as an example, his mother driving an hour and half to Lakeview, N.J., during his childhood for kosher meat.

Meyer said that values of service to the community were also a key part of his Jewish upbringing, invoking the tradition of tikkun olam. He also discussed a childhood tradition — instead of receiving a present on the eighth night of Hanukkah, his family would give tzedakah, allocating money to a charity. He said his family has maintained that tradition of charitable giving each year.

“We’ve got to go out and do something to fix, and to help do our part to heal a broken world. It’s really ingrained in who I am, and certainly how I’ve led the county and how we’re going to lead the state,” he said.

He traced his gubernatorial run back to his childhood in the close-knit state. He later left Delaware for a variety of opportunities domestically and internationally, including law school in Michigan, a Teach for America program in Washington, D.C., a stint in Kenya starting small businesses and service as a diplomat in Iraq.

But he ultimately returned to Delaware to teach middle school math, which he described as his true “passion.” He said his time in that job inspired his political career: “I got pissed off because kids and families weren’t getting served the way they deserved to get served in a 21st-century America.”

His top issues as governor would include education, housing, health care, cost of living, climate change and improving public schools.

Meyer also connects his eclectic career paths around the world to his “driving principle” of service: “go wherever you can to learn and also to understand problems, and do whatever you can do to do your small part to help.”

He said that as governor, he would be open to any legislation or other action to help support the State of Israel and Delaware’s Jewish community, including supporting anti-Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions legislation.

“Israel is going through a really challenging time right now, and we have to do what we can to support what is one of America’s strongest allies in the world,” he said. “What happened to Hersh [Goldberg-Polin] just breaks my heart and we have to recognize that’s happening every day in Israel and Gaza. We need to work together here, within the U.S., wherever we are, to be a model for how things can work.”

Meyer has been to Israel three times, and had been planning a fourth trip in recent years. He pledged that he would visit Israel as governor. 

He also said that New Castle County — home to Wilmington, the largest city in the state— has developed some “extraordinary” partnerships with Israeli companies, including utilizing public opinion research and video 911 services from Israeli companies, and that he would pursue similar partnerships at the state level.

“I’m very interested in taking a harder look at how we can give Israeli companies a shot here in Delaware, and also create value for Delaware taxpayers,” Meyer said.

He emphasized his dedication to protecting the Jewish, Muslim and other minority communities when they come under threat. He said that he has worked with religious leaders during holidays to ensure adequate protection and deploy technologies to ensure that “we’re better prepared than anyone around the country” for potential threats.

He added that the governor’s office would give him an expanded bully pulpit to speak up about the Jewish community and the challenges it’s facing. He said he sees that responsibility as especially critical in the modern day because the lessons of the Holocaust are fading — there is just one living Holocaust survivor remaining in the state, according to Meyer.

“I can tell you the names of [Holocaust survivors] who would tell me their stories and show me pictures of what actually happened [when I was growing up], and that’s happening less and less,” Meyer said. “The people who have firsthand knowledge are gone. But we still need to make sure we’re putting voice to these horrific things that happened, to make sure they never happen again to the Jewish people, and they never happen again to any people.”

He’s also open to legislation codifying a definition of antisemitism into state law.

Meyer would not be the state’s first Jewish governor in recent years — he would follow Jack Markell, who served from 2009 to 2017 and now served as the U.S. ambassador to Italy and San Marino. But “I’m determined to be the first one to read a Haftarah,” Meyer said.

Meyer’s competitors in the race are Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long and National Wildlife Federation CEO Collin O’Mara. Meyer, who loaned his campaign $600,000, has consistently led the field in fundraising. Meyer was endorsed by the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Hall-Long is facing an ongoing campaign finance scandal, which knocked her out of her position as the clear front-runner when she entered the race. In August, the New Castle County assessor sued Meyer and other county officials, accusing them of permitting a pattern of sexual assault and of denying her promotions for reporting the assault. The county settled another sexual harassment targeting the police department in 2022.

Meyer has said that he was unable to directly intervene in the case charged in the new lawsuit, and that he was not in power at the time when the incidents in the police department took place.

Meyer said that, like most Delawareans, he shares personal connections to President Joe Biden, Delaware’s most famous son, and his family. Meyer’s rabbi, Michael Beals, has a close relationship with Biden, Meyer went to middle school with Biden’s sons Hunter and Beau and his brother tutored Hunter in middle school.

“Joe is a hero for Delaware, and he’s also a hero for the Jewish community, I believe, and especially the Jewish community in Delaware,” he said. “He has a Jewish soul somewhere in there, and you really feel like he’s one of us sometimes. When you talk to him about Israel and the politics in the Middle East, you want to kind of say, ‘Where did you go to Hebrew school?’”

He called Biden’s decision to exit the presidential race “sad for all of us” but “necessary.”