WHYY · Cris Barrish · September 9, 2026
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When Kyle Grantham , a first-time candidate for the New Castle County Council, read a WHYY News article last week about another county candidate being recorded as he offered a potential election foe a job , the encounter rang a bell with him.
Grantham, who is facing Kira Alejandro in the Sept. 15 Democratic primary for the vacant seat that includes the Pike Creek and Hockessin areas, said Councilwoman Dee Durham tried to dissuade him from running by saying he’d be perfect for a job with County Council that doesn’t even exist.
Durham countered that she was merely posing “a theoretical” for Grantham’s future should he lose, and wasn’t offering him anything.
The issue of job offers to stay out of political races during this year’s primary season first reverberated through Delaware political circles last week. That’s when WHYY News reported that in June, incumbent New Castle County Recorder of Deeds Mike Kozikowski offered County Councilman Dave Tackett a newly created job in his office for $76,295 a year, in an attempt to keep Tackett from running against him in Democratic primary.
Tackett, who recorded the conversation at a Newport-area diner, filed his candidacy that same day and has asked prosecutors to investigate what Kozikowski did.
Now, a second account about a potential job for a candidate if they didn’t run for office has surfaced. Grantham, a former county communications aide, said that while he views Kozikowski’s offer as a blatant attempt to avoid a primary, Durham had a subtler approach.
‘I just kind of tried to brush her off. But she going back to it.’
Grantham said he met with Durham for about two hours at the Brew HaHa cafe in Greenville on Feb. 26 — the same day he issued a press release announcing his candidacy.
Grantham said he had been told by another council member that Durham supported Alejandro but still wanted to meet with her and as many council members as possible to discuss his platform as he campaigned for office. Unlike Tackett, Grantham did not record the conversation.
Grantham said Durham asked repeatedly why he was running for office and kept trying to gauge his interest in a nonexistent job as County Council’s communications specialist and said she hoped to create along with fellow council members.
Under state law, if such a media relations job was created and Grantham was hired, he could not also serve on County Council.
As Grantham recalls it, Durham told him, “We’ve never had a comms person. What would you think of, instead of running, maybe we created a job like that?”
Grantham said her remarks “felt odd” to him because that wasn’t why he sought a meeting with Durham and also because the county was in a budget crisis and new jobs would be hard to get approved, even if he was interested.
He said he told Durham that council members would also need to create a chief of staff position because the spokesperson would need someone to report to on the 13-member Council. Those two jobs alone could cost taxpayers some $250,000 a year, including benefits, Grantham told WHYY News.
“I just kind of tried to brush her off that way. But then she kept kind of going back to it,” Grantham said, alleging that she told him, “Is this something that you should consider? We’ve been talking about it for a long time and you know the budget work is happening right now. We could look at creating something like that.”