RACE OF THE DAY — DEL. AT-LARGE

by Sean J. Miller - 09/14/10 12:54 PM ET

Businesswoman Michele Rollins (R) was supposed to coast to the Republican House nomination after clinching the endorsement of delegates to the state party’s convention.

But developer Glen Urquhart (R) remained in the primary race after Rollins got the May endorsement, and polls show his tenacity may be rewarded with victory on Tuesday. Urquhart was leading Rollins by double digits in one of the final polls conducted before the vote. Half the likely Republican primary voters who responded to the Public Policy Polling survey said they’d vote for Urquhart, compared to 38 percent who said they’d vote for Rollins.

Urquhart sought to portray himself as more conservative and tried to court supporters in the southern half of the state. Rollins, meanwhile, ran in the mold of Rep. Mike Castle (R-Del.) — a pro-business, fiscal conservative.

Rollins was married to businessman John W. Rollins Sr., a former lieutenant governor of Delaware who made a fortune with a truck-leasing business and other interests. He eventually expanded to property development in Jamaica and after he died Michele Rollins continued the family’s connection with the Caribbean island.

She led Rose Hall Developments, which owns and develops property in Delaware and Jamaica. Last year she wrote a letter to the editor of a Jamaican newspaper encouraging the government of the Caribbean island nation to develop its financial-services sector to compete with countries such as the Cayman Islands.

Urquhart said Rollins’s advocacy raised questions about where her “true loyalties lie.”

“Delaware has banking interests; Jamaica has banking interests,”
Urquhart told The Hill in May. “Would any of Mrs. Rollins’s Jamaican
interests compete with Delaware’s major banking industry?”

Rollins said her business in Jamaica has nothing to do with the financial-services industry.

“We are not in the financial-services industry,” she said. “We are not in that business in the U.S. and we are not in that business in Jamaica. We sell real estate. If the government decides they want to do a financial center, we have real estate to sell to them.”

Rollins has a family fortune valued somewhere between $92 million and $350 million, according to her Federal Election Commission filings.