Mike Castle, State quarter sponsor, defeated in Delaware primary

Mike Castle, the primary sponsor of the bills that produced the fifty state quarters  and the America the beautiful quarters has lost the Republican primary for US senate in Delaware.  He also sponsored the 2009 Lincoln cent coins and the presidential dollar  coins.

What were the Delaware voters trying to say? Castle was defeated by Christine O’Donnell, a darling of the modern tea party movement.  Some Republicans had described Castle as a “Republican in name only (RINO) and “too liberal.”  Although coins were never explicitly mentioned in the campaign, my guess is that they were on the Delaware voters’ minds (after all, I always keep coin policy in mind when I vote).  Do conservative voters wish to go back to the eagle-back quarter and the wheat cent ?  Are they resistant to coin designs that change five times a year?  The State quarters series raised 6.2 billion dollars for the US government. Perhaps this is seen as some kind of tax.

We have begun the process of getting 56 new reverse designs to our Washington quarter as part of the America The Beautiful quarter series.  Perhaps the voters have seen enough.