Delaware diner feeds on bipartisan support

When the national media were on the hunt for Delaware Senate candidate Christine O'Donnell, the waitstaff at Arner's Family Restaurant could have told them exactly where she was.

The answer: At this iconic Delaware diner tucked into a highway cloverleaf near New Castle.

Four nights after O'Donnell was parodied on Saturday Night Live's season opener, she was holding a brainstorming session at two pushed-together tables. It was the first time anyone at Arner's remembered serving O'Donnell, who was "very gracious" to the staff. (Her group left a $30 tip on a $104 bill. They paid with a Friends of Christine O'Donnell credit card.)

For political newbies, a stop at Arner's is a Delaware rite of passage. Arner's regulars include Gov. Jack Markell ("grilled cheese"), Attorney General Beau Biden ("I love the pies"), Sen. Ted Kaufman ("turkey burgers"), and O'Donnell opponent Chris Coons ("eggs and a short stack" about three times a week).

If Delaware politics were a board game, Arner's would be a square on the board. It sits hard by Route 13, once the state's major north-south route.

"Joe [Biden] used to eat here until he became V.P.," owner Rob Morgan says. "Now he doesn't have the time. Even when he's in town, he doesn't come in."

At Arner's, politicos blend like caramels in a box of chocolates. No autographed 8x10s paper the walls. Heads don't swivel when a U.S. senator digs into the $2.99 two-egg breakfast special. Union shirts and denim jackets mingle with $800 suits. In the parking lot, a shiny black Mercedes sidles up to a paint-challenged Camry.

Politically, the diner is a zipper merge of red and blue. Mary Winard has been waiting tables there for 27 years - or "since Beau was a baby." She remembers that the late Sen. Bill Roth, of Roth IRA fame, loved the five-inch-high banana crème pie, Joe Biden wore the best-looking suits, and Dan Quayle once ate at the counter and got up without leaving a tip.

"We talked about that for awhile," she says.

Morgan remembers that the Clinton-era Secret Service decided against letting the president eat there after casing the place and asking some diners to move. "They said we had too many suspicious characters," Morgan says.

Republican Rep. Mike Castle figures it's the food and location (literally a stone's throw from the state's major thoroughfares) that make the restaurant a go-to spot for politicos. "It's a great breakfast spot, and campaigns often meet in the morning to hash out whatever it is they're going to do," Castle says.

"You never know who you might run into at Arner's, says Attorney General Biden, a Democrat.

"It's like old-home week," says Terry Spence, former speaker of the Delaware House, who stops at Arner's four times a week.

"The amazing thing is you see your opponent in the restaurant, and you're happy to see them," Spence says. "It must be something in the water or in the air."

Democrat Coons, too, has come face-to-face with past political rivals at the diner. "Even when we disagree on politics, we can always agree on Arner's," he says. (The staff of O'Donnell, his opponent, did not make her available for comment.)

Democratic Sen. Tom Carper is not a regular, but he says he never misses his lucky election-day breakfast of an omelet, whole-grain toast, and raisin bran with bananas.

"Biden, Carper, a whole bunch of them, they say we're their lucky charm," says Joann Sims, who has been waiting tables at Arner's for a quarter-century.

Coons says he often outstays his original breakfast companions by 30 minutes because he spots so many people he knows. "It's kind of like an extended living room," he says of the diner's interior, a mix of wood-trimmed Formica tables and pricey Murano droplights.

Most, but not all, meetings at Arner's end well. The restaurant's name was entered into the court record at the sensational Thomas Capano murder trial, the love-triangle case that spawned an Ann Rule book and a Lifetime movie.

According to testimony, it was at Arner's that Capano's older mistress passed the political insider the .22-caliber Beretta that he used to kill his younger mistress.

"It's amazing what goes on right under your nose," says co-owner Kristin Morgan.

"That was one of those bad-publicity-is-better-than-no-publicity deals," her husband Rob says. "You don't want to be associated with a murderer, but, you know, your name got out. . . ."

They don't want to be associated with any one candidate in Delaware's nationally ballyhooed elections, either. "I'm a restaurant. I feed everybody," Rob Morgan says. "I feed Republicans. I feed Democrats. I feed tea parties."

Celebs from beyond tiny Delaware drop by Arner's on occasion, too. Former Los Angeles Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda reportedly loved the éclairs the size of hoagies. Country singer Kenny Rogers, who had his own chain of restaurants, ate there. So did actor William Hurt. NASCAR ace Jeff Gordon was no favorite. ("He didn't like my lemon meringue pie. He was an ass," Rob Morgan says.)

"Important things would get discussed over meals at Arner's because many of us have busy schedules, but you always have to take time to eat," former state legislator Herman Holloway Jr. says. "I used to thoroughly enjoy the cream chipped beef."

A few minutes after being interviewed, Holloway called back to say, "Now that I started thinking about the homemade mashed potatoes, I think that's where I'm going to end up later today."

Congressional candidate Glen Urquhart, who won the Republican primary and is partial to the scrapple, says Sen. Bill Roth first took him to Arner's more than a decade ago.

"Everybody thinks it's the big-ticket restaurants where business gets done, but it's not. It's the places where people feel comfortable," he says. "If you really want to get things done, you don't go to a place where you worry about who's watching you and whether you'll get spots on your tie."

On a recent Sunday morning, while Urquhart, in a ketchup-red campaign shirt, was eating breakfast with his wife, Angela, two men near the cash register talked politics.

"Who are you going to vote for?" the first man asked.

"I dunno," the other man said. "Does it matter?"