Tag: neil abercrombie
Hawaii Sets Friday Make-Up Election To Decide Senate Nomination

Hawaii Sets Friday Make-Up Election To Decide Senate Nomination

By Cathleen Decker, Los Angeles Times

A primary election in Hawaii that had threatened to extend weeks beyond last Saturday’s balloting will conclude Friday when voters affected by Tropical Storm Iselle cast the remaining ballots that will determine the Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate.

Appointed incumbent Sen. Brian Schatz held a lead of 1,635 votes, out of 230,000 cast, over challenger and U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa when ballots from all but two precincts were tallied.

Voting in the two precincts in the Puna area of the Big Island had been postponed because of power outages and blocked roads caused by Iselle, which came ashore early Friday.

Initially, state officials had said they would mail ballots to those who had not heeded calls to vote before the storm, and give residents three weeks to return them.

But on Monday night, state election officer Scott Nago announced that voting would be held Friday, for storm-affected residents only, at the local Keonepoko Elementary School. Results will be announced Friday night, cutting short what otherwise would have been a lengthy wait to determine the majority party nominee.

Nago said in a statement that the change in plans followed consultations with the state attorney general, the Defense Department, and county election officials.

Although the Senate race technically has been too close to call, the election math is not in Hanabusa’s favor.

Just over 8,000 voters reside in the two precincts, and many either already cast ballots or don’t regularly vote. Among the remainder, Hanabusa would have to overwhelm Schatz, something she failed to do in any area of the state on Saturday. (Schatz has narrowly defeated her in Big Island ballots cast so far.)

The tumultuous finish was in keeping with the controversy that has surrounded the seat. It became open with the December 2012 death of longtime Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, who just before he died sent a letter to Gov. Neil Abercrombie asking that Hanabusa take the seat.

But Abercrombie instead appointed Schatz, who was his lieutenant governor. Abercrombie further inflamed Hanabusa’s supporters and the state’s Japanese-American political establishment by questioning in a Los Angeles Times interview whether Inouye actually was the author of the Hanabusa request. (He later apologized to Inouye’s widow but insisted the senator had given him free rein to appoint whomever he wanted.)

The Schatz appointment and Abercrombie’s subsequent comments were factors in the governor’s landslide primary loss Saturday to fellow Democrat and state Sen. David Ige.

Schatz, not burdened by Abercrombie’s record of antagonizing key elements of his own party, managed to carve out enough of an independent image to survive the initial balloting and, analysts on the island expect, the closing votes on Friday. (Even before Friday, Schatz had carried 40,000 more Democratic votes than the governor.)

“He’s been in office a year — and then to them he’s a senator, he’s not running as Neil Abercrombie’s lieutenant governor,” said California-based Democratic pollster Ben Tulchin, who has done extensive work in Hawaii for independent groups.

The Democratic nominee will face Republican Cam Cavasso in November for the right to serve out the final two years of Inouye’s term. But even Republican analysts have suggested that, no matter who wins the Democratic nod, the party’s advantage is such that the general election is a formality.

Photo: Waikiki Natatorium via Flickr

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‘Self-Inflicted’ Wounds Led To Hawaii Governor’s Defeat, Analysts Say

‘Self-Inflicted’ Wounds Led To Hawaii Governor’s Defeat, Analysts Say

By Cathleen Decker, Los Angeles Times

Somehow, 40 years into a political career that was crowned by his election as Hawaii’s governor, Neil Abercrombie ignored the most basic lesson of the trade: It’s a popularity contest.

After years of antagonizing not just partisan opponents but key elements of his own Democratic Party, retaliation came Saturday in the form of an epic thumping. Abercrombie lost his party’s primary by 35 points to state Sen. David Ige, who campaigned on his mastery of the state budget but implicitly promised a return to the more workman-like, less bombastic style that defined Hawaii’s political class before Abercrombie.

The depth of anger toward the incumbent was evident in two statistics: Abercrombie, 76, lost to a candidate he outspent by a 10-1 margin. And he lost to a candidate who, one poll showed, was unknown to almost 4 in 10 Hawaii Democrats as recently as February.

Ige’s victory highlighted a strange primary election for Hawaii, one that will not end for weeks: Two Democrats vying for the nomination for a U.S. Senate seat were separated by about 1,600 votes, and the outcome of the race may hinge on ballots yet to be cast in two precincts where voting was canceled because of Friday’s pounding by Tropical Storm Iselle.

State elections officials said that voters who had not cast ballots in the Big Island precincts will be mailed new ones, which must be returned within three weeks. But the timing of the start of that process was not clear Sunday, nor was it clear how the Senate candidates would marshal their forces to campaign in the damaged areas.

Some strategists said that both Abercrombie’s trouncing and Sen. Brian Schatz’s narrow lead over Rep. Colleen Hanabusa in a race he was expected to easily win suggested that Asian American voters in particular had rallied to Ige and Hanabusa to the detriment of the incumbents.

The races were fraught with ethnic divisions driven in part by the circumstances of Schatz’s appointment by Abercrombie to the Senate seat held by Daniel Inouye until his death. In a deathbed missive, the 50-year senator had made clear he wanted Hanabusa to be appointed to his seat, but Abercrombie sided instead with his lieutenant governor, Schatz.

Then, pouring acid into the wound, Abercrombie earlier this year suggested in an interview with the Los Angeles Times that someone other than Inouye had manufactured the imprimatur. (He later apologized to Inouye’s widow, Irene, but insisted the senator had given him free rein to pick his successor.)

The contretemps escalated what was already a perilous circumstance for the first-term governor and, before that, legislator and member of Congress. Jennifer Duffy, who studies governor’s races for the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, said that after Abercrombie’s comments on Inouye, “people kind of looked at him in a different light.”

“A lot of it is just self-inflicted,” she said.

Indeed, Abercrombie entered the race woefully weakened — one poll said almost half of Hawaiians had a negative view of him — which required him to both curry favor among his fellow Democrats and run an artful campaign. Those who watched his fall said he did neither.

Barely six months after his election, he angered the tourism industry — the state’s biggest source of income — by saying that it was “so stupid” for the state to pay to host the NFL Pro Bowl, a game that generated upwards of $30 million in visitor spending and state tax revenue.

He alienated the state’s teachers union by imposing a contract upon it during labor negotiations; the union became an early and important backer of Ige.

And then he cast aspersions on Inouye’s braintrust and by extension the state’s largest voting group, Asian Americans, and inflamed the elbowing between them and the more liberal white voting bloc that was Abercrombie and Schatz’s power base.

“This is a very small place and people have very long memories,” said Floyd Takeuchi, a writer and former political journalist.

Ben Tulchin, a California-based Democratic pollster who has worked extensively in Hawaii, said Abercrombie ran, “quite frankly, one of the worst campaigns imaginable for an incumbent in trouble.”

Time after time, he said, Abercrombie’s combative style pushed aside voters he needed, even if he eventually worked his way toward their views when it came to policy. A personality that was bearable when he was working in the statehouse or in far-off Washington became less so in the in-your-living-room role of governor.

Tulchin said Abercrombie negated his overwhelming financial advantage by refusing to define Ige before Ige had the money to define himself. In hewing to Hawaii’s traditional distaste for negative campaigning, he gave up one of the few options left to an unpopular politician.

“If you’re an incumbent who is in trouble and you have the resources, it can’t just be a referendum on you,” Tulchin said. “You have to tell others why the other guy is worse than you.”

In the end, being the anti-Abercrombie was more than enough for Ige. The question now is whether it will carry him to victory in November. The general election race will feature three major candidates: Ige, Republican Duke Aiona, and independent Mufi Hanneman.

While Ige easily outdistanced the others Saturday, he opens the campaign with more momentum than money. Three-way races are notoriously difficult to predict and the winner in the Democratic state may be dictated by where Hanneman gets his voters, analyst Duffy said.

“If he pulls votes from Ige, this is really a race,” she said.

The winner of the Democratic Senate primary is expected to have no such difficulty against Republican Cam Cavasso; the race is not expected to alter the balance of power in the Senate. The winner will hold the seat until 2016, the conclusion of Inouye’s original term.

“In the Senate race, it was all about the primary,” pollster Tulchin said.

Photo via WikiCommons

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U.S. Senate Race In Hawaii Pits Opposing Wings Of Democratic Party

U.S. Senate Race In Hawaii Pits Opposing Wings Of Democratic Party

By Mark Z. Barabak, Los Angeles Times

HONOLULU — In primaries across the country — in Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi and other states — Republicans are locked in a heart-and-soul battle between purists and pragmatists clashing over what it means to represent the party, its philosophy and core values.

Here in Hawaii there’s a similar fight over power and purpose, but this one is between Democrats. It’s a fight for a U.S. Senate seat, a rare enough prize in a state that has elected just six people senator since statehood in 1959. But it is also a battle over age and gender, over ethnicity and identity, over old grudges and new tensions.

Rivalries and historical resentments often surface in Hawaii politics — sometimes years later, like a bottle cast to sea — and the fierce contest between appointed Senator Brian Schatz and his fellow Democrat, Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, is no different: The two ran against each other in a 2006 congressional primary, and they both lost.

The latest contest arises from the death of Democratic Senator Daniel K. Inouye in December 2012, less than a month shy of completing his 50th year in the Senate. Democratic Gov. Neil Abercrombie ignored what was presented as Inouye’s dying wish, that the senator’s protege, Hanabusa, be named his successor, and instead appointed Schatz, the lieutenant governor and a former head of the state party.

In choosing, Abercrombie cited seniority as an overriding factor. Schatz is 41 and Hanabusa is 62, which suggests — actuarially speaking — he could serve many more years and gain more clout for a state that has counted for decades on a generous ladling of federal largess, thanks to Inouye’s power and longevity. After tourism, the U.S. military is Hawaii’s biggest source of income.

“Go to Washington, bring federal dollars home,” said Randy Perreira, head of the Hawaii Government Employees Association, the state’s largest and most powerful union, which has endorsed Schatz. “That’s the game.”

Abercrombie’s mention of age led Hanabusa to accuse the governor of sexism, suggesting his comments insulted women who devote themselves to family and start their professional careers later in life. (Hanabusa has no children but practiced law for several years before launching her political career.) “We make choices,” Hanabusa said in an interview. “We have to.”

Another fault line is race and ethnicity. Asians make up the largest segment of the population, about 4 in 10 residents, followed by whites, at just over 25 percent. Nearly a quarter of the population identifies itself as being of two races.

A generation of Japanese-American World War II veterans, including Inouye, helped break down long-standing economic and social barriers that had once favored white plantation owners and businessmen and, with the help of organized labor, converted pre-statehood Hawaii from a Republican-leaning territory into today’s Democratic stronghold.

Within the party, however, there has long been a divide between pragmatists and a smaller group of activists, typically younger, whiter and more ideological. For years, Inouye and Abercrombie represented those wings; now, it’s Hanabusa and Schatz.

They took opposite sides in the bitter 2008 Democratic presidential contest: Hanabusa, like Inouye, backed Hillary Rodham Clinton. Schatz, like Abercrombie, was an early and ardent backer of native son Barack Obama and ran his successful Hawaii campaign.

Philosophically, though, the Senate contestants are largely in sync. The National Journal, which annually rates congressional members by ideology, has Schatz tied with two others this year as the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate. Hanabusa, who was elected to Congress in 2010 after serving as state Senate president, consistently ranks among the more liberal House members.

There are differences on some issues, among them Hanabusa’s support for limited drilling in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, reminiscent of Inouye’s long alliance with Republican former Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska, who pushed to open oil production there. Schatz opposes it.

Hanabusa also opposed forcing drug companies to pay the federal government a rebate for bulk purchases under the Medicare and Medicaid programs and voted to support the Simpson-Bowles commission, which, among its proposals, suggested raising the age for Social Security benefits to help cut the federal deficit.

Hanabusa said she opposed changes to Social Security but supported the commission’s model as a starting point for discussion. Indeed, members of the Democratic House leadership also backed Simpson-Bowles.

Still, the Schatz campaign raises those examples to question Hanabusa’s fealty to the Democratic Party’s principles. His first TV ad featured the senator in a homey setting with his elderly father-in-law, vowing to protect Social Security. Hanabusa, who has raised only about half as much campaign cash as Schatz, has yet to begin her TV advertising.

Schatz said the race should be about performance, favorably comparing his year-plus in the Senate with Hanabusa’s House record. He says his endorsement by President Obama — a rare intervention in a primary — and support from Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, along with much of the rest of the party establishment, means he can deliver in ways the congresswoman cannot.

“That’s what I want to make this election about,” Schatz said in an interview.

Hanabusa said she would have “the same kinds of relationships and opportunities afforded to me as well” if elected to the Senate. Sounding a rare note of bipartisanship, she said it was important to work across the aisle, as Inouye did. “Times change and majority status changes,” she said. “What doesn’t change is relationships that are built.”

Much of the drama surrounding the race so far has focused on a letter, ascribed to Inouye on his deathbed, seeking Hanabusa’s selection. Abercrombie has questioned the authorship and said Inouye told him, privately, to use his best judgment in filling any vacancy.

“I wouldn’t want the Senate race to get lost in this question of what Sen. Inouye wanted or didn’t want,” Abercrombie told the Los Angeles Times this month.

With so many cross-currents, there seems little chance of that. Polling is difficult in Hawaii, a state with one of the worst turnout rates in the country. But all sides agree the race is exceedingly close and will probably stay that way to the end.

The outcome probably won’t affect the fight for control of the Senate. Whoever wins the August 9 Democratic primary is overwhelmingly favored to win in November and serve the remainder of Inouye’s term. Then, it is expected, the incumbent will seek a full six-year term in 2016.

Photo: Senator Brian Schatz via Flickr