My entry here a days ago concerning the latest campaign update from Ed Case drew a substantive reply from the former Congressman.

I had on my sometime-soon list to respond to your blog of September 18th. Now that you’ve gone back to that well in your yesterday blog, I have these comments.

-I’ve been a member of the Democratic Party of Hawaii for somewhere around or over a quarter century, and will be continuing as a member.

-I’ve run as a Democrat in each of my eleven campaigns for state and federal office, and will be running as a Democrat in my next campaign.

-My beliefs, positions and voting records as a state and federal elected official have on balance been consistent with Democrat platforms and other Democrat elected officials, although I have disagreed and will disagree with the mainstream of my party on occasion.

-I personally decided on President-elect Obama as my choice earlier this year and pledged to him as a delegate before the May Hawaii Democrat state convention (all of which, to my knowledge, was earlier than any of, for example, Sens. Inouye and Akaka, Rep. Hirono, Sen. Hanabusa and Mayor Hannemann).

-No, I did not contribute money directly to Obama or any other federal candidate this cycle, although I did (1) phonebank for him, (2) contribute financially to various Democratic candidates and party in Hawaii, and (3) volunteer for various Democratic candidates in Hawaii.

-By comparison, I checked the FEC disclosure database as you did for me and understand that the following elected officials made the following contributions to federal candidates (or didn’t make such contributions) in this election cycle: (1) Rep. Abercrombie made a $2,300 donation to Obama on 9/30/07; (2) Sen. Akaka made a $2,300 donation to Sen. Clinton on 7/31/08 and a $2,300 donation to Obama on 9/30/08; (3) Sen. Hanabusa made a $250 donation to Clinton on 10/24/07; and (4) Sen. Inouye, Rep. Hirono and Mayor Hannemann made no such donations.

-During my years in federal office (see FEC), I and my campaigns gave somewhere in the range of $30,000 to federal Democratic committees, $10,000 to federal Democratic candidates, and $10,000 to Hawaii Democratic state and county parties.

-I’ve supported mass transit for Honolulu dating probably back to my 70s congressional staff years with Sen. Matsunaga, did support it during my service in Congress, do support it and will continue to support it if again elected.

-I did endorse and volunteer for Councilmember Kobayashi for Mayor, my reasons for which were largely separate from the mass transit debate.

I’m sure we could get into various related discussions, and recall that in a prior go-around I suggested we meet so that we could do just that. That offer stands (your convenience?), but I’ll just leave it here to these facts for now.

Given this background, I’m perhaps more puzzled why none of Case’s communications to supporters during this crucial and very competitive presidential campaign season never took sides or expressed his own views on the race, especially since the independent voters he has courted were such an important constituency for both Democratic and Republican candidates.

I guess this time I’ll follow up on Ed’s willingness to meet and discuss these issues further.

From the free enterprise zone comes this news: Sarah Palin’s reported belief that “Africa is not a country” has spawned a cottage industry, according to the Minnesota Independent.

Thanks to the Star-Bulletin for pointing out the insanity of having Catholic Charities providing most of the sex education provided to Hawaii public school students, limited to an “abstinence only” approach by strings attached to federal funding. And more appreciation for the newspaper’s follow-up editorial on the matter yesterday.

And here’s yet another dose of local political history, this time my 1985 news clips about Common Cause/Hawaii. I split the year into a Part 1 and Part 2, both large pdf files.

There’s a lot of interesting info here.

A March 18 clip quotes retired AP bureau chief Howard Graves on an award I received from SPJ. Graves described me as “a nagging toothache in the centers of power.” It’s on my all time favorite quote short list.

Early in the year, the key issue appears to have been secrecy vs. sunshine. Sometime in the summer, though, Common Cause began raising questions about lobbying by the State Judiciary. Those questions snowballed, resulting in major investigations and a shakeup of the courts, with political fallout that still has its lingering effects on judicial-legislative relations.