A comment by ‘hipoli’ a couple of days ago about the Congressional race drew a number of lively responses. Here’s a piece of the comment that started it:
Be clear to your readers about where you stand in this particular race or be more fair in what your reporting (again, if you already have and I missed it, I’m wrong here). You don’t have to do as I suggest (it is after all, your blog) but I think that would be most fair and honest to your loyal readers.
I’m not sure I can “be clear”, but I’ll take a stab at revealing my ambivalence. I haven’t really thought this all the way through, so you’ll have to put up with a bit of rambling.
Yes, as I said earlier, Colleen Hanabusa would have been my first choice (among available candidates) if we lived in the 1st District. We have a roundabout connection with her via Meda’s family that goes way back. I should clarify that–the Hanabusa’s relation with Meda’s family is via Meda’s second cousin once removed. Although we’re personally quite distant from it, we met Colleen’s parents several times as a result. We also overlapped in graduate school at UH with Colleen’s former husband, and have watched her political career with interest.
Colleen has demonstrated her political effectiveness by becoming Hawaii’s first female president of the Senate, no easy task. She had a law career before politics, so isn’t a one-trick pony. She smart, well-spoken, and confident. She’s garnered lots of political backing from a pretty wide swath of the political spectrum. I have no doubt she would be an effective member of Congress.
And, if you’ve been dropping by this site for a while, you’ll know that I’ve been quite critical of Ed Case in the past. He’s more conservative on key issues than I like, and doesn’t have a similar record of legislative effectiveness.
That said, in this case, at this particular political moment, and in a special election with a short timeline, there was a legitimate question of who would be the strongest Democratic candidate to face Djou. Available polling data suggested that, for whatever reasons, it wasn’t Colleen. At some point, I expressed the view that I felt it was important to back the Democrat most likely to beat Djou, even if that meant abandoning my preferred candidate. There’s room for debate on that, as reflected in the comments on this blog, but it’s a legitimate debate.
Not being heavily involved in the internal factions of the Democratic Party, my emphasis was on the “big picture”, putting a Democrat into the seat, even for this short term to be decided by the special election. Apparently the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee reached a similar conclusion. Other Democrats saw it differently, either because of a commitment to Colleen, a different intermediate-long term political strategy, or because they were just dead set against Case. All legitimate positions, so it’s no wonder that the debate has continued and will carry over into the primary.
That’s the election. Then there’s the ongoing analysis of campaign finances, which raises a different set of questions.
Some people believe that, in a more perfect world, candidates wouldn’t have to raise money in order to campaign. I used to agree. Now I’m not so sure. The ability to raise campaign funds is one measure of the degree of political support a candidate is able to muster. Does a candidate have enough of a following to launch a plausible campaign?
Does the ability to raise big money make a candidate “suspect”? Not necessarily so. After all, money will follow a winner or a projected winner, and at any given moment it’s hard to know whether money is leading or following. But, if money talks, it’s important to know who candidates are listening to?
There’s a thin line between having the skills and ambition to put together a winning political coalition, and being “anointed” by political power brokers as part of their own larger political plan. There are dangers to be alert to either way.
Politics is a matter not only of ideas and principles, but of debts and obligations, friendships and commitments, a constant clash and balancing of competing and conflicting interests. I look at campaign contributions as markers identifying the interests competing for the attention of a candidate or public official.
Whew. Enough of that for an early Sunday morning.
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Thank you, Ian, for responding. I appreciate your thoughtful ramblings.
I especially love your final paragraph:
“Politics is a matter not only of ideas and principles, but of debts and obligations, friendships and commitments, a constant clash and balancing of competing and conflicting interests. I look at campaign contributions as markers identifying the interests competing for the attention of a candidate or public official.”
It is a great summary of the state of things, really.
Why hubby and I did not vote for Hanabusa:
1. She does not live in the district (she lives in Waianae). Per hubby, she is a carpetbagger.
2. She has a lousy personality and has no appeal whatsoever. Doesn’t she come across as shrill to you?
We voted for Ed Case.
gigi, if I’m not mistaken, Case does not live in CD1 as well.
Case lives in Manoa, CD1. Has he moved to another district???
case lives in Kaneohe, Oahu…. making him a carpetbagger under gigi-hubby’s definition…
Per hubby, Kaneohe is part of CD1. Waianae is CD2.
gigi, I’m afraid your husband is wrong. Kaneohe is in CD2.
See: http://hawaii.gov/elections/maps/2010/oahu-12.pdf
So if you voted for Ed because Colleen was a carpetbagger, that shouldn’t have factored into your decision.
By the way, Djou himself carpetbagged when he ran for the council seat since he was a representative from Kaneohe and then moved to East Honolulu to run for the council.
how exactly is that a qualification or disqualification to hold federal office? carpetbagging is a term that came from the U.S. post-civil war by racist pro-Confederate white Southerners for Northerners who moved to the South and politically allied themselves with freed slaves and pro-Union white Southerners. the framers of the U.S. constitution did not think district residency was a qualification and didn’t include. of course, under your hubby’s definition of a carpet bagger, Case is one too and that didn’t seem to stop you two from voting for him. of all the videos I’ve watched of Hanabusa, shrill is not one of the labels I’d put on her, but given the lack of inner consistency with your carpetbagging reason, this is also likely blinded by something also having nothing to do with Hanabusa.
Colleen SOOO has personality! Are you kidding me?! Now, she’s not easy to get to know, I certainly admit that. But once you do-she’s pretty darn cool.
Yeah, and she treats her staff as as disposable pieces of chattel. She’s the most extreme version I’ve ever seen of the politician who is constantly looking past the person to whom she is”speaking” or “listening” to see if there is someone better, more powerful, more useful to her to whom she should devote her attention.
How we treat “little,” less powerful people (restaurant wait staff, hotel housekeepers, office custodians, etc.) is important. Like they say, a person’s true character is evidenced by what they do when no one is looking. By the measure of how she treats people less powerful than her, Hanabusa is a misanthrope, or at leats would be if she didn’t have personal handlers telling her how to treat these folks. I will vote for her because of the alternative, but it will be with little enthusiasm and I doubt many her “supporters” will have much for enthusiasm for her “personality.”
I do know Colleen, hipoli.
In my opinion, to insist she has personality would be an overstatement.
[Edited to remove unnecessary personal insults. If the person posting the comment had left a valid email, I would have checked with them first.]
Well, Ed Case has just pulled out of the CD1 race.
How’s this idea for Ed’s next move (call this unpaid & unsolicited): Carpetbag into Hemmings district, run for the Senate seat, & make a bid for Senate Presidency, or at least WAM chair.
How better to be a pain in Mufi’s okole while you wait this all out.
Just the idea gives me the giggles.
In any event, Ed Case has just withdrawn, per announcement to his email list and Advertiser story.
Hipoli-
your suggestion is a HUGE risk given the timing. Upside is relatively minor (state senate seat), downside is huge (beaten by a nobody).
I don’t know who will be running on the republican side (heard something about a Hemmings staffer, but I never confirmed), but Case has momentum working against him and has to seriously consider that voters might have “Case-fatigue” right now. Any attempt at “carpetbagging” right now just plays into the “Ed Case perpetually looking for an elected office gig” meme. By running this fall, Case will essentially validate the ads that Djou ran against him. “What Ed Case wants to do for a living changes with the tradewinds.”
He should sit out the fall election cycle. Two years from now, he will have a better chance. Even if there is some sort of special election in the off-year. He needs to play smart now and bide his time.
It was a brilliant move by Case. In a contested primary, Case would have to be all-in and if he lost, particularly by more than ten percent, it would essentially end his political career.
With this decision, Case has positioned himself well on a number of levels:
– He’s the new Ed Case and is willing to do something for the “good of the party”; something he was not known for in the past.
– He makes amends to a large degree to those who felt offended by his race against Akaka and shows he’s willing to “wait his turn.”
– He can continue to build his moderate base which some analysts believe is a growing not a shrinking base in Hawaii.
– Colleen (and Mazie to a slightly lesser degree) will surely show her “ultra-liberal” credentials if she should prevail in November and serves in the Congress. Case can then use this in future elections to prove that Hawaii needs a moderate like him to temper the ideological extremes.
It’s critical to note that Case did not say he will work hard to help elect Colleen in November. Indeed, his message was that he’s going to take care of his lawn and go body surfing.
Brilliant move.
Sorry, Charles, but I think its a bit of a stretch to characterize this as a “brilliant move.”
The fact of the matter is that he was the third place finisher in a three-way (major candidate)special election.
Most of the time, people call this “facing reality.”
No fan of Case or Djou, but very troubled by Hanabusa’s ties to Stone/Ko Olina and others. Much too close, and mostly unexamined by news media lately.
I agree with West Side Story. Honolulu’s soon-to-be sole daily newspaper mostly is staffed with people who do not investigate powerful politicians here. And the reporters simply won’t learn how to do it overnight, especially with their owner. Way too many powerful people in this state go unexamined and it is about to get worse with the loss of hundreds of people from the Honolulu Advertiser. My only advice: if you know of crimes taking place, don’t just sit on it and be quiet out of fear and greed — keep telling people.
I think Case could move into Lanikai today and take the seat, winning most areas, save Waimanalo.
Ed’s still got game. KITV is reporting whispers that he could make a run for Mayor!
@Woowoo, if in ten years, Case is a U.S. Senator, I would say it was brilliant what he did today.
If he is relegated to the periphery of electoral politics, then I would say it was still a smart move.
I’m not astute enough or clairvoyant enough to know where Case will be in ten years.
Case’s withdrawal from the CD1 race shows exactly what the REAL big picture was in the special election. The “losing” Democrat was tremendously compromised in the primary. We can only be thankful that enough Democrats understood this race for what it was and voted their principles.
It is a little surprising that Ian missed this. Is he too close to the politics now?
Missed it? Nope.
I’ve said all along that there have been different agendas, goals, and strategies at work depending on what vantage point you took.
I’m not active inside the party, and from my point of view it was important to hold the 1st District seat.
Others, as I’ve said, saw the elimination of an internal rival as a higher priority than holding the seat.
I don’t think one side or the other had a monopoly on the “principles” referred to by “The Lesson”. That question of goals and subsequent strategies was a legitimate matter of debate, and there’s no denying that there was a split among Democrats on it.
And now you’ve even missed what you missed.
The one poll you based your recommendation on was a Case tout and few if any other polls corroborated it. Most showed the Democrats irreparably splitting the vote.
As the election drew closer, polling for either Democratic candidate was so far behind the single Republican candidate that either would have required about the same margin of polling error (far outside the reported error) to have won. So it did not make sense to play the compromise-principles-to-eke-out-a-victory card, since neither candidate was much more likely than the other to buck the polls to a degree that secured a win (in actuality as we saw Hanabusa was the candidate that bucked the polls more, that was also foreseeable).
This is not about principles in general, but YOUR principles. Hanabusa represented yours but you recommended Case. You were looking at the race the wrong way. This election was not going to be won on a “hold your nose and vote” late rally around one Democratic candidate, that’s not the climate or election circumstance. It was long clear it was about positioning for November.
oh knock it off with the stupid attacks. If Case would have run as the only Democrat, Case easily would have mopped the floor with Djou. Now that Djou is in office, Hanabusa’s chances of winning — even now that Case has bowed down to her — are weak. Djou easily can go after the moderate votes that were behind Case, leaving Hanabusa stuck.
The Real Lesson: Too many people like The Lesson insist on backing losers as winners. If Case was 10 points ahead of Hanabusa in all polls, you still would refuse to back him. Your real Lesson will be in November.
Left alone, either D- candidate would have mopped the floor with Djou.
If Case was as strong as you portray him to be, Colleen would have lost this. The polls were wrong, now weren’t they? And we knew they were.
The Real Lesson? The best candidate really will win this November.
Just as it should be.