Yesterday’s post drew quite a few comments, including several citing the work of Dan Tuttle, the late UH political scientist who was a well known analyst of local politics and a leader in bringing the science of modern political polls into Hawaii. Tuttle died in 2006 at the age of 81.
The Hawaii State Library has a number of reports done by Tuttle and his students. A search of Google Scholar turns up a number of citations.
I’ve found it fascinating to read through his series of reports on Hawaii elections published in the Western Political Quarterly. “The 1960 Election in Hawaii” was followed by similar articles for at least the 1962, 1964, and 1966 elections), and there may have been pre-statehood reports as well.
If you have access to the digital collections at the University of Hawaii’s Hamilton Library, the Western Political Quarterly is part of the JSTOR database. JSTOR may also be available through the Hawaii State Library system, but I can’t remember the right password to get into their computer system to check. Perhaps someone else can do that and let us know.
Tuttle wrote what has become great history. His article on the 1960 election describes how Richard Nixon was favored to win Hawaii. He had been endorsed by the ILWU, was better known in Hawaii because of his base in California, and he launched his presidential campaign in the islands. Most local Democrats had supported either Lyndon Johnson or Adlai Stevenson, and the easterner Kennedy wasn’t well known. The only evidence of a possible Kennedy victory was turned up in a poll by UH students published the week before the election, which put Kennedy ahead 52.3 percent to Nixon’s 47.7 percent, Tuttle reported.
But Dan Inouye and State House Speaker Elmer Cravalho “without open defiance, took the Kennedy cause into ILWU strongholds.”
Tuttle tells a good story, showing how local county politics impacted the larger state and national campaigns.
There are so many interesting tidbits. Nixon’s campaign in Hawaii was estimated to have cost $100,000, while Kennedy’s campaign was estimated to have spent $40,000, while Dan Inouye’s congressional campaign cost $30,000. Democrats spent considerably less than Republicans “due in part to the fact that Democrats were more successful in mobilizing corps of volunteers.”
Tuttle wrote in 1961:
Representative Inouye’s 1960 landslide victory set the stage for his candidacy for the United States Senate or the governorship in 1962, and the Democratic Party may profit greatly from this in the days ahead.
How true.
Anyway, it might be interesting to seek permissions to publish Tuttle’s series of election analyses in book form as a mini political history of the period.
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After yesterday’s discussion, I felt an urge to read more of Tuttle’s work and would be glad if they were readily available. I guess there is always Hamilton’s Hawaiian Collection.
As a UH underclassman, along with my eclectic reading of leftwing classics, I took the time to read some of Tuttle’s studies. I remember xeroxing the complete text of one of his studies, just so I could “possess” the knowledge. Not to many UH students doing that at the time.
Dame:
I take umbrage to your characterization of Professor Tuttle’s work as “leftwing classics”. I viewed his work as strickly impartial and impirical in nature. He never took sides as far as I know and asked of his students only to keep an open and objective mind in viewing any situation.
As a political scientist in the “old school”, Tuttle didn’t have an axe to grind for the left, right, democrat, or republican. He just wanted objective analysis of the political system in Hawaii that was interwoven in the unique ethnic, social and economic mix that made up Hawaii.
To me, he was the like the neighborhood tinker who like to take things apart and put them back together to see how everything worked. That is what his reports and life’s work represent to me, objectively reporting the unique issues and people who made up Hawaii.
Left wing, right wing, it’s all relative. Case calls Hirono left wing; I call him a moderate republican.
Russell,
You are not reading carefully. I did NOT refer to Dr. Tuttle’s work as a “leftwing classic.” I wrote “ALONG with my reading of leftwing classics.” Had I written “AMONG” the leftwing classics, your point would be valid.
In my refrigerator, along with a jar of pickles, I have some chocolate syrup. The chocolate syrup is NOT in the pickles and the pickles are not in the chocolate.
Golly Gee. I suspect you go through the day “taking umbrage” at a heckuva lot of things you needn’t. Chill. If you need a place to do it, I’ve got room in my refrigerator, along side the pickles and chocolate. Just don’t mix them together or your stomach will “take umbrage.”
High emotions at election time? Who wouldda thunk. LOL
Take it easy, y’all. Go for a walk…breathe…
As a grad student, I took a polling workshop from Tuttle. It was one of the major reasons why I shifted from a pure academic career in political science to a more robust political life using the social, cultural and artistic media modalities to tell the stories that need to be heard.
Never met Tuttle but admired him from 220 miles distant and found his work worthy. Too bad his polling successors have not followed suit.
He was well established by the time I arrived just before 1966 primary and his work thereafter was without peer.