Tag: colleen hanabusa

Colleen Hanubasa sues to extend polling in Hawaii. Desperately? …Perhaps desperately.

It’s Blue-on-Blue electoral lawfare in Hawaii, so sit back and enjoy:

The suit [filed by Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, D] will ask the five justices for a restraining order to delay Friday’s vote because the people in the Puna district need more time.”People are definitely without water, definitely without electricity and it’s going to be a while,” she said.

Elections officials decided immediately after the storm to cancel walk-in voting at two polling places because residents and workers could not access the sites. Those are the only places where people can vote on Friday. Hanabusa said other residents who could not get to their polling places should also be allowed to participate in the second-chance vote and election officials aren’t being fair to them.

…and that last sentence is the key point, really. Hanabusa trails kinda-incumbent Senator Brian Schatz by about 1,700 votes. Making that up in the Puna voting district (which has about 8,000 or so registered voters) is a kind of a tall order. Making that up, say, statewide, is not.  Mind you, sitting lame-duck Governor Neil Abercrombie – who got trounced in his own primary – is probably not going to be helpful when it comes to doing more than the bare minimum necessary to assure voting.  After all, arguably it was his appointment of Schatz over Hanabusa to the US Senate in the first place that got him into this mess…

Moe Lane

PS: Yeah, it’s a really mixed-up situation in Hawaii right now. Especially if Republican Duke Aiona wins the gubernatorial election.

I predict an upset in Hawaii’s Democratic Senate primary on Saturday.

Alas, I’m doing so because of, well, racism.  Or at least a highly unseemly racialist awareness of the candidates on the part of Hawaiian Democrats:

If U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz falls short in Saturday’s Democratic primary in Hawaii, it will be despite the support he has lined up from a slew of boldface names who are backing his candidacy.

Prominent Washington Democrats ranging from Al Gore to Elizabeth Warren to Harry Reid have all gotten behind the incumbent in his race against U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa.

Most notably, Schatz earned the backing of the first commander-in-chief born in the Aloha State when President Obama endorsed him in March.

Still, it is another native son of Hawaii who truly looms over the special election, offering Hanabusa perhaps the biggest boost in her upset bid: the late Sen. Daniel Inouye, who represented the 50th state in Washington for half a century.

Continue reading I predict an upset in Hawaii’s Democratic Senate primary on Saturday.

Barack Obama may be giving Brian Schatz the Kiss of Death in Hawaii-SEN primary.

As in, he’s endorsing Schatz over Colleen Hanabusa.

Continue reading Barack Obama may be giving Brian Schatz the Kiss of Death in Hawaii-SEN primary.

Some VERY interesting things in this Hawaii News Now/Star Advertiser poll.

And by ‘interesting’ I mean favorable:

  • The most obvious one is that Republican (and former Lt. Gov) Duke Aiona would in a rematch beat Neil Abercrombie 48-40 among registered voters.
  • Charles Djou (running for Senate) has a favorable/unfavorable rating of 58/30, which is fairly close to Colleen Hanabusa’s 62/27. Clearly, Hanabusa’s is better, but not nearly by as much as I would have expected.
  • And this is important because Colleen Hanabusa currently leads incumbent Senator Brian Schatz 48/40 in the Democratic Senate primary.

If the Hawaii News Now/Star Advertiser poll checked the Senate race, it wasn’t reported: based on the numbers, I’d guess that Hanabusa would be ahead of Djou and that Djou would be ahead of Schatz*. That is… remarkable news: particularly if the Hawaiian primaries turn nasty. After all, Djou won his Congressional race because Ed Case and… Colleen Hanabusa… both adamantly refused to accept the results of their primary race. Obviously, the Hawaiian Democratic party is as aware of this as I am: the question is, will they be able to keep whichever Democrat loses in line?

Interesting days ahead.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*You might be forgiven for thinking that this poll suggests that hao… ahem, ‘Caucasians’… may end up having a somewhat thin time of it in Hawaii this election cycle.  Mostly because I’m thinking it, too.  I don’t know what to do about it, though.

Neil Abercrombie ignores Daniel Inouye’s dying wish, picks Brian Schatz for Hawaii Senate.

Just as a thought experiment: imagine what would happen if the following scenario played out…

  • A minority Republican Senator passes away.
  • Choosing a successor is the responsibility of his state’s (white) (Republican) governor.
  • The late Senator in question had formally made a request to the governor that a particular qualified individual (who also happens to be a minority) succeed him.
  • The governor then proceeds to ignore the dying wish of the late Senator, and instead chooses his (white) Lt. Governor.

The question before the board is, Just how big would the resulting media firestorm be, anyway?  Large enough to detect from orbit?

Continue reading Neil Abercrombie ignores Daniel Inouye’s dying wish, picks Brian Schatz for Hawaii Senate.