Hawaii Race: Crucial Test for GOP, Democrats

Democrats are nervous in paradise.

A special election in the Honolulu-based congressional district of President Obama’s birthplace has divided Democrats so sharply that Republicans have a rare shot at a House seat in Hawaii.

It’s a district as blue as the ocean waters that lap its shore. But House Democrats recently abandoned the race, acknowledging that a split between their two candidates, former Rep. Ed Case and state Senate President Colleen Hanabusa, has paved the way for Republican Honolulu City Councilman Charles Djou to win the May 22 contest.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. Few Democrats raised an eyebrow in December when former Rep. Neil Abercrombie announced he would resign the seat to focus full-time on his gubernatorial bid. Democrats have held the district since Hawaii became a state in 1959, and Obama took a whopping 70 percent of the vote here in 2008.

But that was before Democrats failed to resolve internal rifts and unite behind Case or Hanabusa. Case, a wealthy maverick whose cousin is AOL founder Steve Case, has received strategic advice from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. But he alienated the state’s Democratic elders in 2006 when he challenged Sen. Daniel Akaka in the Democratic primary.

As payback, Akaka and Democratic Sen. Daniel Inouye, the undisputed boss of Hawaii politics, are backing Hanabusa for the House seat. Inuoye, who claims Case lied to him in the process of deciding to challenge Akaka in 2006, recently moved $10,000 to Hanabusa's campaign from his political action committee.

Even Djou admits he wouldn’t be heading toward victory on Saturday if not for the Democratic split and, more specifically, Inouye’s involvement in the race.

“Senator Inouye, I think, enjoys an enormous amount of respect in Hawaii, from myself included. He has an almost mythical level of gravitas in Hawaii politics,” Djou recently told Politico. “In a typical congressional election, in the other 50 states, the DCCC would have gotten their way. But not in Hawaii — and that's because of Senator Inouye.”

The race also has sparked divisions back in Washington, where House Democrats are frustrated with the White House for refusing to intervene. Obama, for his part, recorded a robocall this month that went out to voters in the district.

But the president’s message was vague, encouraging voters only to support a Democrat on May 22. Obama, it seems, has little interest in wading into an intra-party dispute with the powerful chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Ultimately, insiders from both parties believe Democrats will reclaim the House seat, probably as soon as November. While the state allows for open primaries in special elections, Democrats will select a nominee in their September primary for the 2010 midterms. Presumably the party will be able to unify behind that nominee and reclaim the seat.

But then again, maybe not. After all, stranger things have happened.