National Democrats are gearing up to lose a perennially left-leaning district that the GOP hasn’t been able to win since 1988, with the HI-01 special election coming to an end on Saturday. The reason for the loss? Two Democrats are vying for the seat and splitting the vote, allowing for the Republican challenger to sneak in and win.
The loss of the Honolulu-based district will be particularly embarrassing it was the birthplace of President Obama, and he carried it with 70% of the vote in 2008. (John Kerry won 52% of the vote there in 2004 and Al Gore took 55% in 2000.) The seat first became open when Democratic Rep. Neil Abercrombie announced in December that he would resign, in order to focus full time on his campaign for governor. It immediately became clear that there could be a split Democratic vote. The key here is that there is only one Republican running, Honolulu councilman Charles Djou, and two Democrats, former Rep. Ed Case and state Senate President Colleen Hanabusa.
Hawaii special elections for the House do not work like they usually do in other states, where candidates either compete in separate party primaries, or the parties select their candidates through an internal party process. Instead, a single-round election is held in which all the candidates appear together on one ballot, and whoever gets a plurality wins the election. The election has been conducted entirely by mail, and will end tomorrow.
The Democratic split was exacerbated by the nature of the candidates. Case, who was unofficially backed by national Democrats, went into the race with high name recognition. He previously waged an unsuccessful but very close Democratic primary campaign for governor in 2002 and was then elected to the state’s other House seat in a special election. In 2006, he challenged incumbent Sen. Daniel Akaka in the Democratic primary, losing by the fairly close margin of 54%-45%. However, the latter 2006 campaign seriously alienated him from many establishment state Democrats, with Akaka and fellow Dem Sen. Daniel Inouye supporting Hanabusa.
Thus the race was characterized by DCCC running generic attack ads against Djou that did not advocate for a single Democrats, Hanabusa’s allies in organized labor attacking Case, and Case trumpeting his unofficial national Dem support. But the polls kept on showing Djou ahead from a split Democratic vote — The TPM Poll Average gives Djou 33.7%, Case 30.7%, and Hanabusa 22.5%.
Despite poll data consistently showing her in third, Hanabusa refused to withdraw from the race: “I don’t know how else to respond but to just say this: I’m in this race until the end, and I’m in this race to win.” The continued split finally became so bad that the DCCC pulled out of the race two weeks ago, fully expecting defeat. Instead, they will cede the district for the next six months, and look to take it back in the regular election this fall.
“Well look, it’s pretty much a foregone conclusion that Democrats aren’t gonna win this seat,” a Democratic source told TPMDC today, “because it’s not a situation where there’s one Democrat versus one Republican. Come November, it’s a totally different ballgame.”
The source couldn’t help but take a shot at the GOP’s gloating about their imminent win: “It’s sorta funny, Republicans are trying to tout the fact that it’s Obama’s home Congressional district. But what does that say about the Birthers?”
A Republican source disputed the idea that the GOP would not be able to truly claim a mandate from this election, assuming that the two Democrats combine to have a majority of the vote.
“That’s if you assume that 100% of the Hanabusa vote sand 100% of the Ed Case vote is gonna go to the same person. And I would mark you that it will not. The grassroots Democratic base is running against Case in this race,” the source said, who also looked forward to continued Democratic fratricide during the primary season, predicting that it will further undermine the party: “And just think about the makeup of the Democratic primary, and who’s going to come out of that.”
