DCCC Pulling Out of Hawaii

Source: Congressional Quarterly

DCCC Pulling Out of Hawaii

By Shira Toeplitz | May 10, 2010 11:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee announced Monday morning that it will no longer invest resources in the May 22 special election in Hawaii's 1st Congressional district, effectively ceding the race to Republicans and likely setting the party up for what could be their first special election loss of the cycle.

"The DCCC will not be investing additional resources in the HI-01 (Abercrombie-open) special election," said DCCC spokesman Jennifer Crider in a statement. "Local Democrats were unable to work out their differences. The DCCC will save the resources we would have invested in the Hawaii special election this month for the general election in November."

The DCCC's move is monumental because it shows the party believes there is no path to victory -- a first this cycle for House Democrats, who already boast two wins for House seats in New York in 2009. What's more, the DCCC went off of Hawaii television two weeks after the ballots were mailed out for the special election and just less than two weeks to go until the ballots are due.

The DCCC had already put $314,000 towards the special election for resigning Rep. Neil Abercrombie's (D-Hawaii) district, which voted for President Obama by an overwhelming 70 percent of the vote. However, the presence of two Democrats -- state Senate President Colleen Hanabusa and former Rep. Ed Case -- split the party's vote in the free-for-all special election.

Read more: http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/eyeon2010/2010/05/dccc-pulling-out-of-hawaii.html

Are they purposely trying to lose? I mean Hawaii has been blue for as long as I can remember.

It's not the Howard Dean approach to fighting and winning, that's for sure!!

Repuke Charles Djou, a Honolulu city council member, is known locally as "Djerk". In Congress, he would wait until his morning fax came from Faux before blowing his nose. :eyes:

I find it odd that all the energy and volunteerism comes from the progressive wing but when it comes to figuring out who is in charge we end up with DLC'ers controlling the party apparatus.

but Case is basically an (R) in (D) clothing. And he'd hardly need the DCCC; his cousin Steve is the founder of AOL, as well as a major landowner on Maui.

In case anyone was not aware of that

Let's not forget Ed Case endorsed Lieberman for President in 2004 - looks where he went.

Ed Case strikes me as someone who could possibly go down the Republican path in the future.

He is so quick to label himself as the "moderate" and middle of the road candidate in the debates. Why so insecure Mr. Case?

When I see him talk in the debates, sometimes he just looks like a robot with a smile.

I voted for Hanabusa.

I miss Howard Dean.

Probably the so-called progressives screwed things up.

ETA: Seems the Democrat furtherest to the right shot himself in the foot anyway. See Reply # 13. Also seems there was no progressive in the race. See Reply #7.

But thanks for your anti-Democratic post anyway, no matter how far all your assumptions were from reality.

It's just highly likely the progressives screwed things up.

This is not how a major American political party works towards victory.

longtime, beloved Sen. Dan Akaka a few years ago.

Bad move :dunce:

Apparently, in this special election, there's no primary, and no mechanism for selecting one candidate to run on the Democratic line. With two Democrats and one Republican in the race, the division in our ranks meant that neither Dem could come in first. From the linked article, I gather that the seat goes to the candidate with a plurality, with no minimum share of the vote required.

Under these circumstances, it makes sense not to waste the money. Let the Republican have a brief period of glory. In the general, if these two Dems again want the seat, they'll fight it out in a primary, and then whoever wins will have a big enough edge based on party affiliation that he or she will overcome the Republican's advantage of incumbency.

The real flaw here is the system of having a completely open special election, with no primaries (and not even selection of party nominees by a bunch of party leaders), coupled with a pure first-past-the-post system. If enough mainstream candidates entered and split the vote, the race could conceivably be won by a Libertarian or other fringe candidate with something like 15% of the vote.

This is a special election with one Republican and two Democratic candidates. The Republican will rent the seat until November, when the general election will select the next Democrat to occupy this seat.

Is it because it is a special election? No primary for that? I guess it may change in the GE but still, I thought there were primaries in most states for Special Elections.

It depends on state law. Sometimes a special election has normal party primaries, like the election to fill Ted Kennedy's Senate seat. Others don't, however, like the NY-20 and NY-23 special elections last year.

What's most common in the absence of a primary is that the party leaders pick the party's nominee. For example, that's what happened in NY-23 to produce the ill-fated candidacy of the moderate Republican, Dede Scozzafava. The Republican leader for each county within the district was entitled to vote. Their votes were weighted -- I'm not sure if the weighting was by number of residents, registered voters, or registered Republicans. Those party leaders met at a restaurant and picked Scozzafava. Some of the right-wingers who disliked her made it sound as if the Republican party leaders had connived to avert a primary, but it was actually just a matter of New York law.

Another alternative is the "jungle primary" as used in Louisiana (in, I believe, regular elections and special elections). There's a single nonpartisan primary open to anyone. If no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, then there's a runoff between the top two.

Any of these methods would have prevented the mess in Hawaii. There, I gather from the linked article, the Republican candidate could exploit the unresolved split between the Democrats and win the seat with the same 35% or so of the vote that McCain got while being clobbered by Obama.

to not have any way to narrow the candidates down. Well, there is always the GE later on.

"Despite the DCCC's tacit backing of Case, Hanabusa reiterated her intention to stay in the race last week and effectively became a spoiler in the contest."

So it is not surprising that we have this happening in the state off our shores.

All he has to do is go back for a bit, on a well-deserved vacation. Like bush used to take every 2 months.