Thanks for your post. I thought I was being so clever with my analysis, but I prefer your historical evidence. (I hope I get half-credit for suggesting the historical record might have some instructive data for testing my hunch, even if I didn’t bother to dig it up myself?)

Forgive my ignorance, but who else is running against Jerry Coffee in the GOP primary? Note: I won’t be critical if you forgot for a moment and were thinking that Ed was running on the GOP side. Is there really a contest that might cause GOP voters to stay on their side of the fence?

The Second CD Republican primary is, of course, a double-edged sword– the contest affects half the state and may suppress Republican crossover in the Second CD, which it MIGHT be assumed, would help the Senator. In truth, we gotta worry about the 2nd CD GOP race attracting native Hawaiian voters, eager to vote for Quentin Kawananakoa and send a prince back to Washington as sort of a reincarnation of Prince Kuhio. That would cost Senator Akaka some Hawaiian votes and work to Case’s advantage. But I assume the campaign has polled for that and you can share the results with us on this obscure little blog? (Not everybody uses technorati to locate hard to find blog posts).

What about this scenario? Donors sympathetic to Akaka, who have maxed out their contributions to the Senator, pump some money into Bill Aila’s campaign, in an effort to raise the profile of the campaign. Hawaiian voters in the Second CD would have an extra incentive to take a Democratic ballot, so they can vote for BOTH Aila and Akaka. That boost might be worth a point or so for the Senator’s campaign. And it would probably be a relatively cheap way to gain a full point.

I’m sure you are aware that there are a lot of Hawaiians who say they are supporting both Quentin and Senator Akaka. There are influential folks in the Hawaiian Civic Clubs saying this. Ooops, come primary election day, they can only take one ballot and only vote for one of the two. With Aila, they get a two-fer. GO Aila!

Back to your earlier report on 2002. That was the year Case ran against Mazie in the Democratic primary and, still yet, 30% of the voters stayed on the Republican side of the fence? My Gawd, what would it take for them to crossover?

I was arguing that the Ward Research poll was not treating the voters as intelligent voters, who would think things through and logically crossover to the interesting races on the Dem Party side. In 2002, it seems like the Lingle supporters had a newfound optimistic identification with their Republican identity and stuck with the Party self-identification, even when it was NOT rational for them to do so.

So, I was assuming that the poll did NOT accurately reflect the reasoning process of the voters. But looking at the 2002 case, it appears that the voters follow similar foolish ways of processing information, even on election day. Perhaps I am assuming that the voters are more rational than they really are?

So if this election is somewhat analogous with the 2002 election, we Akaka supporters can relax, as Akaka DOES have an 11 point lead and the Advertiser poll is roughly accurate.

OK, I’m going to the beach tomorrow….

If your analysis is correct, however, then Dems (and Progressives in particular) must make sure that they participate in the Dem primary to vote for Akaka. Case’s initial tv ad tells you that he is attempting to avoid any further discussion of the War (or the Patriot Act or his support for Bush tax cuts). Instead, he wants to focus on vague notions of “transition” or “building seniority”.

The interesting thing about this latter argument is that he made exactly the same point in 2002 when he declared it was necessary to run against John Mink when Patsy died. Case said it was necessary to elect him early in order to build up a few extra weeks of seniority. That way, he would have a leg up on his classmates elected in November 2002. With 20/20 hindsight, that opportunistic slogan was nothing but shibai.

Case got his extra few weeks of seniority, and he has done virtually nothing to distinguish himself since getting there. Now, less than 4 years later, he comes back to Hawaii’s voters essentially making the same argument–that we need to build up seniority by electing him while he’s “young”. Let’s not let Hawaii’s voters get fooled again.

Electing Case puts a Blue Dog Dem who doesn’t play well with others into the Senate. In essence, we have the worst of both worlds. A guy who can’t work with others to help Hawaii get the attention it needs and a guy who supports the Bush Administration on the War, the Patriot Act, on prescription drugs, and on tax policy. What could be worse?

If this poll scares you and others, then we must re-double our efforts to get the word out on this race. Case’s transition is nothing less than Bush Administration light.

I hope you will continue to draw attention to this race.

Andy