Sunday, November 08, 2020

Hawaii General Election 2020

 Another general election is now in the history books. 


(note: to learn about the primaries, check out this blog post

https://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2020/08/hawaii-primary-election-2020.html)


Being that I'm on Oahu, this blog post will be Oahu-centric, so all apologies for those who live on the other islands. 



All-mail election and still long lines


This year was planned to be the first all-mail election even before the coronavirus crisis changed everything. 

I was part of the team that inspected ballots being printed before they were mailed to every registered voter. We finished by the end of September, and the ballot was mailed out early October, weeks ahead of the November 3rd, the general election day.

The all-mail election has been proven to increase voter turnout, as noted by Honolulu Civil Beat

https://www.civilbeat.org/2020/11/hawaii-casts-record-number-of-ballots-as-election-day-gets-underway/


Voters could mail back their ballots or drop them off at the collection boxes in various areas of the islands. The good news is that there were more collection boxes available as compared to the primaries. 

The not so good news is that we still had only 2 voter service centers on Oahu.

I mentioned the problems with having so few voter service centers in my primary blog post

 https://pablowegesend.blogspot.com/2020/08/hawaii-primary-election-2020.html

 

On Oahu, there was only Honolulu Hale and Kapolei Hale. That doesn't work well with voters who live in Wahiawa, North Shore, or the Windward side.  

 

This proved to be a major problem on Election Day! 


Yes, the 2 voter service centers were open for 2 weeks, but the election officials TOTALLY UNDER-ESTIMATED how many would line up on the final day! 


Ronen Zilberman/Civil Beat
Long lines on Election Day in Honolulu


The polls were supposed to close at 7pm on Election Day, but anyone who was already in line had the legal right to vote. The last voter was finished 4 hours later. 

That's how long the lines were, people were in line for at least 4 hours.

Granted, there are some people who LOVE being in long lines. To them, this is fun. Some people also enjoy the rush of doing everything last minute.


Lee Cataluna explains more on those who love to be in long lines in this article https://www.civilbeat.org/2020/11/lee-cataluna-we-dont-mind-standing-in-line-in-hawaii-if-we-want-to/


But this also showed the failure to plan!


Having so many people congregate in one place is a disaster during the coronavirus crisis. Case numbers will definitely increase, and I fear we will have to shut down nearly everything again because of this (plus, we just had Halloween, another popular gathering time)


2 voter service centers aren't enough, especially since Honolulu Hale and Kapolei Hale aren't easily accessible to those who live on Windward Oahu, Central Oahu, and the North Shore.

I would definitely open up a voter service center in those 3 areas, and for Election Day, open up some school cafeterias to be voter service centers. Maybe not as much as the old days before all-mail elections, but at least enough so that no place has to deal with 4-hour lines at closing time.  I'll just go as far as saying all public high schools should be voter service centers on Election Day, that way each district can handle their share of the slack. 


Honolulu Mayor


As mentioned in my blog post about the primaries, the 2 top candidates for mayor were 2 businessmen who never held political office: Keith Amemiya & Rick Blangiardi.


Honolulu Star-Advertiser
Keith Amemiya & Rick Blangiardi


Keith Amemiya was mostly known for once heading the Hawaii High School Athletics Association (HHSAA), but was also an insurance executive and a member of the University of Hawaii Board of Regents.

Rick Blangiardi was a recently retired media executive of Hawaii News Now (HNN). As you may tell, his media connections went a long way in helping him in this campaign. 

For city & county offices here, the offices are nonpartisan! (I wish that could be true for every election for every political office)

When you actually compare their proposals, Amemiya & Blangiardi aren't really that different. Their proposals weren't even that detailed, they were just general statements meant to avoid offending anyone.  

However, Hawaii being a mostly Democrat state, Keith Amemiya decided to emphasize that he was a Democrat and to call Blangiardi a Republican, even though Blangiardi said he was a political independent.  To top it off, Amemiya's ads compared  Blangiardi to Donald Trump, even though Blangiardi never campaigned as a Trump-like politician. 

Yes, Blangiardi had the support of Linda Lingle (the only Republican governor in my lifetime), but also had the support of Democrats like Ben Cayetano and Colleen Hanabusa!

Almost everyone saw Amemiya's comparison of Blangiardi to Trump as pure desperation.

If Amemiya wanted to emphasize his opposition to Trump, he should've run for federal office.

But the mayor is a city & county office, where people are more interested in how the leaders will manage transit, homelessness, potholes, parks, and the re-opening of the local economy during the coronavirus crisis. Amemiya should've just focused on that, and let his allies who are running for federal office deal with Trump. 

Here is Lee Cataluna's analysis on Amemiya vs Blangiardi

Even though Blangiardi won this time (he did have an advantage as a long-time media executive after all), I think Amemiya does have a good chance of getting elected to another political office, as long as he stays on topic! 

=======

On Twitter, former state legislator Kaniela Ing noted that every mayor of Honolulu, except for Mufi Hanneman (who is Samoan & German) was a "white man". I responded with the following

But if you're born in Hawaii in 1980 (like me) you never lived under white governor until adulthood! 

Hawaii racial politics just isn't clear cut as you make it out to be

— Pablo the Mad Tiger Warrior (@PabloTheMdTgrWr) November 4, 2020


I also mentioned 

 Also depends on who is running. Many of the same people who vote for David Ige (Okinawan) also voted for Blangiardi (Italian). Also Frank Fasi also Italian! so 2 Italian mayors in my lifetime even Hawaii doesn't have nearly as many Italians as NY or NJ 

 Jeremy Harris had many voters who also voted Cayetano! Fasi had many voters who also voted for Waihee and Ariyoshi! 

 Maybe because Oahu residents of non-European ancestries set their goals higher than the mayor and run for governor or Congress instead

Other local races

Big Island also has a new mayor: Mitch Roth,  a former prosecutor. 

For Honolulu prosecutor, the top 2 candidates were Steve Alm and Megan Kau. Kau was one of those people who only has a hammer and therefore thinks everything is a nail! Steve Alm is a more center-left candidate. Hawaii usually favors the center-left and therefore Alm is the winner. 


President


Hawaii being mostly Democrat, voted overwhelmingly for Joe Biden with circa 65% of the vote!

Most of us here view Trump as even more repulsive than your average Republican.

But even here, Trump has a share of loudmouth supporters, who drove in long caravans with big flags on their big pickup trucks. They were also loud & obnoxious! Most of them thought they were part of a winning bandwagon. It turned out this backfired big time.



“The Trump flag waving that occurred throughout the state, the enthusiasm there, which wasn’t part of the Hawaii Trump Victory Campaign, that was spontaneous ongoings by people who love the president, that I think worked against us,” said Al Frenzel.

Frenzel said he believes the caravans upset and annoyed people, motivating them to vote blue.


That's exactly what happened. All these caravans accomplished was that they irritated the silent majority who didn't engage with these idiots and instead filled out a ballot and turned it in! The secret ballot is the silent majority's middle finger to those bozos!



It isn't just the "mainland haoles" (European-Americans who moved here from the continent) in the Trump caravans, there were some Polynesians too! National Public Radio did note that many Pacific Islanders did support Trump. 



screenshot by Adam Keawe Manolo-Camp
as noted on
 https://www.facebook.com/adamkmanalocamp/posts/3289793521138187


So according to NPR, Trump's biggest support actually came from Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islands, Native Americans and...

Posted by Adam Keawe Manalo-Camp on Wednesday, November 4, 2020



I did mention this on facebook


those Pacific Islanders who support Trump probably think "Trump don't talk s** about us like he talk s*** about Mexicans & Muslims, therefore Trump likes us"

 

NO, FOOL! To Trump, you're all out of sight, out of mind, not that many Pacific Islander in New York for Trump to notice they exist!

 

But remember this, if someone is racist to someone else, sooner or later, they'll be racist to you too! 
Much of his most rabid supporters in the continent would assume the next Pacific Islander they see as either "black" or "Mexican" and therefore don't even want them in their suburbs and will act as if their lives don't matter!


Some people mentioned religion as a motivator being that LDS (Latter Day Saints) were very successful in recruiting Polynesians. They basically own Laie in the North Shore of Oahu.  I did notice some of their enthusiasm for fellow LDS Mitt Romney back in 2012, but I don't think religion that was the main motivator for the Trump caravan, I think those guys just love Trump's pro-wrestling persona! 

I also wonder how much of it was also xenophobia, especially being that there are tensions between Polynesians vs Micronesians, which replaced the used to be more common tension between Polynesians vs Filipinos & other Asians.

But most of the Native Hawaiian activists that I know lean very left and therefore HATE Donald Trump, as they see him as just another racist imperialist misogynist! They were very happy to see Trump voted out, and many of them really loved Kamala Harris who they see as a symbol of progress for racial & gender justice. 


---

The slight increase in Trump votes in Hawaii did almost nothing for the Republicans in the state legislature. Still a tiny minority. It seems as whoever supported Trump loved his pro-wrestling persona more than they love conservative Republican ideals.  


learn more at https://www.civilbeat.org/2020/11/biden-easily-won-hawaii-but-data-shows-support-for-trump-has-grown/

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