Ed Case wins!

Congressman Ed Case wins Hawai`i's second Congressional district with 43.2 percent of the vote. Matt Matsunaga garnered 30.2 percent, Colleen Hanabusa at 7.9 percent and Barbara Marumoto at 5.9 percent.

For full results:
http://www.hawaii.gov/elections

Comments

Great news.

I supported Ed Case anyway. And Matt Matsunaga was really starting to tick me off ("...but he wants to legalize it recreationally!"). And the basis of Barbara Marumoto's entire campaign ("it only makes sense to send a Republican") boggled my mind.

Oh, and poor Bob McDermott. In a recent interview, he snickered and said of Barbara Marumoto: "Barbara's a dud. God bless her, she's a dud." And she netted nearly 200 more votes than he did.

Her personally financed media campaign probably helped, of course...

What I'm curious about (hey, 2nd District residents!) is whether anyone got any franked mail from Case. That's part of the power of incumbency, after all.

That franked mail comes under the Congressional office's budget for community newsletter or bulletin or something like that. It's just like at the state Legislature, where each lawmaker has a certain amount of money in their office budget to send out bulletins to their districts. But the cost of snail mail has dampened that a lot and many can only afford one mailing per year. Others resort to e-mail.

I honestly didn't follow the race, and was rather indifferent as to who would win. The election seemed like a second-chance drawing for all the losers of the recent election.

One political ad that struck me as strange came from Colleen Hanabusa. The camera shot in the ad had an extreme close-up of the face of Ms Hanabusa, not a flattering angle for her at all. She then declares that she "can fill the shoes of Patsy Mink", which seemed rather disrespectful and insensitive towards the late congresswoman.

Personally, I didn't like Matsunaga's ad attempting to differentiate between himself and Case; it seemed to be classic negative campaigning, with some misinterpretations of previous Case positions.

'Course, I always got a sense from Matsunaga's ads that he was attempting to trade on his Dad's name; they made me think he felt almost entitled to a job in Congress.

The kicker for the "My Dad Sparky" angle in Matt Matsunaga's advertising was because of his heartfelt, emphatic vow in a previous run for office that he would never capitalize on his father's legacy in an attempt to ride his coattails into office. Phbbth.

The implied entitlement in Hirono's ads were high on my list on why I didn't vote for her.

Case got sworn in today. I expect a short honeymoon, and wish him luck.

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