Posted on 03/24/2014 3:28:59 PM PDT by Clintonfatigued
In an appearance on Hawaii News Now Sunrise, Pat Saiki, the newly-elected chairwoman of the Hawaii Republican Party, confirmed that former congressman Charles Djou will soon declare his candidacy in the upcoming election for the state's 1st Congressional District.
During her interview, which aired on Friday morning's program, Saiki also said she expected Duke Aiona to formally enter the state's gubernatorial race.
When he formally announces his candidacy, Djou will likely run for the seat being vacated by Congresswoman Colleen Hanabusa, who has announced that she will challenge Brian Schatz for a seat in the United States Senate.
Djou, who won a special election for a seat in the 1st Congressional District in May of 2010, was defeated by Hanabusa in the general election for the same seat nearly six months later.
(Excerpt) Read more at hawaiinewsnow.com ...
If Djou runs, Pubbies have a chance at winning. I was hoping he’d run for the U.S. Senate, given that he’s consistently run ahead of the top of the ticket.
Djou helped repeal DADT. I’m not getting behind him. If he wins at the expense of a DemoScat, then fine.
He may win this seat back. Senate? Not up this year, and not a chance anyway.
I think Hawaii’s GOP is left of the GOPe.
“Senate? Not up this year”
There is one seat up this year (the one to which Schatz was named when Inouye died).
Djou’s odds of winning the House seat are a lot better than the Senate seat: the Dem nominee won’t be as strong, there won’t be as much Democrat money thrown into that race, the HI-01 is several points more Republican than the state as a whole (in 2004 it gave President Bush 47%, as opposed to the 45% he got statewide), and Djou is far better known within the Honolulu-based HI-01 (he represented it for like a year in Congress, and previously was on the Honolulu City Council for years) than in the Sister Islands. So while obviously it would be preferable to have Djou in the Senate (even for a two-year period; the seat would be up again in 2016), the odds of him winning the Senate race are so much slimmer than for the House race that I think he made the right decision.
Is it still looking likely we take the governorship? A recent poll had our guy up several points over Abercrombie.
Yes, though we’ve been let down before by polling data there. So we can’t take the race for granted.
I agree.
So Pat Saiki is the new party chair eh, I hope she does a good job.
I was going to answer exactly as DJ did.
Former Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann (D), is running for Governor as an Independent.
I think he’s moderate for a HI rat, this could actually hurt Duke Aiona more than Ambercrombie.
My concern exactly. This could be a replay of 1994 when there was the 3-person race between Pat Saiki (R), Ben Cayetano (D), and Frank Fasi (I). Fasi and Saiki split the center-right vote, and Cayetano came in with barely over a third of the vote.
Yes.
The rumor was he was thinking about running as a Republican.
The state GOP should try to get him out, maybe offer him our Senate nomination or something.
Yes, we don’t have a strong GOP nominee for Senate. He could waltz in between the ugly battle currently raging between Schatz and Hanabusa.
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