Perhaps an all-out effort by the Republicans to get the a majority in the Hawaii legislature in 2010....and pass a law that all birth certificates are open per view of any county judge who requests a view. This would really tear up the Obama legend.
Linda Lingle had a fantasy about winning the lower house in 2004. Didn’t come close to happening.
Now there are hardly any Republicans in the legislature.
It’s like Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
Yeah, winning the HI legislature isn’t going to be happening anytime soon. The HI House has gone from 32D-19R in 2000 (under Dem Gov. Cayetano, its high water mark in the recent era) all the way down to 45D-6R with this election (essentially tying MA for a GOP non-entity). Even worse, the Senate now has just 2 Republicans, down from the 5 it had won since 2002 (it had lost 1 in ‘07), so it is even lower a percentage in the Senate than in the House (8% of the body).
Lingle has been unable to turn it around. The GOP hasn’t held the majority in either body since just prior to statehood in the ‘50s. At one point, the GOP had an even smaller presence than it does now and came very close to being the first state in the nation outside the South in the modern era to have no Republicans in a legislative body.
It’s remarkable Lingle can even govern under such circumstances, as the obscene Dem majorities could rule without her input and reduce her to figurehead status.