Posted on 10/30/2004 12:12:22 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
Tightly contested Hawaii no lock for Kerry
HONOLULU (AP) — Cheering John Kerry supporters packed a high school auditorium Friday night to hear Vice President Al Gore and Sen. John Kerry's daughter Alexandra as Hawaii started looking like a battleground state.
"Four more days, four more days," they chanted, mocking the Republican chant of "four more years," before the featured speakers arrived.
Across town, Republicans filed into state GOP headquarters to pick up tickets for a near midnight Halloween visit by Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday.
A few weeks ago, Republican Gov. Linda Lingle was having a hard time selling the idea that Hawaii could play any real role in the presidential election. Now, she and leading Democrats are talking about the 50th state deciding a 50-50 race.
After two media polls early this week showed the local race dead even with up to 12 percent undecided, Hawaii is no longer a sure bet for Kerry.
Cheney, Gore, Kerry's elder daughter, former President Bill Clinton and Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe and Kerry himself all were playing roles as attention focused on Hawaii's previously ignored four electoral votes in the closing hours of a super-close national race.
Kerry gave satellite TV interviews to at least two Honolulu TV stations Friday. Clinton talked to four Hawaii TV reporters on Thursday, and McAuliffe planned a conference call with Hawaii reporters on Saturday in an effort to counter the impact of the Cheney visit.
"To see it as a battleground state, I'm not sure that's really true," said Juliet Begley, a 46-year-old researcher from Pearl City who was at Farrington High School to see Gore and Alexandra Kerry address a concert that was being turned into a Democratic campaign rally.
"But if they (the Republicans) want to believe it, that's fine. I'd like them to go ahead and spend their money," she said.
About 1,000 people packed the school's auditorium for the concert organized by Rep. Neil Abercrombie's re-election campaign, with dozens of Democratic supporters lining the street outside waving campaign signs as the state's top Democrats arrived at the rally.
Abercrombie dismissed the Republican plan to have Cheney rally support less than two days before polls open Tuesday.
Four electoral votes are at stake where polls close at the tail-end of a long national election day and the vote count is slow, with the first results not likely Tuesday until after midnight Eastern time.
If the count in the rest of the country somehow falls into place early and is as close as projected, Hawaii could put Bush over the top, Lingle said in announcing Cheney's visit.
Bush national campaign manager Ken Mehlman, in a phone call on Thursday informing Lingle of Cheney's visit, said he hoped the election is settled before Hawaii, but said the GOP considers the state winnable.
Even if Bush can't win Hawaii, stepping up the campaign in the islands and sending Cheney expands the map of close races and forces Kerry to divert money from Ohio and other bigger battlegrounds. Democrats already are running more TV and radio ads in the islands, while the GOP has been relying on national ads.
Mehlman said many Hawaii voters can also expect a call from the president's campaign this weekend.
Abercrombie at rallies also has been telling supporters they could put Kerry over the top.
No major party candidate on a national ticket has campaigned in Hawaii since Richard Nixon in 1960 — a race he lost to John F. Kennedy, with local pundits saying coming to the islands was one of Nixon's mistakes.
But Nixon went on to win Hawaii in his 1972 second-term victory. He, along with President Reagan in 1984, also winning a second term, are the only Republicans ever to take the state. Gore beat Bush in 2000 with an 18 percentage point lead.
Mahalo !
If kerry can't keep his own house in order...
I just called the Hawaii GOP Headquarters to ask if it will be covered on TV. The woman who answered said, "No, not that we know of."
:-(
the WEST side of the Big Island tends to be more conservative...we have Paul Whalen(State Senator)..and we have Council Members Curt Tyler and Joe Reynolds(both Republicans) and Mayor Harry Kim (Republican) and State Representative Mark Jernigan (Republican)..but having said that, we have the disadvantage of the County seat situated in Hilo where liberals prevail...Kauai has a Republican Mayor(Joanne Kusaka)...and Maui dumped their one-term democrat Mayor Kimo Apana for Republican Alan Arakawa during the last election cycle...i think it is an indication of the population putting their progeny ahead of themselves...apologies for the longwinded soliloquy...ALOHA!!
I can see what I can do about posting some of the digital photos the better half takes tonight. Give me a day though.
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