Campaign Diaries

As the health care debate is currently confirming, primary results are just as consequential for Congress’s balance of power as those of the general election. That is particularly the case in heavily blue districts, which sometimes elect Blue Dog Democrats.

One Democrat who compiled a centrist voting record in a heavily liberal district is Ed Case, who represented Hawaii’s 2nd District from 2002 to 2006. That year, he left his seat to challenge Senator Daniel Akaka in the Democratic primary, falling by just 9% in a tense contest that was fought on generational grounds as much as ideological ones.

While in the House, Case joined the Blue Dog Coalition and sided with Republicans on high-profile votes like the 2004 Patriot Act reauthorization, the 2004 bankruptcy reform the 2005 Real Id Act and the 2006 permanent repeal of the estate tax; he was not yet in the House for the Iraq War resolution, but he later said he would have supported it. (One area in which he has a progressive record is gay rights; back in 1997, he was a rare Democrat to battle an amendment to Hawaii’s constitution banning gay marriage. He later introduced legislation legalizing civil unions.)

Case now wants to return to Congress, and he has chosen to run in the state’s other House district, which is open due to Neil Abercrombie’s gubernatorial run. HI-01 is almost as Democratic as Case’s old district; while John Kerry won by only 6%, Al Gore prevailed by 16% and Obama by a startling 42%. In short, this is the type of district in which the Democratic nominee’s ideological orientation won’t matter in the general - the type of district progressives need to win if they want to diminish centrist influence in Congress.

Given the record of Case’s first term, it would be a setback for liberals if they let him replace Neil Abercrombie, who is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

In the Democratic primary, Case will face state Senate Majority Leader Colleen Hanabusa, who just announced her candidacy this week-end. Hanabusa has twice already failed to make it to the House - both times in the 2nd district. In 2002, she came in third in the Democratic primary won by Case; in 2006, she lost by a tiny margin of less than 1% to current representative Hirono. Since this double loss, she managed to rebound by becoming the first woman to lead either chamber of the state legislature in 2006.

(A bizarre side note: This means that both of HI-01’s leading candidates have ran in HI-02 before; one of them has done so twice, the other has actually represented that other district.)

Hanabusa has already secured the obviously consequential support of Emily’s List, which indicates nothing more than support for abortion rights. So can Hanabusa answer progressive hopes to see Abercrombie’s seat remain in progressive hands? An extensive Nexis search makes it hard to answer the question in a definitive way. Not only do the word “bipartisanship” and “progressive” both pop up, but most of the articles concern her take on local politics and procedural battled she waged against the state legislature’s former leaders.

But most of the evidence (from her years as a labor attorney, during which she represents union members, to her defense of affirmative action and her comfort with increased spending) suggests that she would at the very least be a mainstream Democrat - in other words not joining Blue Dog ranks.

Hanabusa drew national attention this spring when she contributed to letting a bill legalizing civil unions die. While she supported the legislation, she chose not to bypass the committee process after the bill unexpectedly stalled because of a 3-3 deadlock in the Senate Judiciary Committee. From the AP: “Civil union supporters lacked the political willpower to go against Senate President Colleen Hanabusa…”  To the extent she insisted she still favored the bill (the article later states, “Hanabusa acknowledged that the public may not understand how she can support civil unions but oppose holding a vote”), this episode is more a reflection on her legislative style than her ideological orientation.

All in all, then, what is a rematch for a different congressional seat should be one of the cycle’s most obviously ideologically significant Democratic primaries, and one to watch in trying to determine how much leeway the White House and the congressional leadership will have to implement the Democratic agenda in 2011-2012.

Another Democratic primary that could shake up as similarly is New Hampshire’s 2nd District, left open by Paul Hodes. Here, Republicans have a stronger chance of picking-up the seat but NH-02 is blue enough that a GOP victory won’t be due to the Democratic nominee’s orientation but to the national environment. Former Lieberman ally Katrina Swett is running in the Democratic primary; while she’s sure to face competition - attorney Ann McLane Kuster is proving a capable candidate - the field hasn’t entirely taken shape yet so we’ll still talk about it in the future.