HONOLULU — In primaries across the country — in Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi and other states — Republicans are locked in a heart-and-soul battle between purists and pragmatists clashing over what it means to represent the party, its philosophy and core values.
Here in Hawaii there's a similar fight over power and purpose, but this one is between Democrats. It's a fight for a U.S. Senate seat, a rare enough prize in a state that has elected just six people senator since statehood in 1959. But it is also a battle over age and gender, over ethnicity and identity, over old grudges and new tensions.
Rivalries and historical resentments often surface in Hawaii politics — sometimes years later, like a bottle cast to sea — and the fierce contest between appointed Sen. Brian Schatz and his fellow Democrat, Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, is no different: The two ran against each other in a 2006 congressional primary, and they both lost.
The latest contest arises from the death of Democratic Sen. Daniel K. Inouye in December 2012, less than a month shy of completing his 50th year in the Senate. Democratic Gov. Neil Abercrombie ignored what was presented as Inouye's dying wish, that the senator's protege, Hanabusa, be named his successor, and instead appointed Schatz, the lieutenant governor and a former head of the state party.
In choosing, Abercrombie cited seniority as an overriding factor. Schatz is 41 and Hanabusa is 62, which suggests — actuarially speaking — he could serve many more years and gain more clout for a state that has counted for decades on a generous ladling of federal largess, thanks to Inouye's power and longevity. After tourism, the U.S. military is Hawaii's biggest source of income.
"Go to Washington, bring federal dollars home," said Randy Perreira, head of the Hawaii Government Employees Assn., the state's largest and most powerful union, which has endorsed Schatz. "That's the game."
Abercrombie's mention of age led Hanabusa to accuse the governor of sexism, suggesting his comments insulted women who devote themselves to family and start their professional careers later in life. (Hanabusa has no children but practiced law for several years before launching her political career.) "We make choices," Hanabusa said in an interview. "We have to."
Another fault line is race and ethnicity. Asians make up the largest segment of the population, about 4 in 10 residents, followed by whites, at just over 25%. Nearly a quarter of the population identifies itself as being of two races.
A generation of Japanese American World War II veterans, including Inouye, helped break down long-standing economic and social barriers that had once favored white plantation owners and businessmen and, with the help of organized labor, converted pre-statehood Hawaii from a Republican-leaning territory into today's Democratic stronghold.
Within the party, however, there has long been a divide between pragmatists and a smaller group of activists, typically younger, whiter and more ideological. For years, Inouye and Abercrombie represented those wings; now, it's Hanabusa and Schatz.
They took opposite sides in the bitter 2008 Democratic presidential contest: Hanabusa, like Inouye, backed Hillary Rodham Clinton. Schatz, like Abercrombie, was an early and ardent backer of native son Barack Obama and ran his successful Hawaii campaign.
Philosophically, though, the Senate contestants are largely in sync. The National Journal, which annually rates congressional members by ideology, has Schatz tied with two others this year as the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate. Hanabusa, who was elected to Congress in 2010 after serving as state Senate president, consistently ranks among the more liberal House members.
There are differences on some issues, among them Hanabusa's support for limited drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, reminiscent of Inouye's long alliance with Republican former Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska, who pushed to open oil production there. Schatz opposes it.
Hanabusa also opposed forcing drug companies to pay the federal government a rebate for bulk purchases under the Medicare and Medicaid programs and voted to support the Simpson-Bowles commission, which, among its proposals, suggested raising the age for Social Security benefits to help cut the federal deficit.
Hanabusa said she opposed changes to Social Security but supported the commission's model as a starting point for discussion. Indeed, members of the Democratic House leadership also backed Simpson-Bowles.
Still, the Schatz campaign raises those examples to question Hanabusa's fealty to the Democratic Party's principles. His first TV ad featured the senator in a homey setting with his elderly father-in-law, vowing to protect Social Security. Hanabusa, who has raised only about half as much campaign cash as Schatz, has yet to begin her TV advertising.
Schatz said the race should be about performance, favorably comparing his year-plus in the Senate with Hanabusa's House record. He says his endorsement by President Obama — a rare intervention in a primary — and support from Senate Democratic Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, along with much of the rest of the party establishment, means he can deliver in ways the congresswoman cannot.
"That's what I want to make this election about," Schatz said in an interview.
Hanabusa said she would have "the same kinds of relationships and opportunities afforded to me as well" if elected to the Senate. Sounding a rare note of bipartisanship, she said it was important to work across the aisle, as Inouye did. "Times change and majority status changes," she said. "What doesn't change is relationships that are built."
Much of the drama surrounding the race so far has focused on a letter, ascribed to Inouye on his deathbed, seeking Hanabusa's selection. Abercrombie has questioned the authorship and said Inouye told him, privately, to use his best judgment in filling any vacancy.
"I wouldn't want the Senate race to get lost in this question of what Sen. Inouye wanted or didn't want," Abercrombie told The Times this month.
With so many cross-currents, there seems little chance of that. Polling is difficult in Hawaii, a state with one of the worst turnout rates in the country. But all sides agree the race is exceedingly close and will probably stay that way to the end.
The outcome probably won't affect the fight for control of the Senate. Whoever wins the Aug. 9 Democratic primary is overwhelmingly favored to win in November and serve the remainder of Inouye's term. Then, it is expected, the incumbent will seek a full six-year term in 2016.
mark.barabak@latimes.com
By Ben Werschkul and Mac William BishopTimesCast Politics: Terry MacAuliffe: Mark Leibovich on ‘The Macker.’Terry McAuliffe, the former chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is starting a company that makes little electric cars. On a sweltering Friday in early July, GreenTech Automotive unveiled its signature vehicle — the MyCar — at a plant opening in the North Mississippi town of Horn Lake. McAuliffe was puttering backstage before the event with his pals Bill Clinton and Haley Barbour, the former governor of Mississippi and archetypal Republican lobbyist. 
McAuliffe the Democrat (left) and Barbour the Republican, share a laugh. The holding area was crowded and somewhat frenzied. People designated as V.I.P.’s kept streaming through, many in from China, where GreenTech is building an 18-million-square-foot facility. They arrived, dozens of them, via a Harrah’s shuttle bus with a big “Fun in Store for Those Who Ride” painted on the side. As Clinton prepared to go onstage, I asked him if he would ever consider buying a car from McAuliffe, who he once marveled could “talk an owl out of a tree.” “Absolutely, I would buy a new car from Terry,” he told me. “But a used car? I am not so sure about a used car.” He laughed and wheeled around and repeated the line to Barbour (“Listen to what I just told him . . . ”), while slapping his fleshy back. McAuliffe, 55, is eager to be known, foremost, as a businessman and an entrepreneur, and not so much as a political moneyman. That will take some doing. He is “the greatest fund-raiser in the history of the universe,” Al Gore once said, in keeping with the hyperbole often heaped on McAuliffe, known widely as the Macker, by the politicians who love/need him. McAuliffe, who is in fact quite hard to dislike and is himself a peerless exaggerator, has collected legions of friends over the years. “There are 18,000 names in my Rolodex,” he boasted to me earlier that morning over coffee. When I pressed him, he revised the number upward, to 18, 632. The acknowledgments section of his memoir, “What a Party!” runs six single-spaced pages and includes the names of every member of the Democratic National Committee during his time as the party chairman. In a five-minute span of conversation, McAuliffe distilled for me the extent of his psychological complexity: 1) He pinches himself all the time because he’s so lucky. 2) He likes to think out of the box. 3) He swings for the fences every day. 4) At the end of the day, it is what it is. If McAuliffe’s trademark is fund-raising, his principal identity is as a Professional Best Friend to Bill Clinton. The subtitle of “What a Party!” might as well be “Let Me Tell You Another Story About Me and Bill Clinton.” (One involved South Korean Intelligence agents thinking McAuliffe and Clinton were more than just friends.) If he is not dropping the name of the 42nd president, the Macker is telling you that he just got off the phone with Bill Clinton, or that, what do you know, President Clinton is actually on the phone right now, and can you please excuse him for just a second (“Hello, Mr. President”). And if Mr. President is not on the phone, there is a good chance he is, as today, close by. Clinton’s voice is softer and throatier than you remember. He has lost considerable weight, evident to anyone who has seen him in photographs (once known as the “Big Dog,” he’s now more “Vegan Dog”). But it is jarring nonetheless to see the svelte version of the former president up close, especially since his head is as big as it ever was — a fact accentuated by the ruddy brightness of his face and pronounced cheekbones. Encountering Clinton these days is like meeting a skinny older guy who is wearing a Bill Clinton mask. McAuliffe’s MyCar debut is the culmination of years of planning for a firm that is trying to reinvent the automobile. Unsaid was that he also hoped it would reinvent Terry McAuliffe as he approaches his own probable run for governor of Virginia in 2013 — something he tried in 2009, losing in the primary to a relative political unknown named Creigh Deeds. GreenTech could be the vehicle, so to speak, for McAuliffe to escape his lane as a political rainmaker, carnival barker and Clinton appendage and reposition himself as “a Virginia businessman fighting for Democratic causes and creating jobs,” as his Web site says. It hardly mattered that a lot of these jobs would be in Mississippi, not Virginia, because of a package of tax and infrastructure incentives McAuliffe was able to secure from Barbour, who himself made the successful transition from operative-businessman to public office when he was elected governor of Mississippi in 2003. 
By Carolyn Kaster, AP
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