The catastrophic primary defeat of Gov. Neil Abercrombie to state Sen. David Ige in all but two voting districts has generated among political observers a desperate search for explanations. One of the most frequently mentioned reasons has been Abercrombie’s disregard for U.S. Sen. Dan Inouye’s wish, expressed in his so-called deathbed letter of December 2012, to appoint U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa as his replacement. U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz’s victory in his primary-election race for reelection removes the deathbed letter from the list of explanations for Abercrombie’s devastating defeat.
The statewide losses of the governor silence to some extent the suspicion that this was an ethnically motivated election. Though it would be difficult to find an ethnic pattern that could explain this overwhelming result, there are still voices that suggest the old-time AJA power network that launched the mostly unknown Ige as candidate against Abercrombie has somehow come through in punishing the governor for not listening to the dying shogun. Some had the déjà-vu feeling of revisiting 1974 when the outspoken, liberal and charismatic haole Tom Gill was defeated by George Ariyoshi, who has played a major role in promoting Ige.
Abercrombie, however, is not the only prominent member of Hawaii’s political class to end this year in retirement. Hanabusa and state Sen. Clayton Hee, stalwarts of the Democratic establishment, also were wiped out by their own party this primary season. In this unexpected watershed event in Hawaii politics, the primary may have shown us something that has been visible in recent years in other democratic societies.
Three of the most successful democratic societies in Europe, namely Sweden, Norway and Denmark, have surprised the world with strange voting patterns. The citizens of these countries confirmed regularly in pre-election polls that they were satisfied with the political conditions in their societies. Still, they voted against the people in power. When political analysts wanted to find out the reasons for this strange behavior, they discovered something unexpected: The Scandinavian voters said they were tired of the old faces and wanted to see new ones.
This seemingly irrational political behavior of the electorate may actually reflect some longing for more direct participation of citizens in the governance of democratic societies. However, the low voter turnout in Hawaii seems to show the limits of the Scandinavian model as an explanation since all Scandinavian societies have regularly a voter turnout of over 70 percent.
Still, the Abercrombie campaign was proud of a commercial that showed the governor driving two women in a yellow cab through the cityscape of Honolulu, a car that had made him famous in the 1970s when he began his political career. Yet this video may actually have triggered a "Scandinavian" response to the candidate. People had become tired of his face and wanted to see a new one, even if this new candidate had scant record of political achievements to run on.
Ironically, this turn of politics in Hawaii started with the death of the most powerful politician in the history of the state. Inouye’s death enabled Abercrombie to make the two appointments that will be his political legacy.
Brian Schatz and Shan Tsutsui are two new faces that will eclipse the legacy of Inouye’s influence. Abercrombie initiated with these appointments the beginning of the renewal of the Democratic Party. The unintended consequence of his own premature political death may actually accelerate this process.
However, the real political test will come in November in the three-way race for governor. If Ige fails to successfully reach out to the disenchanted Abercrombie voters, he may find himself losing to the Republican James "Duke" Aiona. The overwhelming sense of triumph in the Ige campaign over the primary might turn in November into a deep depression.
