Gov. Linda Lingle, Lt. Gov. James "Duke" Aiona and U.S. Rep. Charles Djou have all run and lost, some repeatedly.

Those were the starters for the Hawaii GOP team; they were the proven winners and they lost in both 2012 and this year.

So where does the GOP go, and who takes them there?

Calling it a "tough election for us," Pat Saiki, Hawaii GOP chairwoman, says there was a hope that local voters would "rise up to object to … where we’re going when it comes to the high cost of living, housing, education, high taxes and fees and depressing government overreach."

Saiki has both won and lost in her own long political history, but picking up the pieces of a shattered local GOP may not possible.

The Hawaii GOP model may just be broken.

This year the GOP put all its effort into growing the party, getting more new people to sign up and then vote. It didn’t happen.

Dylan Nonaka, a GOP consultant, says if the Democrats can regularly turn out 200,000 voters, the GOP has to beat them with 210,000 of the potential voters who didn’t go Democratic.

"I gotta believe they are out there, but this was a very disappointing election in terms of getting them to the polls," Nonaka said in an interview.

After he lost his race for governor, Aiona touched on what is needed when he said the GOP has to "just keep chipping away at it and we’re going to find the right message."

So far, the failed local GOP has had two messages.

The first is that democracy works better with competition — so government would be better if the Democrats had competition, so vote Republican.

The second message had been, "Don’t you just hate how expensive everything is in Hawaii and don’t you hate paying so many high taxes?"

First, voters don’t vote for someone because they want the Democrats to have competition.

Politics is not the Friday Night Fights; voters want to see their side win big.

The second GOP message is that life in Hawaii is terrible.

That message seems designed to appeal to people who arrived here three months ago and are still disbelieving the price of a gallon of milk.

The Hawaii GOP doesn’t have to run a campaign based on saying Hawaii is a lousy place to live; there is another way.

Linda Lingle used it in 1998, almost won, came back in 2002 and won, and then perfected it in 2006 and won big.

After Lingle lost to Gov. Ben Cayetano 12 years ago, she went back to basics and grew the GOP. In two years Lingle added 4,000 new GOP members.

That wasn’t done six months before the election; it was done two years ahead of time and that is how far out the GOP has to plan.

The second thing Lingle did was not lecture voters about high taxes, which by the way, pay the salaries for state workers who are reliable state voters and don’t want their livelihood threatened. Instead, Lingle talked about how great we are. She talked about hope and how together Hawaii could be even better.

"It is time for everyone in our state to participate fully in planning Hawaii’s future," Linda Lingle said in her 2002 inaugural speech.

For decades, Democrats have been winning by keeping hope alive. The GOP should pay attention.

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.