Abercrombie’s swan song falls short of being graceful

Fellow Democrats who gave Gov. Neil Abercrombie an abrupt heave-ho in their August primary have mostly laid off of him since his humiliating defeat, not wanting to kick a guy while he’s down.

Their message as he runs out his term: "Don’t go away mad, just go away."

But Abercrombie’s graceless excuses seeking to spin his landslide loss as somebody’s fault other than his own is making him difficult to ignore and further tarnishing what’s left of his legacy.

First he claimed he was the victim of Republicans crossing over to the Democratic primary to vote against him in punishment for the special session of the Legislature he called to enact same-sex marriage.

This has been widely discredited as nonsense; the unprecedented whipping Gov.-elect David Ige gave Abercrombie by a vote margin of more than 2-to-1 cut across virtually all demographics.

Democrats, Republicans and independents alike were in remarkable agreement that Abercrombie had to go, giving a sitting governor just 73,507 votes out of 289,367 cast in the primary.

Blaming his loss on an anti-gay backlash unfairly stigmatized the gay community, which was probably more loyal than any other group in sticking with Abercrombie.

He made it seem like there was more hostility toward gays in the electorate than there actually was by any reasonable analysis of the vote, which showed little traction for same-sex marriage foes.

It was an ugly final word for him to leave on the gay marriage victory he has described as his proudest achievement.

Now Abercrombie is aiming equally unfair parting shots at environmental groups that did contribute to his loss after becoming disenchanted with his surprisingly fervent pro-development policies.

At a climate summit he called last week to try to repair his environmental credentials, Abercrombie did the opposite by describing those who lost faith in him as the equivalent of "a left-wing, environmental tea party."

He doesn’t seem to get it that his problem wasn’t with radical fringe elements, but with solid mainstream environmentalists who have participated constructively in public policy for decades and mistakenly thought Abercrombie was one of them.

They watched with disbelief as he raked in fat campaign donations while giving away Kakaako to luxury developers, backing the suburbanization of West Oahu farmlands, touting big energy and advocating a new state agency to pass public lands to private developers without county zoning oversight.

Abercrombie traded on the support of environmental activists all of his political career, but now he channels Spiro Agnew by deriding them as eternal victims and cynics who are waiting for Harry Potter to wave a magic wand.

Whatever he has to tell himself to rationalize the epic failure that sadly was the Abercrombie administration.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com or blog.volcanicash.net.