Inouye not taking tea party for granted as 2012 nears

He may not understand precisely how it works, but Hawaii’s senior Sen. Daniel K. Inouye has seen the effectiveness of the new Internet-based, hyper-speed political campaign style and sees nothing but trouble out there for Democrats.

Inouye, at a news conference in his Honolulu office Monday, happily admitted he liked being in the majority; as the eldest Democrat in the Senate, he is president pro tempore and provided Secret Service protection, a perk that comes with a fleet of drivers.

"I am driven around; it is a good life," Inouye chuckled.

The stakes, of course, are much higher than Inouye’s mode of transportation: Even if the Republicans capture the majority, Inouye is unlikely to be hitching down the interstate to get to work. What is important is that there is a serious chance that the barely blue Senate will turn red after the 2012 elections.

The GOP needs to pick up only three or four Senate seats, depending on whether the president and vice president (who is the tie-breaker in Senate voting) are R’s or D’s.

The most obvious race for Inouye is Hawaii’s campaign, which is expected to pit former Gov. Linda Lingle against the Democratic primary winner. Asked about Lingle, Inouye flatly said, "She will be difficult."

The reason, Inouye said, was that the style of campaigning has changed and the spread of multimedia campaigns makes it much more difficult.

Of course, the same Internet tools are available to both Democrats and Republicans, but Inouye is worried that the simplistic argument put forward by the tea party will have an effect.

While Lingle has never really been aligned with tea party activists, she is unlikely to reject their help.

When asked if he thought the national Democratic campaign was underestimating Lingle, Inouye nodded in affirmation.

"They are somewhat underestimating this whole exercise. They have underesti- mated the impact of the tea party," Inouye said.

Hawaii’s 86-year-old leading Democrat, who has been representing Hawaii since it became a state, complains about the sort of simplistic commercial now popular.

"They say, ‘I balance my books at home, why can’t you?’ That’s hard to fight," Inouye said.

National political experts, such as Larry Sabato with the University of Virginia Center for Politics, describes Hawaii as "leaning Democrat." In discussing the political trends, Sabato earlier this year said the polarized political landscape lends itself to close races being decided by presidential margins.

"We found that, over the past three decades, nearly three of every five truly competitive Senate races, decided by 53 percent to 47 percent or less, went the way of the presidential election winners in each state," Sabato wrote in his blog.

For Inouye, 2012 will be a year of travel. He reports that he has taken requests for campaign help in Washington state, Minnesota, Virginia and New York. Those are all presumably strong Democrat states.

"A lot of these people were considered to be in the bag, but with this tea party, it is hard to predict what is going to happen," Inouye said.

Perhaps most worrisome for Inouye is the knowledge that if you play the game of politics long enough, you will see patterns emerge and accept the swing of the pendulum.

"You will find that sometimes the country goes more conservative, or more to the left. We may be seeing a change right now. I don’t know. I hope not," Inouye said.

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