Hirono vs. Case will push differences, not similarities

It was former New York Gov. Mario Cuomo who advised, "You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose."

In this campaign season we have not yet been visited by the bard.

This is not a year of singing hopes and defining visions. What it does appear to be, however, is a demonstration of some in-your-face campaigning.

The Democrats’ primary race for U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Akaka’s Senate seat is particularly tense.

For the two major candidates, U.S. Rep. Mazie Hirono and former U.S. Rep. Ed Case, the contest is particularly important.

Both Hirono and Case are at a point in their political careers that, if they lose, they will likely go home and not come back.

So when Hirono launched the first television ad of her campaign, it immediately set off alarm bells in the Case campaign.

Hirono’s TV spot is an attack on both Case and former Gov. Linda Lingle, the major GOP candidate in the Senate race, but it saves her big attack for Case. Hirono’s spot says she is "the only candidate who opposed Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy."

Case shot back that Hirono’s ad is "false and misleading."

"I voted against them as congressman and have publicly stated on several occasions that I oppose their extension," Case said.

Hirono’s campaign manager, Betsy Lin, defended the ad, calling Case "one of just 15 Democrats who voted for Bush’s capital gains tax breaks for the wealthy in 2005."

The Hirono spot seeks to draw a distinction between herself and both Lingle and Case, although the attempt to pass Case off as a Bush-loving Democrat in name only is clumsy at best, misleading at worst.

During her three terms in office, Hirono has predictably voted as a liberal Democrat. Her politics are progressive and she has won the support of liberal political groups ranging from the AFL-CIO to Emily’s List.

The National Journal gives Hirono an 88 percent liberal score, according to a composite of interest group ratings.

Case is a much more complicated political animal. One of his defining GOP votes was in 2006 when he was one of only 34 Democrats to support lowering the estate tax. The bill had overwhelming GOP support, but interestingly, one of those other Democrat votes was cast by Case’s Hawaii partner, then-U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie.

The anti-Bush crowd has always jeered Case not for a vote he cast but for saying that if he had been in Congress, he probably would have voted to authorize the use of military force in Iraq.

He later said if he had known that Bush’s claims about weapons of mass destruction were false, he would have voted no.

While in Congress, Case had a 90 percent approval rating from the environmentalists’ League of Conservation Voters, an 8 percent rating from the Christian Coalition and a 100 percent vote record according to the pro-peace group SANE.

If you look at the composites developed by the bipartisan group On the Issues (ontheissues.org), both Case and Hirono are classified as left of center. Case is a "moderate liberal" and Hirono is dubbed a "hard-core liberal."

So far, no poetry from either candidate.

Perhaps the best advice in the campaigns comes from the late Pulitzer-winning columnist Walter Lippmann: "Before you can begin to think about politics at all, you have to abandon the notion that there is a war between good men and bad men."

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