Former Lt. Gov. James "Duke" Aiona said Saturday that he has not decided whether to run for governor next year but indicated that his only political aspiration remains Washington Place.
"I’m not saying ‘no’ and I’m not saying ‘yes’ to running for governor in 2014," Aiona told Republicans at their state convention at the Ko‘olau Ballrooms and Conference Center in Kaneohe. "That’s not a political answer. That is an honest answer."
Aiona, who lost to Gov. Neil Abercrombie by 17 percentage points in 2010, is still the best Republican prospect in a state where the minority party is grasping for traction against the dominant Democrats.
Not only do Republicans lack options for governor, they may not have top-flight candidates next year for the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House.
Cam Cavasso, a former state lawmaker who has lost several campaigns, is looking at the U.S. Senate, but the conservative is not considered a threat to U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz or U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, the Democratic contenders.
Former congressman Charles Djou could be competitive again in urban Honolulu’s 1st Congressional District, which Hanabusa is vacating, but Djou has not said whether he will run and did not attend the state convention.
On Saturday, the undercurrent at the convention was the divisions that have split Republicans as the party has lost ground over the past several years.
Aiona, the GOP’s most commanding presence since former Gov. Linda Lingle faded from public view, challenged Republicans to put their differences aside and unite behind their shared values.
He told an amusing story of being approached by a Democrat — obviously not an Abercrombie supporter — to switch parties. "He said, ‘Yeah, you just come and you become a Democrat, and don’t worry, you can believe everything you want to believe. Just don’t say it,’" he said.
Aiona, a father of four children who has recently become a grandfather, said he has been working as a substitute fourth-grade teacher and lecturing a graduate class on government at Chaminade University in between legal work for Family Court.
He asked Republicans who have divided the party to look within and remember that Democrats are the opposition, not each other. "I think we all got to remember that the first step on the way to victory is to recognize who the enemy is," he said.
Unity WAS also the theme for Miriam Hellreich, the Republican National Committeewoman, who offered a stinging partisan critique. She described Abercrombie as the nation’s most unpopular governor and saw potential Republican opportunities in the Schatz-Hanabusa primary, the warring Democratic factions in the state House and the absence of a real titular leader among Democrats since the death of U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye.
Hellreich also referenced national controversies over the Internal Revenue Service’s targeting of conservative groups, the U.S. Department of Justice’s seizure of Associated Press telephone records and the Obama administration’s response to the terrorist attacks last year on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
"Number one, we have to unify as a family," she said. "We need so-called Republicans to stop attacking other Republicans and instead use that energy in a positive way to elect Republicans."
Tito Montes, the president of the Hawai‘i Republican Assembly, which has been critical of party leadership, said the conservatives who make up the faction consider themselves loyal Republicans. "We’re here to be the conscience and the conservative standard-bearer of the party," he said in an interview. "I do agree with the message of unity. But I don’t agree with — necessarily — the message that we all have to agree."
Republicans voted overwhelmingly to re-elect David Chang as state party chairman. Chang, who has said it could take a decade or more for the party to build competitive strength, believes there are more conservatives than liberals in Hawaii. "They just don’t know it yet, right?" he told delegates.
But Chang and other party leaders sought to soften some of the more extreme conservative voices. Mike Palcic, a conservative activist, proposed a resolution that demanded that President Barack Obama resign over Benghazi, the federal health care reform law, the IRS abuses and "his willful disregard of the natural and God-given rights of mankind as enshrined in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights."
Chang joked that Obama’s resignation would mean that Vice President Joe Biden would take over, which would be worse.
"He’s fumbling over himself, and he’s committing suicide, so why don’t we just let him? I don’t think we need to tell him about it," Chang told delegates, persuading them to refer the resolution to the party’s platform committee.
