When Dean Uehara was director of the Baltimore office of a microelectronics firm, he would ask each year for a little extra money in the company budget for raises for his workers. He argued that bumping up salaries in that highly competitive industry would pay off in the long term by boosting profits and helping to retain employees.

The board of directors always refused, and Uehara watched as the company moved work offshore to Shanghai and India, cutting costs and eliminating U.S. jobs.

“It became pretty clear that really, even with a high-tech company, the goals really were just for the majority shareholders and the executives of the company, and absolutely nothing for the employees who were actually doing the work and making us very profitable,” Uehara said.

Now back home in Hawaii, that experience provoked Uehara, 58, to join the campaign crews that line up along Beretania Street to wave signs for upstart presidential candidate and Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders.

“I think the most pressing issue is the economic fairness issue, which is why he resonates with me,” said Uehara, who lives in Ewa Beach.

Sanders backers and the supporters of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are mobilizing in Hawaii to prepare for a statewide preference poll on March 26. Voting in the presidential preference poll is open only to members of the Democratic Party, and the event will help decide how many Hawaii party delegates will support each candidate at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in July.

Hawaii’s presidential polling likely won’t have much impact on the national contest for the Democratic presidential nomination, partly because of timing. The voting here is scheduled after the March 1 Super Tuesday voting and other potentially decisive polling in larger states such as Michigan, Illinois, Florida and Ohio.

Even so, the Sanders and Clinton camps in Hawaii say they are working to draw their supporters out for the preference polling at sites across the state.

A Hawaii Poll published early this year showed Clinton is the most popular of any of the candidates running for president from either major party, and had the support of 52 percent of the people who said they usually vote Democrat. That compares with just 18 percent of Democratic voters who said they prefer Sanders.

However, the same poll showed Sanders is slightly more popular than Clinton among voters who are younger than 35 years old.

The Sanders supporters in Hawaii are game, but they face some major obstacles.

Much or most of the Hawaii Democratic Party establishment is firmly in Clinton’s camp. When the Clinton campaign opens its Honolulu office today, organizers expect former Hawaii Govs. George Ariyoshi, Ben Cayetano and John Waihee to attend along with former U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka.

Stephanie Ohigashi, chairwoman of the Hawaii Democratic Party, was a Hillary Clinton delegate from Hawaii in 2008 who became friends with the Clintons after Bill Clinton’s 1992 presidential campaign. Ohigashi was unavailable for comment for this story.

Clinton also appears to have a significant head start in the competition for delegates. Hawaii will send a total of 34 delegates to the Philadelphia convention this summer, including nine “superdelegates” who are free to support their favorite candidate regardless of the outcome of the Hawaii preference polling on March 26.

At least five of those superdelegates have already committed to Clinton, including Hawaii U.S. Sens. Mazie Hirono and Brian Schatz and U.S. Rep. Mark Takai.

One of the officially “uncommitted” delegates is Gov. David Ige, who put in an appearance along with former U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa last fall to offer encouragement to the crowd at a major “Ready for Hillary” pro-Clinton event in Honolulu.

Democratic National Committeewoman Jadine Nielsen is another Hawaii superdelegate committed to Clinton, and is the Clinton campaign’s point person for delegate selection here. Nielsen said the Clinton campaign is fighting for delegates “at all levels.”

Nielsen described Clinton as “a progressive who can get things done,” and said the Clintons have personal connections to Hawaii from their campaign and official visits during and after President Bill Clinton’s administration.

Hillary Clinton has a record on domestic issues ranging from economy and education to health care and gun violence, Nielsen said. “She relates to Hawaii, and she believes in the issues and has fought for the issues that we care about in Hawaii.”

When asked about controversies over issues such as the Sept. 11, 2012, Benghazi attack that killed four Americans and Clinton’s use of a private email server, Nielsen replied: “No battle, no battle scars.”

“This is a woman, a candidate, a former senator, a former first lady, and former secretary of state who has taken positions and has not hesitated to fight for what she believes in,” Nielsen said.

The Sanders campaign, meanwhile, is busy setting up district-level organizations, sign waving, and engaging in classic get-out-the-vote activities. Volunteers are calling Sanders supporters to remind them of the date and time of the preference polling, and making sure they are both registered voters and party members, said Bart Dame, the lead representative of the Sanders campaign in Hawaii.

The message that volunteers want to convey to party members is that “there is a Bernie presence, and his supporters are their friends and neighbors.”

“We find that while there are a lot of more traditional Democrats who like Bernie’s sort of class-conscious-New-Deal-Democrat kind of approach, there are a lot of people who are disenchanted with both the Democratic and the Republican Party, and Bernie is appealing to them where no politician has before, so we’re bringing in a lot of new people,” Dame said.

Dame said six paid staffers from the Sanders campaign just arrived in Hawaii after working on the Nevada caucuses, where Sanders put in a solid showing. “This is the highest level of any presidential campaign activity in Hawaii that I’ve ever seen,” he said.

Clinton “really represents the sort of business-as-usual, just continue-on-the-same-path approach that has really alienated a lot of people from being involved in electoral politics,” he said. “Bernie for the first time in a long time is appealing to people who just have been struggling to get by, and they think maybe they’ll take a chance with him.”

A wild card in the race may be the movement surrounding the issues of banning or limiting cultivation of genetically modified organisms and restricting the use of pesticides in Hawaii agriculture. The activists who have been driving the movement have demonstrated an ability to organize in recent years, and Dame said the Sanders campaign in Hawaii is getting support from those networks on Kauai and Maui.

Sanders supports labeling of GMO products, while Dame said Clinton has been closely associated with Monsanto Co. and has been “a big advocate for agribusiness.”

Hawaii Republicans will hold a separate presidential preference poll on March 8.