Trump wins among isle Republicans

• Isle republicans brave rain to vote in caucus

• GOP split could give isles clout on the national stage

Billionaire Donald Trump won the Hawaii Republican Party’s presidential caucus voting Tuesday night, dramatically demonstrating his local appeal by spurring a strong voter turnout that swamped his competition.

After all the precincts were counted, Trump won handily with 42 percent of the vote, followed by Texas U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, at 33 percent, U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida a distant third-place, 13 percent, and Ohio Gov. John R. Kasich fourth, just under 11 percent. Trump won more than 40 percent of the vote in all counties.

The New York businessman also won in Michigan and Mississippi on Tuesday, while Cruz won in Idaho.

Hawaii Republicans packed polling sites across the state Tuesday night for presidential caucus voting that was both unpredictable and unusually important for the national candidates.

State Rep. Cynthia Thielen (R, Kailua-Kaneohe) estimated 600 to 1,000 people were lined up at Enchanted Lake Elementary School shortly before 7 p.m. waiting to cast their ballots.

“The crowd is unbelievable and it’s raining, and this is just amazing,” Thielen said. “It’s wonderful with the people pouring in to vote, and a lot of them are standing out under umbrellas. This line is snaking around the school and it just doesn’t stop. It’s absolutely amazing.”

The final vote tally showed the statewide Republican caucus turnout was more than 13,300 voters, which exceeded the 2012 presidential caucuses by several thousand votes.

Voters eager

Some GOP voters were determined to have their say. Pete Saunders showed up two hours early at Highlands Intermediate School in Pearl City to vote for Trump. “I hate Trump but I’m going to vote for him because I’m sick of politicians,” said Saunders, a 60-year-old Waipio resident and Pearl Harbor mechanic. “He’s not for sweetness and light. I’m tired of the same old thing. If you’re doing the same thing over and over and expecting (different) results, you’re insane.”

Voting began at 6 p.m. and was scheduled to last two hours, but GOP Hawaii announced shortly after the scheduled close that voters still in line at 8 p.m. would be allowed to vote.

First-time voter and Kahala resident Shawn Whetstine, 24, turned out at Kalani High School in East Honolulu to vote for Cruz.

“He’ll make a better candidate than Trump,” Whetstine said. “I don’t believe in what Trump’s doing.”

Andrew Walden, chairman of the Hawaii Republican caucus committee, said the strong voter turnout across the state delayed the end of voting. “There are lines everywhere, and everybody who’s in line gets to vote, and that might take quite a while in a few places,” Walden said.

Nathan Paikai, lead volunteer for the Trump campaign in Hawaii, said Trump poll observers at voting locations across the state reported the sites were overwhelmed, and he worried the party would run out of ballots.

“The excitement is unreal,” Paikai said. “Unprecedented numbers.”

Kimo Sutton, co-chairman of Trump’s Hawaii campaign, said his candidate was responsible for the strong turnout.

“Donald got them out because they are inspired by the many ways that they see him as their candidate,” Sutton said. “They are a diverse group of people out there, so you could ask 20 people and get 20 different answers.”

Colin Moore, director of the Public Policy Center at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, predicted that “disengaged voters” who normally don’t participate in caucuses would turn out because they like Trump’s style and message. But he also expected a strong turnout from traditional Republican activists “who would be horrified if Hawaii nominates Trump.”

Support for Cruz, Rubio

That deep split in the Republican Party over the extraordinary campaign by Trump made the outcome of the caucus voting last night almost impossible to predict.

“All of the Republican leadership, the most well-known Republicans from Charles Djou to Pat Saiki to Duke Aiona — they’re all supporting candidates who aren’t Trump, and they are not subtle about it,” Moore said. However, Trump “does still seem to have this support.”

The local Republican Party is small enough that a surge of activism from almost any quarter can overwhelm the “traditional” mainstream local Republican voters.

Church groups have at times seized control of the Hawaii GOP presidential caucuses to win solid local victories for candidates such as Pat Robertson and Mitt Romney, but Cruz, who has appealed to evangelical Christians, failed to turn any church support into a win here.

Former Lt. Gov. James “Duke” Aiona, who is known for his ties to local church organizations, this week endorsed Rubio, the Florida senator, instead of Cruz. Aiona said he likes Rubio’s youth, and prefers his vision regarding foreign policy and social issues to those of Cruz.

Neither Aiona nor Moore said they saw evidence of an organized effort to flood the caucuses with churchgoers last night. Aiona said he believes the local churches were divided between Cruz and Rubio, but he hoped for a strong church turnout. The evangelical community understands the influence the next president will have on the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court, he said.

Four of the six Republican candidates who qualified to compete in the caucus voting in Hawaii were still active this week. They are Trump, Cruz, Rubio and Kasich. But Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson each gained less than 1 percent of the Hawaii vote despite having dropped out of the race.

The local voting tally ensures that Trump will receive the majority of Hawaii’s 19 Republican delegates, although the exact breakdown was not immediately announced.

Moore said Trump has a particular interest in the Hawaii race because the national primary to this point has prominently featured accusations about Trump’s alleged racism.

‘Trump factor’

Hawaii is the most racially diverse state in the nation, Moore said, and “if he could win Hawaii, that would be a very important symbolic victory for him. He can say, ‘I’ve won the most diverse state in the nation.’”

Former U.S. Rep. Djou, who is supporting Kasich, said the Ohio governor’s team focused more on Michigan than Hawaii for Tuesday’s races, and is even more intent on the voting in Ohio on March 15. In the end, Kasich lost in both Michigan and Hawaii.

“What makes this year weird and different is the Trump factor,” Djou said. “Trump is not organized, he doesn’t have good guidance or leadership here, he has not done any of the traditional work one would normally expect in a caucus, and like so many other aspects of Trump, I don’t get it.”

Normally, seeking the support of a caucus is “all about contacts” and reaching out to party members, but Trump didn’t do that, said Djou, who served in the U.S. House in 2010 and 2011. For example, email is a cheap, easy way to reach out to targeted potential voters, but Djou said he saw no effort by the Trump camp to collect email addresses and communicate with supporters.

A campaign that fails to do that sort of basic work would be doomed in an ordinary year, but “Trump has this sort of attraction with a strongman persona that resonates with a certain part of the electorate, that it doesn’t matter whether you have that sort of disciplined organization or not,” said Djou.

A large turnout of disaffected voters supporting Trump provides potential new recruits for the local Republican party, but there is also a risk for the party in a Trump victory, Moore said.

“The Hawaii Republicans have suffered for so long because of this image of a deeply conservative mainland party,” Moore said, an image that has never played well in Hawaii.

“If Trump gets the nomination, I think that could really hurt the party in the long run. It’s going to be much more difficult for them to advertise themselves as kind of a moderate alternative to the mainland party. If they’re trying to increase their long-term electoral success, I think this could really be a black eye for them.”

Star-Advertiser reporters Dan Nakaso and Jayna Omaye contributed to this report.