A large majority of neighbor island and rural Oahu Democratic voters in U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s district think she has an obligation to debate her less famous opponents this election year, according to a new Honolulu Star-Advertiser Hawaii Poll.
Gabbard is expected to easily win re-election this year, and so far has declined to debate or appear on forums with her Democratic opponents Anthony Tony Austin and Sherry Alu Campagna.
Gabbard, who represents the neighbor islands and rural Oahu in Congress, also refused debate requests in 2016 from Shay Chan Hodges, who was her Democratic challenger that year. That means Gabbard has yet to participate in a debate against a primary challenger since being elected to Congress six years ago.
However, 76 percent of likely Democratic primary voters in the 2nd Congressional District said in the Hawaii Poll they think Gabbard has an obligation to debate her political rivals. Another 16 percent said she has no obligation to do so, and 8 percent said they were unsure.
Campagna publicly criticized Gabbard earlier this month for skipping all debates this year, including forums proposed by Hawaii News Now and the League of Women Voters. Campagna, who is Gabbard’s best-known challenger in the Aug. 11 primary election, has described Gabbard’s decision to forgo debate as a “subversive form of censorship.”
In an interview Monday, Campagna said the poll results demonstrate that “the people of rural Hawaii know that they deserve an opportunity to fairly judge and weigh the candidates that have put themselves forward as potential representation for them. I think that avoiding a debate flies in the face of and is counter to democracy as we know it.”
Gabbard did not respond Monday to a request for comment sent to her campaign and congressional staffs. When questioned about the lack of debates last month, campaign spokeswoman Erika Tsuji said Gabbard had other business to attend to, including matters related to the Kauai flooding and the Kilauea eruption on Hawaii island.
“Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard extensively discusses her positions on the important issues that face our state and country on her website and Facebook, and she welcomes all to join her there,” Tsuji said at the time.
It is not unusual for well-known incumbents to avoid debating lessor-known challengers, since those debates tend to help the challengers more than the established politicians.
However, Gabbard in 2016 called out Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz for limiting the number of debates during the Democratic presidential primary campaign that year.
Gabbard told CNN at the time she wanted more primary presidential debates “to give the American people the opportunity to hear from these presidential candidates, to listen to what they’ve got to say, to hold them accountable for their views and their positions.”
Gabbard was a Bernie Sanders supporter, and limiting number of presidential debates in 2016 was seen as a tactic to help Hillary Clinton defeat Sanders.
On another issue, Democratic voters are divided over Gabbard’s controversial decision early last year to meet with Syrian President Bashar al- Assad, a dictator who is accused of repeatedly using banned chemical weapons against his own people during Syria’s vicious 7-year-old civil war.
The poll found that 41 percent of likely voters in the Democratic primary thought Gabbard should have made the trip, while 39 percent said she should not. Another 20 percent were unsure.
Gabbard met Assad twice during her visit to Syria in January 2017, which caused a furor in Washington, D.C. The United States has provided aid to rebels seeking to overthrow Assad, but Gabbard has opposed those efforts because she thinks Islamic terrorist groups would fill the power void if Assad were ousted.
After returning from Syria, Gabbard said her trip to the region strengthened her “resolve to end our illegal war to overthrow the Syrian government.”
“My visit to Syria has made it abundantly clear: Our counterproductive regime change war does not serve America’s interest, and it certainly isn’t in the interest of the Syrian people,” she said in a news release at the time.
The Hawaii Poll, conducted July 6-11 on cellphones and landlines by Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy, included 250 likely Democratic primary voters in the 2nd Congressional District. The margin of error is plus or minus 6.3 percentage points.
Poll Tulsi – Tuesday by Honolulu Star-Advertiser on Scribd
