Four years ago it was Hawaii’s time to shine. On February 2008, local Democrats trooped down to school cafeterias and gymnasiums to cast a record-setting 37,000 votes in the presidential caucus. Party leaders were expecting a maximum of 17,000.
Then-Sen. Barack Obama won with 75 percent of the vote. Then-Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton had 24 percent.
It was a staggering show of enthusiasm from a state that usually leads the nation in political laid-back disinterest.
At the Manoa precincts, 3,200 showed up and an excited then-Rep. Neil Abercrombie reportedly jumped on a table and unilaterally directed people to just vote on scraps of paper when party officials ran out of printed ballots.
Having a presidential caucus, even a chaotic one, seemed like such an obvious good idea, the local Republican Party copied it and is holding its own caucus next month.
The Democrats go to vote for Obama, or Obama, or maybe Obama, on March 7 in their presidential preference poll. The Republicans hold theirs on March 13.
There is more information about the specifics at the Hawaii Democratic Party website at www.hawaiidemocrats.org Opens in a new tab. The GOP website is www.gophawaii.com Opens in a new tab.
During the last presidential race, all the excitement was on the Democratic side, with Obama and Clinton giving the world a lesson on bare-knuckle democracy. It was exciting and compelling drama.
This year instead of drama, the GOP contest appears to have devolved into some sort of a circular firing squad, with former Gov. Mitt Romney either distributing or receiving some of the season’s most vicious attack ads.
The result has not been to make any of the GOP candidates stronger.
Here in Hawaii, however, the GOP caucus is hoping that any interest will all be for the better.
"There is a lot of great momentum. It is a brand-new concept," reports Hawaii GOP Chairman David Chang, who has been traveling the state speaking to GOP members in preparation for next month’s caucus.
The four candidates — Romney, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul and Rick Santorum — all have campaign leaders in Hawaii.
The Hawaii GOP will have 20 delegates to the national convention and the caucuses will apportion the votes among the candidates. There are 17 delegates at stake because the party chairperson, national committee man and woman are considered "unpledged super delegates," meaning they are not bound by the March caucus results.
Chang, a West Point graduate, assured me that the method of assigning the delegates was "simple arithmetic."
As a chronic math-challenged journalist, nothing is "simple arithmetic" — plus the Hawaii GOP has been tying itself in knots just counting the votes in its national committeeman elections.
The winner, Ted Liu, topped former party chairman Willes Lee, by one vote, with both sides now arguing about who was eligible to vote.
So the chance for some after-caucus confusion is pretty much guaranteed.
"We have never had a caucus system; previously delegates were elected at the convention," Chang says.
For Chang, trying to boost excitement for a decidedly minority party, any flurry of controversy will serve to increase interest. The party will be left to decide how much chaos is a good thing.
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Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.
