If you were a white Republican looking for a district to win an election, the 25th Senate District in Windward Oahu would be a likely pick.
The area is about one-third white, usually votes Republican and has that small community, small business, independent streak that could turn out the GOP votes.
Of course, the district includes Waimanalo with a strong Native Hawaiian representation, which is an area that can go either R or D.
What you wouldn’t expect in the district is a candidate with a biography as a liberal, educated, ambitious, articulate, female lawyer and former state department head.
So Democrat Laura Thielen laughs when she considers the strange course she has set upon.
"If I were an opportunist, I would run as a Republican. People think I am a Republican; I would have a tremendous amount of support in the Republican Party. The district has historically been Republican, but I am not," she said in an interview this week.
The course is stranger still because the Democratic Party says she can’t run as a Democrat because she hasn’t been a Democrat long enough.
That’s the reason the party gave when its central committee formally ruled that Thielen had not met the six-month membership test.
Everyone knows that’s not the real reason. The Democrats don’t want her running because there is a Democratic incumbent in the seat, Sen. Pohai Ryan, who won last year after GOP standard-bearer Fred Hemmings declined to run for another term.
Democrats also don’t want her to run because her mother is long-time GOP state House Rep. Cynthia Thielen. And daughter Laura, a former member of the state school board, backed former GOP Gov. Linda Lingle’s plan to divvy up the public school system in different school districts. To make it even more suspicious, Thielen served as Lingle’s director of the Land and Natural Resources Department.
"I have pulled a Democratic Party ballot for every single election I have voted in since I turned 18," Thielen says.
Of course in general elections, Thielen the younger voted for Thielen the elder, but come on, it was her mother.
"I did support my mother. She babysat my children and the Democrats weren’t offering that kind of constituent service," Thielen jokes.
There is a serious side to the contest: Thielen says she is running against what has happened to the Democrats in power.
"The Democratic Party values that are dear to me are under attack in the Legislature. It is important that I stand up and challenge the Legislature on their positions on the environment and agriculture and open government," she says, noting that one bill under discussion would exempt state and county projects from much of the environmental and planning laws in the state.
Adding that when she ran DLNR, the department was able to process permits and applications without voiding the state’s environmental protection laws, Thielen says, "I don’t agree with Legislature that we have to bypass these rules and laws in order to create jobs."
The Democrats meeting in convention next month are expected to chew again on the Thielen decision to say she can’t run, although Thielen has filed for office and says it is up to the Democrats to do something to take her name off the ballot.
Even then, if Thielen is able to prevail, she still has to win the primary against an incumbent who used to be a party official; and then in the general election against Hemmings, who has decided to run again. That would be a case of the Democrat, who some think is a Republican, running against someone who has run for both governor and lieutenant governor as a Republican and served as a Republican in the state House and Senate.
With a campaign that appears to be the political version of the Navy Seals’ "Hell Week," Thielen is easily the most interesting long shot of the campaign season.
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Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.
