If elections are won by unified political parties with a shared, specific sense of purpose, the Hawaii Republican Party appears poised to extend its long and painful losing streak.

The Hawaii State Republican Convention in Waipahu on Saturday erupted into booing and catcalls when state House Minority Leader Beth Fukumoto Chang took the microphone to say some of Donald Trump’s statements are sexist and racist, and she does not want him to become president.

That triggered an uproar among the crowd of nearly 300 delegates, with delegate Michael Palcic from St. Louis Heights standing up to suggest that Fukumoto Chang resign from the party.

Nathan Paikai, the authorized representative of the Trump campaign in Hawaii, stood at another microphone reminding Fukumoto Chang that “we grew the party 50 percent off of this man,” pointing at his Trump campaign hat. “Why would anybody come against him?”

More people lined up at the microphone to challenge Fukumoto Chang, and state party Chairman Fritz Rohlfing finally called for order to try to move on to other issues and speakers. That prompted more booing, and one woman at the microphone snapped, “This is bulls—!”

Fukumoto Chang, who is the second-highest-ranking elected Republican in the state, remarked after the exchange, “If I needed a reason to leave, they gave me one.”

Almost the entire Hawaii Republican Party leadership supported someone other than Trump for president, but Trump supporters drove a huge turnout of 15,672 voters in the party presidential caucuses on March 8 and propelled Trump to victory in Hawaii.

Fierce insurgency

The idea of a state convention in an election year is to rally the GOP troops and unify the party, but the obvious, raw divisions over Trump’s populist campaign present just one more in a string of problems for the Hawaii GOP.

The once-respected Republican brand in Hawaii has been so profoundly weakened over the decades that the party struggles mightily every two years to field enough candidates to provide meaningful competition for Hawaii’s ruling Democrats.

The Hawaii Republicans who do run for office often downplay their party membership in advertising and yard signs, a clue that the candidates calculate that party membership here may be more of a liability than an asset.

Lately the party’s weakness helped fuel a sometimes vicious insurgency by a faction of unhappy Republicans known as the Hawaii Republican Assembly that is accusing the party leadership of both incompetence and wrongdoing.

And wading into that volatile mix this weekend were Trump’s supporters, a group whose members mostly appear to be unaligned with either the official Hawaii party leadership or its angry Republican Assembly opponents.

Officially, the business of the convention Saturday at the Filipino Community Center in Waipahu was to elect representatives to the Republican National Committee and amend party rules, but the real question of the day was whether the Trump troops are the key to reviving the Hawaii GOP.

After a high-energy day of speeches, selfies and sign-waving, it still isn’t clear exactly what the Trump supporters want from the Hawaii party, or if they will steer the party in a new and more successful direction.

Warner Kimo Sutton, a member of the leadership team for the Trump campaign in Hawaii, said the national Trump campaign made it clear it isn’t interested in local party conventions or activities because the campaign is focused on winning the presidency.

Considering Hawaii hasn’t voted for a Republican presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan ran for re-election in 1984, the national Trump campaign has good reason to direct its energies elsewhere. But with the deadline for candidates to file for election just 16 days away, the local party has little time to sort out its dramas and chart a new course.

Paikai said even Democrats want to be part of the Trump movement, which he said is dominating the party, will cross ethnic boundaries and will sweep the state.

“The tide is already changing,” he said. “I’m hoping to bring Mr. Trump here.”

He said the Trump movement will focus on job creation and infrastructure because Trump is a builder, he said.

“The party is already moving,” he said.

Reversing GOP slide

The arrival of Trump’s supporters on the scene introduces a new ingredient into what was already a complicated political mix.

Republican Linda Lingle’s rise to governor of Hawaii from 2002 to 2010 was the pinnacle of success for the party in the post-statehood years, but the local GOP promptly resumed its long-term collapse shortly after Lingle left office.

After Lingle won re-election as governor, the Hawaii party members “decided, ‘Well, we’ve done our best, and we’re going to go back and do the things we really like to do as Republicans, which is maybe not politics,’” Rohlfing told listeners at the convention. “What happens when we let down our guard is the other guys come in, and they never stop, and so we need to be vigilant and involved.”

The ranks of GOP officeholders in Hawaii have been whittled down to one member in the 25-member state Senate and seven in the 51-member state House.

Hawaii Republicans have not held one of the state’s four congressional seats since Charles Djou held office for seven months in 2010 and 2011, and Republicans have not held any statewide office since Lingle departed a half-dozen years ago.

Sam Slom, the only Republican left in the state Senate, lays some of the blame for that erosion in the party at the feet of Lingle and party leaders who deliberately diluted the definition of what it means to be a Republican in Hawaii in order to make party membership more appealing to more people.

Change is inevitable

Slom said in an interview he believes the party is deliberately avoiding controversy by, for example, avoiding heated public debate over the party platform. Slom says the party has not adopted a new platform with specific planks on issues such as abortion in 10 years.

The House Republican minority led by Fukumoto Chang has also “bent over backwards” in recent years to prove it can work with the Democrats instead of acting as vocal critics of the Democrats, which Slom said has also hurt the local Republican Party.

Still another factor that hurts the party brand is the decision by prominent Republican candidates such as James “Duke” Aiona, Lingle’s lieutenant governor, and Djou to downplay their Republican affiliations, Slom said.

“You don’t see a Republican label next to their name, and in fact they don’t campaign as Republicans,” Slom said. “If you’ve got the party leaders who are running away from the brand, and you don’t have very strong statements or positions, why would you want to be a Republican in Hawaii?”

The surge of Trump supporters has caused excitement about the election both nationally and locally, “so the party will be changed, there’s no question about it,” Slom said. “A lot of people fear that. I don’t fear it. With new people coming in, new ideas, new energy, I think that gives us a real opportunity.”

Palcic, the delegate from St. Louis Heights, was the Hawaii coordinator for Ben Carson’s campaign, but said he welcomes the Trump supporters into the party and supports Trump’s candidacy.

For those Republicans who refuse to back Trump, “I think they need to think it through,” Palcic said. “They will realize that to withhold support from Trump means that the other party will win. It’s like a vote for Hillary Clinton, and to have the Clintons back in the White House I think is an abominable thing.”

Slom, who is recovering from heart surgery, gave a rousing speech to the convention from his wheelchair despite his concerns about the trajectory of the party.

“Let’s win in Hawaii, let’s win the presidency, because we are Republicans. Let’s stand proudly as Republicans, not bipartisan or anything else,” he told the crowd.

‘We’re not Texas’

Fukumoto Chang said in an interview she remains concerned about the Hawaii GOP because “what’s sort of taken over the party is anger for anger’s sake, and it’s not policy-driven anymore, and for me that’s very disconcerting.” She said most Hawaii voters cannot identify with that approach, and she has argued for a less confrontational posture.

She said some local Republican Party members demand that local candidates adopt a mainland style, but “we are Hawaii, we’re not Texas, and I was born here, I grew up here, I’m a local girl, and I have a local style.” Party members have expressed anger toward her in the Legislature because she has avoided a confrontational style, she said.

Fukumoto Chang has also said publicly she is troubled by statements from party members both locally and nationally that “are coming from a place of either racism or sexism … and that definitely upsets people, but again, I’m just trying to make the party better,” she said.

That kind of talk has fueled speculation Fukumoto Chang might switch parties to join the Democrats, and she did not rule that out.

“I don’t know where the party’s going to be a year, or two years, or 10 years from now, so no, I haven’t committed to never changing parties,” she said. “None of us can say for sure where the party is going right now, and if the party no longer represents my district’s values, or my values, then my commitment is to my district.”

She added, “We can be better than we are right now, and until we address some of those elements in our party, I don’t think that we’re ever going to have a viable alternative for voters in Hawaii.”

State party chairman Rohlfing sees it differently, and assured the gathered delegates that “we are on the threshold of a Republican renewal in Hawaii nei.” He said the official party membership has grown from 22,176 to 33,074 today.

“Our prospects are bright, but we cannot slacken our pace now,” he said. “We need to lengthen our stride and quicken our pace. We can’t afford to sit back and let somebody else take up the slack.”