Tourism in Hawaii is approaching record highs. Construction is booming in Honolulu. Unemployment is at 4.4 percent, the lowest since before the recession.

The state government posted a record $844 million budget surplus at the end of fiscal year 2013. Emergency cash reserves are being replenished. Credit ratings for state bonds are sound. And the state has finally taken initial steps to address multibillion-dollar unfunded liabilities in the public-worker retirement and health care funds.

"All the negative elements and factors that were in play in 2010 when I was elected, when I was hired for this job, have been reversed," said Gov. Neil Abercrombie, 76.

So why is Abercrombie in danger of becoming the first governor since 1962 to lose re-election?

Many of his fellow Democrats at the state Legislature have not been willing to extend to Abercrombie the customary credit chief executives often receive for a healthy economy and budget surplus. The governor has alienated several important liberal allies on labor, the environment and land use with his often blustery and confrontational personality. His job approval ratings, according to the Hawaii Poll, have not broken 50 percent since his first six months in office.

State Sen. David Ige, 57, with little campaign money or name recognition statewide, is a credible threat in the Democratic primary. Former Lt. Gov. James "Duke" Aiona, a Republican, and former Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann of the Hawaii Independent Party are emboldened for the November general election despite their bad losses to Abercrombie in 2010.

Re-election campaigns are typically about the performance of the incumbent, so Abercrombie was going to be center stage. But public and private polls have indicated that the primary might solely be a reflection on Abercrombie, a precarious spot for a polarizing governor.

Always a fighter, Abercrombie might have expected his last campaign would not be easy given the state’s factional Democratic politics. But he also might have expected to get the benefit of the doubt like some of his predecessors at Washington Place.

"If someone wants to try and take credit for the general atmosphere of prosperity, are they also willing to take responsibility when it was negative?" Abercrombie asked. "So the political forces that you cite all have their reasons to try to take credit. Success has many, many mothers and fathers. But were they there, taking responsibility, or claiming jurisdiction, when it was so negative in 2010?

"I didn’t run away," he said. "In fact, I said I welcome the challenge."

Cooperation leads to new laws, deals

Former Gov. John Waihee says Abercrombie deserves a second four-year term. "You may not like his personality, but look at his accomplishments," he said. "And when you have something going correctly, why would you want to change?"

Waihee said Ige and many of Abercrombie’s other detractors have listed few policy disagreements with the governor. Instead, the main complaints seem to be with his leadership style.

"Is this a campaign of style or substance?" Waihee asked. "And on the substance, Neil has done a job that is worthy of re-election."

Waihee took a subtle jab at former Govs. George Ariyoshi and Ben Cayetano, who have endorsed Ige. Cayetano, who was once Abercrombie’s close political ally, barely won re-election as governor in 1998 and left office with poor job approval ratings.

"I think that some of the politicians that, for example, were governors need to be reminded that not everybody liked their style either," Waihee said. "And we stuck with them because, on the substance, they were doing what needed to be done."

As much as the primary has drifted into personality contrasts, Abercrombie has a record as governor for voters to examine.

His administration reached a $200 million settlement with the state Office of Hawaiian Affairs over former crown land revenue. While some Hawaiians have questioned the value, since OHA has faced obstacles in developing the state land the agency received near the waterfront in Kakaako, the agreement ended a long-running dispute.

In partnership with the Legislature, Abercrombie signed laws to contain multibillion-dollar unfunded liabilities in the public-worker retirement and health care funds. Some conservative policy analysts have belittled the changes, and the test of whether the state can keep an annual payment schedule in the health care fund might not come until the next economic downturn, but the response happened under the governor’s watch.

Abercrombie, working with lawmakers, kept a promise to replenish the state’s hurricane relief fund and rainy day fund once the economy improved.

Abercrombie signed a civil-unions bill into law that had been vetoed by Gov. Linda Lingle, a Republican. In response to the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark ruling last year that legally married gay couples are entitled to federal benefits, the governor called the Legislature into a historic special session to approve marriage equality.

Working with the city and the Trust for Public Land, Abercrombie reached a $48.5 million deal with Turtle Bay Resort on a conservation easement to protect 665 acres from development. Ige crafted the bond-financing scheme to cover the state’s $40 million share.

After twice calling for a minimum-wage increase in his State of the State addresses, lawmakers approved a bill that Abercrombie signed into law this year that will raise the minimum wage to $10.10 an hour by January 2018.

Abercrombie convinced the Legislature to place a constitutional amendment on the November ballot asking voters whether public money should be spent on private preschool. Lawmakers have been hesitant to approve much state money for preschool until the vote, but the governor has secured money for an initial investment in preschool at 18 public schools.

Abercrombie has said that providing preschool opportunities for all of the state’s 4-year-olds would be his policy focus in a second term. Ige has opposed the constitutional amendment, raising questions about the cost of preschool and the wisdom of expanding into private schools, and has also faulted the governor for allowing a junior kindergarten program to expire this year.

Personalities clash at capitol

Other parts of the "New Day" agenda that Abercrombie outlined four years ago have been unrealized.

Abercrombie had said he wanted to decentralize public-school administration and make school principals more like chief executives. But many principals have complained about stifling, top-down mandates from the state Department of Education, and the issue has now become one of Ige’s campaign themes.

The governor wanted to establish an independent Hawaii Energy Authority that would have policy and regulatory power over alternative energy. He has instead wrestled with the Public Utilities Commission over the pace of change on energy.

Abercrombie had predicted he would have a better relationship with the Legislature than Lingle had. The number of vetoes has declined substantially under Abercrombie — and the Legislature has not overridden an Abercrombie veto — but the relationship has often been rough. Lawmakers have complained privately about a lack of consultation, particularly on policy ideas from the governor — like a pension tax — that are controversial.

"Every blessing has its counterside, if you will," Abercrombie said. "And what I mean by that is very simple. When you have the kind of overwhelming majority that has existed for the Democratic Party for the better part of half a century, inevitably then, you’re going to have factions.

"You’re going to have differences of opinion as to how to get there, which manifests itself in elections."

Stance on growth has stirred anger

While some politicians have a Teflon-like ability to deflect controversy, everything negative — as one Abercrombie ally says privately — seems to stick to the governor.

At the state Capitol, many political observers still talk about the painful moments of Abercrombie’s first year, which included a brutal contract fight with public school teachers, public-relations blunders on the Pro Bowl and emergency proclamations, staff turmoil and the ignominy of the lowest job approval rating of any governor in the nation.

Abercrombie suffered the brunt of the backlash over the Public Land Development Corp., which was given broad exemptions from state land-use regulations to redevelop underused state land but never completed a single project before it was repealed last year. The governor initially defended the new agency against what he derided as the "usual suspects" who want to be arbiters of development.

On the left and in anti-development circles, there has been dismay that the Abercrombie administration endorsed the Ho’opili and Koa Ridge residential development projects in West and Central Oahu.

The harshest disapproval has come over the governor’s exuberant backing of urban growth in Kakaako.

Abercrombie, who had once dismissed high-rise condominium projects in the region as "kennels for the rich" in the 1970s, has celebrated the long-delayed redevelopment of Kakaako. The governor views Kakaako as a potential urban village, with a blend of workforce and market-rate housing, retail shops, businesses and entertainment venues connected by walking and bicycle paths near the city’s new rail line.

Critics have accused Abercrombie of selling out to developers who are building luxury high-rises for foreign and mainland real estate speculators and driving up the state’s already staggering home prices. Real estate developers, construction firms and others that stand to benefit from redevelopment in Kakaako have been lucrative sources of campaign contributions for Abercrombie, but the governor has also attracted donations from across the gamut of the state’s business and financial elite.

The image of Abercrombie — who entered Hawaii politics as a defiant, long-haired, bearded Vietnam War protester — being feted at fundraisers by the Howard Hughes Corp. at the IBM Building in Kakaako, or by Oracle Corp. billionaire Larry Ellison at his San Francisco home, is too much for some progressives to shake.

Honolulu City Councilwoman Ann Kobayashi, who has been friends with Abercrombie for four decades, has stayed loyal despite what she acknowledges are some mistakes by the governor. She explained that "issues don’t cloud over friendships."

"There are negatives against Abercrombie. I mean, we all have negatives against us," she said. "But I think, overall, he has served the people of Hawaii well over all these years."

Do what is best, not what is easy

Four years ago Abercrombie campaigned for governor as an agent of change against the status quo. This year some of Abercrombie’s loyalists have framed his re-election as a final clash with an old guard desperate to keep the power they had under the late U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye.

Ige has won the support of many in Inouye’s camp, and there is some overlap with the primary and the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate between U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz and U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa. Abercrombie chose Schatz, his former lieutenant governor, over Hanabusa, who was Inouye’s preference, to replace Inouye in 2012.

Both primary campaigns have stirred up racial and local divisions that are never far from the surface in Hawaii politics but rarely alone make the difference in statewide elections. Four of the seven governors since statehood have been white and born on the mainland, including the Buffalo, N.Y.-bred Abercrombie.

Abercrombie also described himself four years ago as a collaborator, a necessary trait for anyone who survived politically in Congress for two decades. He impressed many who had known him over his political career by a willingness to drop his tendency to lecture and to instead listen.

This year it is Ige who is emphasizing that he is the collaborator.

"From the very first election that I was in 40 years ago, I have never said I’d be all things to all people, or just to try to tell people what might be comforting to hear," Abercrombie said. "I’ve always said and acted on the premise that you’re entitled to hear from me what you need to know, what I think needs to be said because we have a common interest in resolving problems.

"That may not always comport with what the most convenient answer of the moment (is), but that I would rely on their trust that I was trying to act in the best interests of the people of Hawaii with regard to any particular issue. Didn’t mean that I always had the right answer or that I wouldn’t have to, at some point, say, ‘Gee, I wish we’d gone in another direction,’ and say so. But say so.

"And I’ve always done that."