It is election night: David Ige has just won the governorship and on Maui, Stephanie Ohigashi, Hawaii state Democratic Party chairwoman, is looking at her phone.
"As busy as he was, David stopped to text me, ‘Thank you for your efforts to balance the party,’" Ohigashi recalls.
Ohigashi reports that since then, she has had several talks with Ige and is hoping that after next week’s inauguration, she will be able to brief the new titular head of Hawaii’s dominant political party.
"I plan to meet with him and talk about everything coming up in the next two years, which will lead us to 2016 and the presidential race," Ohigashi said in an interview.
There will be much to talk about before getting to presidential politics because Hawaii’s Democrats are neither united nor happy.
"He has got to bring the Democrats together. There is a divide in the party. There are the very liberal guys compared to the more moderate ones. There is a divide between the elected officials and the party leaders who have never been elected, but want to tell us what to do," said one state Senate Democratic leader, who agreed to talk anonymously about the party problems.
Long-time Maui House Democrat, Speaker Joe Souki, added that Ige will soon face a fractured political party.
"This will be a challenge for him. The party right now is basically progressive, but the chair (Ohigashi) is moderate. Ige is more a moderate to conservative," said Souki in an interview.
Last year the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Caucus of the state Democratic Party filed charges against Democratic legislators who sponsored proposals to define marriage as between a man and woman.
The reasoning was that the party platform endorsed gay marriage and Democratic legislators should not act in conflict with the platform.
"It is a democracy, and everyone has the right to propose legislation," bristled Senate President Donna Mercado Kim at the time, adding that legislators have many reasons for introducing legislation.
Eventually the party fumed but never formally took away the legislators’ party memberships. Still, there is a divide between grass-roots activists in the party and legislators.
Ohigashi said getting all sides to play nicely is her challenge.
"That is my job, to bring everyone together. We have a government liaison officer and we are trying to bridge the disconnect," she said.
The rest of the job will be Ige’s.
"He is the kind of leader who will cement some of the areas that were crumbling," Ohigashi said.
Ige, she said, is ready for the challenge.
"I think, just like his wife, Dawn, said during the campaign, it is a different kind of leadership. He is a different kind of leader," Ohigashi said.
"He thinks of everyone as a valuable player, and I think that is going to be really refreshing, and we are going to have a lot more inclusion in all the party activities."
If Ige can bend the always-scrappy Democrats to actually get along and change the course of the mighty feuds between the grass roots and elected leaders, then Ige leaps from mild-mannered governor to stepping into his Superman suit.
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Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.
