U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz and U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa used brief stops before Oahu Democrats on Saturday to make politics personal, but they took different approaches that offer insight into their campaign strategies.

"There’s an old saying in Hawaii politics and that is that: Everything in Hawaii is political, except politics, which is personal," Schatz told Oahu Democrats at their convention at Moanalua High School.

Schatz said that when he thinks about expanding Social Security, he remembers the more than 200,000 people in Hawaii who receive benefits, including his father-in-law, George Kwok.

The senator also cited the high cost of a college education, which leaves many with crushing student-loan debt.

"And it may be a four-year degree, it may be a two-year degree, it may be a desire to get a culinary degree, but college is the ladder up," he said. "And for us, that’s personal, that’s not political."

Hanabusa turned to her aspirational history as a girl from Waianae who became a labor attorney, the first woman to lead a chamber of the state Legislature as Senate president, and a member of Congress. But rather than tie the narrative into public policy, like Schatz, she used it to emphasize her values.

The congresswoman recalled how her mother, a proud Waipahu High School graduate, would drive her into town to the private St. Andrew’s Priory in a car that doubled as the auto parts car for the family’s service station.

"I learned how to sleep in every contorted way that you can possibly sleep among parts," she told delegates. "But it taught me and trained me well for Congress, because I can sleep in every contorted way on the plane between Honolulu and Washington, D.C.

"But I also want to say that it also impressed upon me the concepts of fairness and equity, what it means to be from Waianae."

The two candidates in the August primary for U.S. Senate did not cross paths at the party’s Oahu convention. Hanabusa spoke in the morning, Schatz in the afternoon.

They were given only five minutes each to speak, the same time constraints that will be imposed at the party’s state convention later this month, so voters will have to wait until debates closer to the primary to fully evaluate them side-by-side.

Hanabusa and Schatz also flew to Hawaii island and Maui on Saturday for party conventions.

A parade of Democrats who want to replace Hanabusa in urban Honolulu’s 1st Congressional District state Senate President Donna Mercado Kim, state Rep. K. Mark Takai, Honolulu City Councilman Ikaika Anderson, Honolulu City Councilman Stanley Chang, state Sen. Will Espero and community activist Kathryn Xian made appearances before Oahu Democrats.

Gov. Neil Abercrombie and state Sen. David Ige, who is challenging the governor in the primary, also crisscrossed the state on Saturday for the party conventions.

On Oahu, Abercrombie praised delegates for getting involved despite what he called the cynicism, skepticism and dismissal in the media of party politics.

The governor said the Democratic Party has a legacy, from Hawaii’s transition from a territory to a state, that said "it was not willing to settle for anything less than to give everybody the opportunity and the justice that they deserve, and that they were willing to work hard for and to try and keep."

Abercrombie warned that the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in April in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, which lifted the caps on what campaign donors can give in aggregate to federal candidates and political party committees, would eventually reach the state and local levels.

The governor said the way to counter that influence is "the values and the priorities of the Democratic Party."

Ige was more biographical. The engineer and Senate Ways and Means Committee chairman spoke of growing up in Pearl City and Aiea, the son of a steelworker who was a veteran of the 100th Infantry Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team.

The senator recalled the World War II veterans who came back to the islands ready for social change, which led, in part, to the state’s Democratic revolution in 1954,

"Sixty years ago, we had a revolution," he said. "A revolution for equality, for working men and women, for an island culture based not on race or class, but on the character of the individual, on integrity, on the willingness no, eagerness to stand up for what we believe is right.

"I see that culture here today. And I’m here to say, I’m prepared to fight.’"

Both Abercrombie and Ige mentioned the minimum-wage increase and the state financing for an agreement to preserve land at Turtle Bay Resort as successes of this year’s legislative session. But Ige dropped a dig at Abercrombie, who has embraced the rapid redevelopment of Kakaako.

Lawmakers approved a bill, signed into law by the governor last week, that will reduce the governor’s power over appointments to the Hawaii Community Development Authority and essentially freeze building height limits and expand public-notice requirements on Kakaako high-rise projects.

"I don’t hear anyone talking about the fact that we need more multimillion-dollar luxury condos. But that’s what’s being built," Ige said. "And I don’t hear anyone saying we ought to raise building heights. It makes me wonder."

Democrats, meanwhile, could soon have a new party leader. Tony Gill, an attorney and former chairman of the Oahu Democrats, is campaigning for state party chairman.

Sources said Dante Carpenter, who has served as the party’s chairman since 2010, does not plan to seek another two-year term, although Carpenter was not ready to make a formal announcement on Saturday.

Oahu Democrats approved resolutions on Saturday that celebrated the passage of a gay-marriage law last year and strongly urged the party and the Legislature to work together to pass a public-financing program for state elections.