Dick Cheney to Campaign in Hawaii
As a follow up to my earlier post, it looks like Hawaii really is in play this year. Vice President Cheney is scheduled to appear there tomorrow. Oh, and the Democrats sent Al Gore, which is just about the biggest favor they could possibly have done for the GOP.
From AP:
DIMONDALE, Mich. — Making a major detour on the campaign trail, Vice President Dick Cheney on Sunday night will rally voters in Hawaii, a state only two Republicans have won in a presidential race.
The Bush-Cheney campaign said Hawaii was within reach and that every electoral vote is worth fighting for — in Hawaii’s case, four.
“The polls look so good in Hawaii that we are going to drop in,” Cheney told hundreds of cheering Republican volunteers Friday in Wisconsin. The vice president said he and wife, Lynn, have campaigned in 48 states in the past year, “and yesterday we booked the 49th.”
The Bush campaign is highlighting Hawaii in a move that forces Sen. John Kerry to spend money there and feeds the perception that President Bush will win.
A campaign can use second-tier states like Hawaii to cover its bets in case it miscalculated elsewhere. For example, Democrats miscalculated in West Virginia four years ago when Bush became only the fourth GOP candidate to win the state since 1932.
“We are competitive in the state. This is a very close race,” said Cheney spokeswoman Anne Womack.
Gov. Linda Lingle, Hawaii’s first Republican governor in four decades, said the Cheney appearance was a response to polls showing Bush and Kerry neck and neck, a remarkable turn of events in a state that Democrat Al Gore won by 18 percentage points in 2000.
Gore was to have appeared Friday in Hawaii at a get-out-the-vote rally with Kerry’s daughter Alexandra.
With the lowest unemployment rate in the nation, Hawaii has none of the economic problems that many states on the mainland have. The islands are in the midst of a construction boom. Tourism is soaring after recovering from the Sept. 11 attacks.
Ten thousand Hawaii-based U.S. troops are at war in Afghanistan and Iraq, making the military vote in a time of war a strong potential force for an incumbent Republican.
Hawaii politics are in a state of flux. Lingle cashed in on widespread voter discontent with an entrenched Democratic power structure. The state Legislature is still Democratic, although Lingle has been campaigning hard to change that, and Republicans might at least pick up enough House seats to keep Democrats from overriding her vetoes.
Hawaii also has a trend in elections that makes Democrats uneasy: a lot of cross-party voting in presidential races.
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