HIRA News
REPUBLICAN MELTDOWN IN PARADISE: Hawaii GOP Weaknesses Exposed in the 2024 Primary Election
Other than liberal Scott Saiki, the speaker of Hawaii’s Democrat state house, losing to a radical socialist transvestite who declared war on his/her own party (which has controlled the Aloha State for 70 long years), there were no real nail biting races to watch this past Saturday night. “I wasn’t just campaigning against him. I was campaigning against the entire Democratic establishment,” victorious Kim Coco Iwamoto told Hawaii News Now. Saiki was endorsed by nearly every single Democrat heavy-hitter from Josh Green on down (even the supposedly apolitical and nonpartisan prosecutor Steve Alm) and still lost. It’s too bad that the Hawaii GOP didn’t bother to campaign against that same Democrat establishment. Too bad indeed.
The BIG lesson of the 2024 Primary? There was ABSOLUTELY ZERO excitement for Republican candidates among island voters. The proof is in the numbers. With a mixture of intent and inaction, the Hawaii GOP did NOTHING to generate any excitement. If the party had just one job, it would be making it harder for Democrats to get elected and easier for Republicans. That’s the job. It’s that simple. But no dice. FOUR TIMES as many voters chose to vote as Democrats rather than Republicans (200,000 to 50,000). That’s a trend which only the most delusional meth smoking election deniers could expect to swing the other direction once General Election voting starts in just a few short weeks. In other words, Democrat politicians, policies and special interest groups will completely control Hawaii for the next two years and face no opposition from the GOP. Period.
The meltdown of the weakest state GOP in the country can be witnessed in so many races. For starters, one of the biggest losses showcases how the Republican Caucus in the State House failed miserably in ‘primarying’ one of its own members. The top race in all of 2024 (according to the handful of ‘active’ Republicans) pitted RINO’s Diamond Garcia, Elijah Pierick, Lauren Cheape, David Alcos and Gene Ward against their GOP colleague Kristen “Kanani” Souza who regards that quintet as a cult. Plucked from obscurity was somebody named Sheila Medeiros to run against Souza. It was unmistakably the cause of the century inside the tiny circle of GOP influencers to replace Souza with Medeiros. Forget about ousting Democrats. Forget about increasing the numbers of Republicans in elected office. Nope, Souza had to go and the RINOs would be bringing their A game to change the composition of their caucus. Well, after going ‘all in’, the final tally was incumbent Souza 1,100 to challenger Medeiros 800. C’mon RINO blowhards. If they can’t even deliver their own handpicked challenger across the finish line, it’s no wonder they get no legislation passed and typically vote just like Democrats. They are as worthless a political force as a legislative force. It’s also no wonder why Democrats didn’t even bother to run for the office, just like no Democrats bother to run against Gene Ward. Why bother? The result is the same. So, Kristen “Kanani” Souza is automatically back in for another two years. Game over. Pathetic. Exhibit #1.
Here’s another example of a meltdown. Mazie Hirono received more than SIX TIMES the number of votes cast than her GOP opponent, Bob McDermott. And why not? Penniless non-campaigning RINO Bob McDermott and the silent Hawaii GOP did nothing to explain why Hirono is so dangerous to the livelihoods and futures of these voters. NOTHING. And among the tiny cadre of Republicans who voted in the primary, McDermott received virtually the same number of votes as his five unknown GOP opponents. McDermott bailed on his reasonably safe seat in the State House; handing his Ewa Beach office over to Democrat Rose Martinez, now running for her second term since Bob decided in 2022 to bail on his state house colleagues to run against Mazie Hirono’s colleague Brian Schatz for a U.S. Senate seat. Not surprisingly, McDermott lost to Schatz by a 3-to-1 margin. You can already imagine the blowout in this year’s general election against Mazie. Remember, it doesn’t matter if YOU know that Hirono is horrible. What matters is that virtually nobody else knows this, because they aren’t being told or shown by the silent Hawaii GOP and Mr. Zero Fundraising McDermott.
Keep in mind, neither the presidency nor the governorship were being voted on in Hawaii’s Primary. So you can’t say that local voters were inspired to heavily vote Democrat by Kamala Harris or Josh Green being on the ballot. Nope. The top partisan races saw Mazie Hirono, Ed Case and Jill Tokuda completely escape any scrutiny from the Hawaii GOP’s nonexistent communications effort and nonexistent ground game. Likewise, the Democrat controlled state legislature and county councils and mayorships received ZERO attention from the state and county GOP organizations. If you thought party leaders had been working feverishly since the last election to degrade the “D” brand in Hawaii, you were sorely mistaken.
Comparing the statewide results with the combined results of the two unknown Republicans running for Congress in Hawaii’s 1st and 2nd Districts, professional politician McDermott received a measly 27,815 while Patrick Largey and Steve Bond together received 36,783 votes . . . 9,000 more than McDermott, whose race saw nearly 5,000 blank ballots
Even Sheila Walker, who thought she was capable to be the state chair for the Hawaii GOP, was barely able to consolidate the tiny Republican vote behind her, with more than 500 leaving the ballot blank in her race to her less than 1,500 votes received. Needless to say, the Democrat Angus McKelvey received roughly 4,400 votes – more than TRIPLE the votes cast for Walker. This is a sign to the nondelusional among Walker’s donors and volunteers that she isn’t really mounting a serious campaign and that the Hawaii GOP isn’t really trying to unseat McKelvey. In mainland states where Republicans have their act together (even ‘blue’ states), you simply DO NOT SEE margins of victory and defeat this MASSIVE.
Waianae Cost Republican Teri Savaiinaea lost bigly to GOP rival and angry ethnic justice warrior Samantha Decorte, notwithstanding the fact that Savaiinaea is a high-ranking officer with the Hawaii GOP. Ironically, she serves as vice chair for candidate recruitment and training, which apparently didn’t pay off for the party insider. But, even if you add their votes together, they barely got more votes than either of the two Democrats in that hotly contested race. With a Hawaii Democrat Party which historically takes post-Primary ‘unity’ seriously in order to keep Republicans from winning, it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which the GOP could push RINO Decorte across the finish line.
Incumbent GOP state senator Brenton Awa – whose downright un-American and highly vocal opposition to ‘transplant’ Americans moving from any other state to the State of Hawaii – got only a fraction of the votes in his Windward Oahu district than his two Democrat rivals. It was another case of 3 Democrat voters for every 1 Republican voter. Fired KITV news anchor Brenton Awa appears destined for the one-term and out dustbin of former politicians. Again, where was the Hawaii GOP??
Speaking of one-term politicians, even the Hawaii Trump campaign was unable to help former Andria Tupola staffer and Hawaii Trump campaign honcho Braedon Wilkerson’s girlfriend and client and campaign donor Natalia Hussey-Burdick You remember this far-left nutjob, don’t you? She’s the one who tattled on her fellow Democrats and blew the whistle to HPD that her colleagues at the State Capitol were holding booze-fueled parties INSIDE the building, in hopes that they’d be arrested for DUI (presumably as political payback for not supporting her bill relating to the legality of using midwives for delivering babies). Well, it didn’t take Democrats long to find some willing candidate to ‘primary’ Ms. Hussey-Burdick, who was outspent by a small fortune by the upstart Mike Lee and his generous benefactors. The Republican who’ll be facing Mr. Lee in the General Election, poor unknown Tim Connelly, only received 1,000 votes to the combined 6,000 Democrat votes on Saturday. Clearly, the Hawaii GOP was just as useless in 2024 as it was when it let its 2022 candidate Kathy Thurston lose to Ms. Hussey-Burdick by 3,000 votes. Needless to say, after such piss poor treatment, Ms. Thurston decided not to run again.
The Honolulu mayor’s race was a total disgrace, with Kirk Caldwell clone and fellow Democrat Rick Blangiardi facing no serious GOP opposition when high taxes, massive debt, rising crime, endless pay raises, pay-to-play kickbacks and an endless housing crisis SHOULD have been major issues. On Hawaii News Now, Hawaii’s Democrat governor Josh Green let the cat out of the bag when he said into the camera: “Congratulations, Rick. You are a superstar and I just love you. And I voted for you, man.” That’s when HNN anchors nauseatingly referred to the ‘bromance’ between Green and Blangiardi. Where was the Hawaii GOP? Nowhere, as usual. But state chair Tamara McKay’s cheerleaders used their social media accounts to continue singing her praises, as if oblivious to the fast-moving political calendar and the total meltdown at Republican HQ.
Even the Hawaii GOP’s national committeewoman (and interim state chair) Laura Nakanelua appeared powerless to help her husband do any better than a distant third place in a race for the Windward Oahu seat on the Honolulu City Council. Incumbent Democrat Esther Kiaaina got more than TRIPLE the votes of Kelsey Nakanelua. You might recall how Kiaaina joined with Fake Republican Val Okimoto in supporting a 64% pay raise for politicians at Honolulu Hale, which saw Kiaaina’s nearly $70,000 City salary explode to $113,000. Voters simply needed the Hawaii GOP and a strong candidate to explain how politicians like Kiaaina are sodomizing their standard of living in order to enrich special interest groups. But, alas, top Republican leaders have zero intention of persuading voters they are being ripped off since these same party leaders are mostly liberals, incompetents, and malcontents who obsess over party titles and perks rather than the important work of unseating destructive Democrat politicians who’ve steered the way to a $1,150,000 median housing pricetag and multigenerational households each with 10 cars parked on the street (including the spare room renters) becoming the norm. Now, Kiaaina is on her way to getting another four years at city hall after the November general election. Way to go, Hawaii GOP!!
With high profile 2022 GOP gubernatorial candidate BJ Penn coming in a distant 3rd in a three-way race for county council on the Big Island with a dismal 16% of the total vote in the nonpartisan 2024 race, you can already hear the gang from Surfing 4 Truth, Audit the Vote, Klean House Hawaii and Maui Freedom TV screaming about a rigged election. But the sad reality is that Penn’s platform – that the #1 issue facing Hawaii is “election integrity” and NOT the cost of living – is cringe-inducing tinfoil hat blather which has ZERO relevance to long-suffering Hawaii residents to whom the Hawaii GOP fails and fails and fails to make its case to. In Penn’s own words (click link to watch video), “Cost of living, although how bad it is and how terrible it is, it is NOT the #1 problem in Hawaii. The #1 problem in Hawaii are these hidden and fake elections where we don’t know who is voting This is the #1 problem in Hawaii.”
Yes, even perennial Hawaii GOP candidate Joe Akana experienced a similar meltdown when asked in 2020 (click photo to watch the video) why he lost to Kai Kahele for a congressional seat.
REPORTER: “Do you think the election was stolen and you should be congressman right now?”
JOE AKANA: “Yes, I do. I’d be remiss if I said I didn’t.
Crazy Joe lost to Kahele in 2020 by a 2-to-1 margin and then lost in 2022 to Jill Tokuda by the same 2-to-1 margin. Believing in this election denier garbage while knowing that the Hawaii GOP is worthless and weak is enough to cause a brain to explode . . . which is probably why we haven’t heard from Joe Akana for some time.
If you are a Hawaii voter who is barely making ends meet, then you’ll probably vote for a candidate who (even if lying) says things that really matter and (even if lying) promises to make things better. Even Donald Trump, who last month saw the value of simplifying the GOP’s national messaging with a concise platform, didn’t think to make ‘election integrity’ his top agenda item in 2024. But the Hawaii GOP is controlled by nutty election denier types who have conned candidates like BJ Penn and too many others into believing the only thing keeping them from winning is a fair counting of the ballots. Sadly, local ‘influencers’ Surfing 4 Truth has already declared in the wake of Primary 2024 that island voters don’t bother voting because they don’t have confidence in mail-in voting. Sorry, but experienced political operatives and marketers know that island voters don’t bother voting because the choices don’t excite them enough to bother voting.
The Hawaii GOP and its officers and its candidates bear 100% of the responsibility for the lowest voter turnout in state history in the 2024 Primary. When nutjobs like Corinne Solomon of ‘Audit the Vote Hawaii’ (and a 2024 candidate for State House in East Honolulu) embrace the delusion that Donald Trump might have WON the 2020 election here in Hawaii despite GOP presidential candidates typically losing by 2-to-1 margins, you have a recipe for political disaster. The disaster? Nobody at the Hawaii GOP does their jobs and candidates become complacent and the local news media gets to sit back and watch the resulting Republican crash and burn in 2024.
Saturday’s Primary was merely a harbinger of bad things to come. Stay tuned for an exclusive HIRA News report on the massive and deliberate failure by the Hawaii Republican Party to make any political inroads in 2024. It’s a story of political malpractice on steroids. Let’s just call it what it really is: a shitshow. HAWAII’S REPUBLICANS ARE LETTING DEMOCRATS WIN. IT’S THAT SIMPLE.
The General Election is less than three months away. And, STILL, no voters have been told by the Hawaii Republican Party and its statewide operation that Democrats suck and why they suck. No ‘red wave’ will be reaching Hawaii, like we keep being told by moronic local influencers. No case has been made to voters. No coordinated campaign. No ground game. No coalitions. No messaging. No nothing at all. The GOP ship is going down while Captain Tamara McKay and her pathetic crew allow Hawaii residents to drown instead of trying to save them. So much for completely broken promises of “strong leadership” and “the right experience.” Old Guard RINO’s are poised to retake the party in 2025 after this debacle. Auwe!
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