They see Dole's plan to cut taxes 15 percent across the board to save $548 billion as resonating in the isles. Their reasons: Hawaii is in one of its worst economic slumps, unemployment is nearly 7 percent while the national average is 5.5 percent and Hawaii's cost of living remains 34 percent higher than the mainland's.
So if isle voters are asked if they're better off now than they were four years ago, "the unequivocal response" is no, said state Senate Minority Leader Michael Liu, who heads the Dole campaign in Hawaii. "Hawaii is the state which proves the Republican point that the Clinton years have not been good ones for the average American," he said.
At the isle convention delegation's final caucus yesterday, state House Minority Leder Gene Ward told his fellow Republicans: "When you get off the plane, the (Hawaii) Dole campaign begins!"
Ward said the 31 delegates, alternates and state party officials who attended the convention must spread its central theme: Dole is a decent man of convictions in touch with the concerns of average Americans and capable of restoring faith in the American dream.
In the next seven days, they are to write their impressions of the convention so the material can be used as letters to local newspapers and by people in the state party's speakers' bureau, Ward said.
They must study Dole's plan to cut taxes by 15 percent to stimulate the economy because critics will ask them to defend it and because potential Republican voters will ask them about it, he added.
Hawaii Republican Party Chairwoman Jane Tatibouet said it is especially important that the information be shared with GOP candidates because they will be asked about Dole and his economic plan as they canvass their districts.
Republicans have won two of the last six presidential elections in the islands.
Liu said he believes Dole's background as an Army officer seriously wounded in Italy during World War II will help him pull votes from President Clinton, who has never served in the military. Veterans of the highly decorated 442nd Regimental Combat Team and the 100th Battalion, a key part of Hawaii's Democratic Party, share a wartime bond with Dole and probably think Dole will make a better commander-in-chief and have a better feel for American security concerns, Liu said.
"They'll think real hard about their choice come November," Liu predicted.
Only 50 percent to 43 percent of Hawaii's Asian vote, which is mostly Japanese American, went to Clinton in 1992.
Dole will also "smoke out" retired veterans from World War II and the Korean War who are not of Japanese ancestry and who have retired in Hawaii, Liu said.
In Honolulu, state Democratic Party Chairman Richard Port said he doubts Hawaii will swing to Dole. The islands have a Democratic governor, Ben Cayetano, a fiscal conservative who is downsizing government and trying to stimulate the economy, Port countered.
Port said he doesn't believe veterans of Japanese ancestry will deviate from their traditional Democratic preference.
He added he believes Clinton will be helped in Hawaii and all across the country because the Republicans are fielding a "flip-flop" ticket.
Dole has become a tax-cutting supply sider after years of being a deficit hawk. Kemp, a moderate on social issues, has suddenly reversed himself, saying the children of illegal immigrants should be expelled from public schools and that affirmative action programs should be abolished.
Those flip-flops raise questions about their political convictions, he said.