Hawaii's all-Democratic delegation of two senators and two representatives has been out of the mainstream these past two years. It still has managed successes, thanks primarily to the seniority and power of Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, even in minority status.
Recently our two House members, Neil Abercrombie and Patsy Mink, refused even to speculate on what will happen when Inouye leaves the Senate. Abercrombie and Mink prefer to consider him eternal or at least a Strom Thurmond, still serving in the Senate at 93. Inouye is 72 and has said he will run for re-election in 1998.
Mink is sure of re-election against a little-known Republican. Tom Pico doesn't have the resources to get through to the public with some of his sensible positions on trimming the intrusion and cost of government.
Voters sometimes vote for almost any opponent just to show displeasure with the incumbent. An early poll putting Pico at only 8 percent tells us there is no significant anti-Mink vote for him to build on.
Mink broke her service in Congress from 1976 to 1988. But she will have the longest total service of any woman in either house - over 18 years - when she goes back. Her achievements on the national level include a freedom of information victory that opens secrecy classifications to court review, and the education act section against gender discrimination in institutions that get federal funds. Those few lines have been invoked against the Citadel and Virginia Military Institute and used to promote women's athletics.
Abercrombie has served since 1990 and had a three-month special election tenure in 1986. Once a proud maverick, he wraps himself in the robe of team player as his opponent, Orson Swindle, attacks him for being one of strongest "big government" people in the Congress. I'm no worse than Hawaii's other members of Congress, he says. But he is in a more conservative congressional district than Mink, one that has had Republican representation in the past.
Swindle's surprising strength as a newcomer in 1994 came from a strong anti-Abercrombie vote in addition to Swindle's personal strengths. In the Reagan administration Swindle lit the fire that forced House Speaker Jim Wright to resign.
He was national coordinator for Ross Perot in 1992, then allied with Jack Kemp. He will not be a novice in Washington if we send him there. House Republicans this year drafted their budget without any consultation with Democrats before it hit the floor. Swindle can give us a GOP caucus vote.
Swindle argues that the Hawaii Democratic team will be strong enough with one less member in the House and that putting him in the GOP caucus would enhance our congressional effectiveness and balance. I agree.
BUT he still is lagging in the polls. Abercrombie has immensely deeper grass-roots penetration. Both Mink and Abercrombie have avoided seemingly automatic big business opposition to their big-government ideas by putting on conservative hats and working hard to protect local interests, as with sugar, local military spending and saving business expense deductions that help tourism.
Swindle was a distinguished combat pilot in Vietnam, then a long-suffering POW. But his fellow POW, Sen. John McCain of Arizona, says voters are grateful for your sacrifice but more concerned with what you can do for them now.
Swindle could give us a centrist voice in House GOP deliberations. He knows government. He has seen waste from the inside. He is far from the ogre pictured unfairly in Abercrombie ads.