Hawaii GOP should
By Mike Liu
support a presidential
primary in 2000Section 9 of our state Constitution reads: "A presidential preference primary may be held as provided by law." It is high time that Hawaii's Republican Party join with the overwhelming majority of states in the union, and urge its caucuses in the state House and Senate to push for legislation authorizing the holding of a presidential primary election beginning in the year 2000.
I have been an active participant in presidential races in Hawaii in 1988 and 1996, the last two times the GOP nominee was not an incumbent president. From experience and in shaping up the presidential election primary calendar for the year 2000, I make the following observations.
The lack of a presidential primary in 1988 showed that a small but committed group of activists can control the delegate selection process by sending followers to GOP precinct meetings in January, months before the actual state convention which is held in May or June.
In that year, supporters of Pat Robertson did a masterful job of rounding up bodies for the January precinct meetings, where they elected most of the delegates to the state convention, who in turn elected the national delegates.
There is nothing wrong with this, except the precinct meetings and delegate selection method for the state and national conventions are known by only a few hundred people.
In 1988, the January precinct caucuses by party rule required a "straw poll" be taken of the elected state convention delegates, as to their preference for president. By 1996, this feature had been removed.
While tempering somewhat the attractiveness of the Hawaii caucuses as an early battleground by presidential aspirants, it also meant that Hawaii did not seriously figure in any campaign's delegate count for the nomination. Neither did any special concerns of Hawaii.
Why should any campaign listen to special concerns from a state that cannot help it gain the nomination?
The number and timing of the selection of national delegates, legally committing them to support a GOP presidential candidate on the first ballot, make it virtually impossible for a nominee not to be chosen before the actual convening of the national convention. In fact, as in 1996, the party's nominee will likely be known before the end of April.
This makes Hawaii's GOP state convention selection of delegates in June interesting only to those running for national convention delegate -- not to the candidates running for president or the public at large.
Why then shouldn't the Hawaii GOP hold a March or April convention during presidential election years? Wouldn't this force the candidates to pay attention to the state?
It might, but this still makes the process the bastion of a small group of people in the state who go to state conventions. The party needs to continue, in as many ways as reasonably possible, the excitement it created in this year's choice. Elections are generally a lot more interesting to the public than are state party conventions which generate little media attention.
What about the expense of such a primary? Such an election would cost under $1 million, and it is probably that combined expenditures in Hawaii of candidates in the field (assuming that the election is held in March or very early April) would top that, and indirectly help to offset impacts on the state treasury.
But even without such spending by the candidates, I believe that the cost involved would be well worth it, when placed within the context of selecting the next president of the United States.
The Republican Party of Hawaii should adopt this position as part of its legislative wish list for 1999 and work with its members in the House and Senate to get it passed. Who knows, perhaps the Democratic Party of Hawaii will join in.
Mike Liu, a former member of the Hawaii state House
and Senate, served in the Bush administration. He also was
Hawaii chairman of Bob Dole's presidential campaign in 1996.