Analysis:

Abercrombie
won seat by capturing
GOP strongholds

By Mike Yuen
Star-Bulletin

U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie won a decisive victory over Republican challenger Gene Ward by not only carrying Democratic strongholds, but by also winning the 1st Congressional District's traditional GOP areas of east Honolulu and Waikiki, a Star-Bulletin analysis shows.

Abercrombie also captured swing areas such as Mililani, Ewa Beach, Makiki and Aliamanu-Foster Village that in 1996 went to Orson Swindle, the former Reagan administration appointee and Vietnam prisoner of war who came close to unseating Abercrombie.

Ward managed to win only one of the nine House districts that Swindle carried in 1996 -- his home district in east Honolulu.

Even then, Ward held onto it by only 433 votes.

But Ward lost east Honolulu to Abercrombie, 14,897 to 14,484.

The overall vote: Abercrombie, 116,692; Ward, 68,903.

In the final days of the campaign, Ward sought to portray himself as part of a team with Republican gubernatorial nominee Linda Lingle. But voters that he needed in order to come close refused to make that connection. In east Honolulu, Waikiki, Makiki and Mililani, for example, Lingle won -- and so did Abercrombie.

Veteran pollster Don Clegg has yet to crunch the numbers from the Abercrombie-Ward race, but is not surprised by the Star-Bulletin's analysis.

"The election was more a rejection of Gene than an affirmation of Neil," Clegg said. "Neil needs to be continuously on guard. I think he recognizes that."

Knocking off Abercrombie, who won his fifth full term, has been a long-held goal of national and isle GOP strategists who see Abercrombie as a '60s liberal out of touch with the electorate.

Clegg said that Ward lost because his appeal was narrow, mainly to the conservative religious wing of the Republican Party. And while Ward's message of economic development and smaller government was similar to Swindle's, the messengers were vastly different. Swindle was a war hero who could connect with a broader spectrum of voters, said Clegg, who polled for Democratic Gov. Ben Cayetano's successful re-election campaign.

"Gene was perceived as the Republican candidate, and the people who voted for him voted more for the party than for the person," Clegg added. "Lingle was not perceived as the Republican candidate. Her votes were more for her than for the party."

Based on his early surveys, Clegg said, Abercrombie would have faced a tougher fight if the Republican nominee was former state House Minority Leader Quentin Kawananakoa, who dropped out for health reasons.

"Quentin Kawananakoa appealed to a broader spectrum. He was not totally committed to the Republican philosophy and the conservative end of the Republican Party," Clegg said.

Ward attributed his inability to win in GOP strongholds and swing districts to Abercrombie's media blitz, which defined him as a clone of departing U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and against teachers, education, the elderly and Medicare.

Gingrich said he will be leaving Congress because the Republican Party failed to make as many gains nationally as it had expected.

"It looks like Newt and I go out together," said Ward, whose campaign stressed his background as an international trainer of entrepreneurs.

The "demonization" of Ward as a Gingrich clone was very effective, said Hawaii Republican Party Chairwoman Donna Alcantara. "People never warmed up to Gene. He never caught on," she said.

Abercrombie campaign spokeswoman Tina Yamamoto said the playing of the Gingrich card might have had an impact on the race.

"When (Gingrich) announced his resignation, he had already become a liability and a target not just for his policies but for his presence," she said.

In east Honolulu, known for having many "soccer moms" -- a term pollsters give to middle-class mothers -- and other women who regularly vote, Abercrombie stressed that he was pro-education and pro-choice on abortion, Yamamoto said.

"That's important to women," she added.

Overall, Yamamoto said, "People heard the congressman's message. They responded to his concerns about the economy, about strengthening education and about Social Security."

This was not the first time that Abercrombie carried the traditional Republican areas of east Honolulu and Waikiki.

He also did it in 1990 and 1992 when he ran against Republicans Michael Liu, the former state Senate minority leader, and Warner Kimo Sutton, a member of the Kuliouou-Kalani Iki Neighborhood Board.