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GOP delegates
aim to garner
attention for isles
'We're a small state.
By Craig Gima
We have to get attention,'
says Chairwoman
Linda Lingle
Star-BulletinHawaii's delegation to the Republican National Convention arrives in Philadelphia this weekend wearing matching red aloha shirts and carrying pineapples, macadamia nuts and more than 250 leis to give to party officials and other delegates.
Part of their mission is to promote Hawaii and to remind GOP and Bush campaign officials not to ignore a state where a Republican just missed becoming governor two years ago.
"We're a small state. We have to get attention," said party Chairwoman Linda Lingle, who is likely to run for governor again in 2002.
"A lot of us just like to market Hawaii,'" said Rep. Barbara Marumoto (R, Waialae Iki), who is attending her third convention. "We make a lot of friends."
The 14 delegates and 14 alternates were voted in at the state party convention in May. They include elected officials, party regulars and a scattering of "Lingle Republicans," new converts to the GOP who joined after working on Lingle's failed gubernatorial bid in 1998. The group is diverse both ethnically and economically. One delegate is a truck driver, another is a lawyer who ran for Honolulu prosecutor.
"I think they see us as a leader in broadening the base of the party," Lingle said.
Miriam Hellreich, Hawaii's national committeewoman, says the national party has given a lot of money to Hawaii.
"They see the effort that's being made. They've been helping us a lot with party-building activities, and they've taken a special interest in us," she said.
The 14 delegates from Hawaii attending the Republican National Convention: Representing Hawaii
Christopher Baron: A recent master's graduate in political science, recently selected to be a foreign service officer. He also worked on staff at the state Legislature.
For Lingle, attending a convention is a new experience.
She said during her 18 years in local elected office she was never really interested in going.
"My interest has just been Hawaii," Lingle said. She said that's one of the reasons she didn't really want to run for Congress.
This year as party chairwoman, Lingle is using the convention to network and get advice and support to continue the effort to rebuild the party in Hawaii. She has been in Philadelphia since Wednesday.
Lingle and other state party leaders have attended Republican National Committee meetings in the week before the convention, where party leaders have been working on the nuts and bolts of running a party and planning strategy for the upcoming election. They have also been to a number of social gatherings.
She said one of the main reasons to attend the convention is to make sure Hawaii has a voice if a Republican is elected president
"I ran into the chief policy adviser for the Bush campaign, whom I had met previously," Lingle said. "I want to renew those kinds of acquaintances while I'm here.
"Should we win, when I want to talk about a Hawaii issue, I want to be able to call somebody," she said. "I want our state to have that kind of access."
The other reason to attend the convention is to get the delegates excited about the upcoming election.
"I hope they come back energized," said state party Executive Director Micah Kane. "That's kind of what I see as the whole purpose of the convention, to energize your most committed volunteers and have them come back and energize everybody else."
Casting a vote to prevent a one-party state
By Craig Gima
Star-Bulletin
A University of Hawaii political science professor who tried to join the Communist Party in her native China but was turned down is one of Hawaii's delegates to the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia.
Kate Xiao Zhou says party officials would not accept her application because her grandfather was a landlord before the Communist revolution.
Now, less than a year after joining the Republican Party and four years after becoming a U.S. citizen, Zhou will have a say in selecting the Republican nominee for president.
"This can only happen in America, in Hawaii," Zhou said. "I want to represent the new face of the Republican Party."
"I don't want people thinking of us as white country club members."
Zhou believes Republicans can be a party of diversity, noting that about half of Hawaii's delegation are ethnic minorities.
Zhou was born in Wuhan, a large industrial city in China. During the Cultural Revolution, her parents were both imprisoned as "bourgeois intellectuals."
She and her sister were exiled to the countryside to be "re-educated" by farmers, she said.
After President Nixon's visit to China, her father was allowed to return to the city to teach English, and she returned to school.
Zhou was able to attend Texas A&M University. She was in Texas during the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. Zhou organized protests against the government crackdown on student protesters and was on the Chinese government's black list.
She said she is attracted to the Republican Party because of its philosophy of small government. In China, she said, government controls people's lives.
In Hawaii, she said, state government has been corrupted by the dominance of the Democrats.
"It's a one-party state in China. I don't want the same thing to happen in Hawaii."
Zhou says she became involved because of party Chairwoman Linda Lingle's campaign for governor. "She inspired me," Zhou said.
"She was a woman from nowhere and she ... challenged the status quo."
The schedule
Here are the speakers and daily themes for the Republican National Convention.Monday
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Compiled from AP wire reports
