From the WSJ Opinion Archives
Aloha, Akaka
A serious challenge to Hawaii's octogenarian junior senator.
A longtime wheelhorse of Hawaii's rusting Democratic machine could lose his U.S. Senate seat because of what happened on the Senate floor Thursday. For six years Sen. Daniel Akaka's signature legislation was a bill that would give Native Hawaiians their own race-based, sovereign government, much as many mainland Indian tribes have. But last week, by a vote of 56-41, the Senate fell short of mustering the needed 60 votes to bring his bill to a formal vote.
The bill's failure opens up the 81-year-old Mr. Akaka to charges that he is ineffective and increasingly irrelevant. His primary battle this September against Rep. Ed Case now becomes a real dogfight between a reflexively liberal incumbent and a much more moderate challenger.
While Native Hawaiians deserve better than what they have, the bill Mr. Akaka put forward as an attempt to redress their grievances was profoundly misguided. The people of Hawaii are a true melting pot, living in remarkable harmony. The intermarriage rate is so high that more than 90% of those who claim Hawaiian heritage do so by virtue of ancestry that is less than half Hawaiian. Until a few years ago, Hawaiians never contemplated being treated as the equivalent of an Indian tribe. Creating a separate government that would subject people who pass a test for "Hawaiian blood" to a different set of legal codes would not have produced racial reconciliation. It would have been a recipe for permanent racial conflict.
Sen. Akaka undermined his own bill last year when he made statements to National Public Radio that the sovereignty granted Native Hawaiians in the bill could eventually lead to secession. "That could be," he said. "As far as what's going to happen at the other end, I'm leaving it up to my grandchildren and great-grandchildren."
After a storm of criticism, Senator Akaka sought to clarify his remarks and make clear that he personally didn't support "independence or secession." But he carefully avoided clarifying whether or not secession was possible. "After the Native Hawaiian governing entity is recognized, these issues will be negotiated between the entity and the Federal and State governments," he wrote. Small wonder that within the last month both the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and the Justice Department decided to oppose the Akaka bill as unconstitutional.
Supporters of the Akaka bill are privately concerned that their champion put in such a weak performance pushing their pet legislative priority. Hawaii TV viewers who caught the Senate debate saw a tentative and lackluster performance by the senator. It reminded many that last April, Time magazine listed Mr. Akaka as one of the five worst senators, calling him "living proof that experience does not necessarily yield expertise." It dismissed him as "a master of the minor resolution and the bill that dies in committee."
It doesn't surprise political observers in Hawaii that Mr. Akaka is ducking invitations to debate Mr. Case. Honolulu Advertiser columnist David Shapiro says that a debate for the incumbent "could be disastrous if he were to stumble and show his age . . . but if Akaka ducks Case, he risks leaving the impression that he doesn't have enough left to stand up to the pressure of tough questioning."
There is no doubting that Mr. Case is a tough opponent. Last month, Mr. Akaka ridiculed the congressman before the state Democratic convention as someone who hides behind a "fiscal conservative" label as a way of justifying his vote for extending the Bush tax cuts and shortchanging traditional liberal values. Mr. Case responded that he was a good Democrat, citing his support of the Akaka bill among other things. But he said he believed a more pragmatic approach was necessary to get actual legislation passed.
Mr. Case is not your typical Hawaii Democrat. A 53-year-old cousin of former AOL Time Warner Chairman Steve Case, he has always had a more moderate public image. His ratings from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce since his election to Congress in 2002 have hovered around 50%. Mr. Akaka, on the other hand, is more of a traditional liberal with Chamber ratings of about 30%. He and his 81-year-old Senate colleague, Daniel Inouye, helped found the modern Hawaii Democratic Party back in the early 1960s.
That Democratic machine has tangled with Mr. Case before. In 2002, he challenged Lt. Gov. Mazie Hirono in the Democratic primary for governor. Mr. Case ran on an unabashed reform platform, calling for greater transparency in government, reform of the state's collective-bargaining system and modest privatization of services. Unions vowed to defeat Mr. Case and cranked up their get-out-the-vote efforts. Ms. Hirono eked out a 1% victory.
But Mr. Case was able to recoup his political fortunes later that year when he won a sudden special election called to replace Rep. Patsy Mink when she died in office. The governor's race was eventually won by Linda Lingle, the first Republican to be elected governor in more than 40 years. Ms. Lingle, who broke ranks with many conservatives in her party and made four trips to Washington to lobby for the Akaka bill, suffered a severe loss of prestige with its defeat. But unlike Mr. Akaka, she has built a solid base of support in both parties and has no effective opponent this fall.
Mr. Case insists that he has the greatest respect for the venerable Sen. Akaka. But he also is clear that "it's time for a new generation of leadership in Hawaii." A lot of voters apparently agree. A poll taken by the Case campaign last month showed him trailing the three-term incumbent by only 40% to 38%. An even more recent poll by the Grassroot Institute, a local think tank, showed Mr. Case in the lead. Most significantly, the Akaka campaign has conducted its own polls but it refuses to release them to the public. The betting is that with the defeat of his signature legislative priority, Mr. Akaka will continue to decline to debate his opponent and try to save his seat by having machine leaders to attack Mr. Case as a crypto-Republican.
There's one problem with that strategy: No credible Republican filed to run for Mr. Akaka's Senate seat this year, and Republicans are free to vote in this September's Democratic primary. Given that President Bush won 45% of the vote in Hawaii in 2004, their numbers are not insignificant and could sway a Democratic primary if Mr. Akaka runs too aggressively to the left.
Hawaii is still a Democratic state, but it is not nearly as liberal as it used to be. The word "Aloha" means both hello and goodbye. Hawaii voters may say it twice this year, once to bid Mr. Akaka goodbye and the other to welcome a modern Democrat as their new senator.
