i L i n d

For those who don’t obsessively check the comments, Bart Dame had a thoughtful response to my post this morning. I’m taking the liberty of promoting Bart’s comment to a guest post because I think it is thought provoking and deserves wider circulation.

On seeing his comment here, Bart worried…”Upon re-reading it, I realize I may have used language a bit more intemperate and hostile than I should have.” Please check out his further comment, below.

For now, though, here’s his original contribution.

Aloha Ian!

It’s good you are reminding party members there are intelligent eyeballs monitoring our decisions, though I I have observed a perverse sado-masochistic attitude which colors the thinking of some party activists who feel their decisions are VALIDATED if they are “misunderstood” by the benighted masses. And if they sense any critical feedback from sources like elected officials or the unions, they take this as further evidence the Party must be doing something right.

The Hawaii Reporter story was disturbing on several counts. That a major party activist would feel comfortable using the Sam Slom-Malia Zimmerman organ to promote an attack on Inouye is perverse to me. The resolution demanding elected officials remain neutral in primary battles is a gross overreach of the party’s authority. Party members and candidates have a right to insist top PARTY officers–as distinct from Democratic elected officials–be fair and neutral in their treatment of competing Democratic candidates prior to the primary. But elected officials are POLITICIANS with their own needs and, yes, Linda Takayama is correct, their own RIGHTS to express their opinions.

I am not defending the interference from Washington of the DCCC or the DSCC in our primaries. I believe they SHOULD remain neutral. But both Senator Inouye and Abercrombie have the right to support whomever they want. Dante Carpenter as chair of the state party or Tony Gill as Oahu chair, gave up that right when they took on the responsibility to deliver equal service to all the party’s candidates.

Not only was the resolution an inappropriate effort by the Oahu party to exert excessive political control over elected officials, it was extremely hypocritical. The Oahu convention featured as our luncheon speaker one of the two Democratic candidates for Mayor, Kirk Caldwell. Since it is in the Party’s interest to be seen as neutral in a primary battle, as per the resolution, the convention organizers should have bent over backwards to avoid the perception we were backing Kirk over Cayetano.

But I guess it is easier to tell Inouye and Abercrombie how to behave than to police our own behavior?

There is a temptation within the party to try to accomplish through our control of the formal party apparatus things we cannot accomplish through traditional community organizing. It is much easier to mobile a few neighbors, friends or co-workers to turn out to the local school cafeteria an elect you as a precinct officer, a district chair or a member of the State Central Committee than to get elected to the Legislature or county council.

The Democratic Party was built the old-fashioned way, in the plantation camps, among returned WWII AJA veterans and going door-to-door at a time when Hawaii was unambiguously dominated by a well-defined “ruling class.” The two sides were obvious to all Hawaii residents. The Republican side was easily identifiable: haole, Merchant Street, Punahou, Pacific and Outrigger Club, Big Five and inter-married missionary families. The Democrats were (almost) everybody else, with the unions and AJA vets at the core. (Hawaiians were somewhat on the side).

Today’s society is much more complicated, in ways which do not lend themselves so readily to such a binary, “Which Side Are You On?” division. As the party of governance, the leading Democratic politicians are coopted by longstanding alliances with powerful corporate interests in addition to the unions. Corporations seeking to influence legislation seek out politicians and politicians needing corporate underwriting for their political futures cozy up to corporations.

The generation which built the original Democratic Party has either died off or are almost completely retired from activity. WIth the “demographic collapse” of the party’s traditional base, has come a hollowing out of our understanding of and connection to many of the subgroups and neighborhoods in the state. The newer party activist is much more likely to be a recent arrival, to be rooted in an issue-oriented community rather than a geographical one and to have a weak grasp of Hawaii’s history and social dynamics.

In a sense, we came across a party structure which had largely been abandoned and have taken it over, sometimes mistaking our control of the formal party apparatus for real power or “legitimacy” to make demands “on behalf of the members” or in defense of “Democratic principles.”

This hollowing out of the party’s strength coincides with, and probably not unrelated to, the professionalization of the legislators as political entrepreneurs and careerists, relatively detached from traditional Democratic principles, unless those “principles” can express themselves through Real Politik mechanism, like union political power to offset corporate power. The recent legislative session angered a lot of people for the violence done to legislative due process with their “gut and replace” tactics and the effort to gut environmental review processes.

Many party leaders share the public frustration with the behavior of many Democratic elected officials and are seeking a means to to use our party powers to influence, sometimes punish, the elects. Our ability to either influence or hurt a sitting Democratic elected official is pretty limited. But a provision in our rules created an opportunity to interview anyone who wants to seek office as a Democrat but who missed a little know deadline in our rules of six months membership prior to filing. So, in my view, a lot of legitimate frustration with sitting Democratic legislators has been displaced onto Laura Thielen, the first member unfortunate enough to apply for permission to run under this rule.

As the former chair of the State Democratic Party’s Rules Committee, I can say with great confidence it was never the intention of this rule to block someone like Laura Thielen from running. The rule was written as an attempt to provide us with protection after the high profile party switches of Bev Harbin and Mike Gabbard, two cases which created a lot of interest in giving the party the ability to screen out applicants seen as “hostile to the Democratic Party.”

The rule was, in my opinion, crudely and willfully misapplied under the influence of people who disagreed with the intent behind the rule and determined to change its purpose.

I have gone on too long and, undoubtedly, said some things which will annoy some of my fellow Democrats. There will be an attempt this weekend to forge a compromise on the rule invoked against Thielen. It is not clear whether we will succeed or not. If the compromise fails, delegates will be left with two choices. Either harden the rule along the lines of the proposal narrowly adopted by the Oahu Convention or delete the rule from our constitution and return to the previous practice, which was to leave it to the primary voters to determine who will represent Democrats in the general election. This naturally leads to a discussion of open versus closed primaries.

The Thielen candidacy controversy may result in a court fight. I am hoping there is enough sense within the Party to avoid trying to assert the right of party “insiders” to substitute our judgment for that of the voters. It reinforces the “party bosses” critique which gave rise to the push for primary elections a century ago with the Populist and Progressive reforms of the late 19th and early 20th century.

I believe the Party DOES have a right to block people hostile to our platform from running as Democratic candidates. They can run as independents, Republicans or third party candidates if they do not broadly agree with our platform. But any screening process MUST be transparent, follow obvious standards and have safeguards against bias, conflicts of interest and arbitrariness. Or it will not survive a court challenge.

The current rule was a “beta version” and needs tweaking. If it cannot be fixed, it should be removed. If it is rendered more inflexible, it will actually DIS-empower the party by forbidding party activists in a district from supporting their favored candidate if they did not have the foresight to join the party at least 12 months prior. And since there is such a weak correlation between a 12 month rule and a members commitment to the platform, it would be insane to attempt to substitute a 12 month rule for a more deliberative process or for the judgment of the voters in the district.

I’ve got my fingers crossed.

The Democratic Party of Hawaii’s State Convention opens on Friday at the Sheraton Waikiki.

All indications point to an interesting time to be had by all.

First there was the new “pay to play” rule requiring candidates to pay $500 per minute to speak during the convention. Putting a price on speeches, even by top of the ticket players, is a departure from past practice, according to a story this week in Civil Beat.

Hawaii Reporter highlighted one resolution passed by the Oahu County Convention earlier this month and submitted to the state convention, which asks members of the Congressional delegation, the governor, and party officials to remain neutral in the primary, and to refrain from campaigning for (or against?) competing Democrats. It is seen as push-back against efforts by Sen. Inouye and others who have been backing their favored candidates in 2nd Congressional District and the Senate race.

There are also several amendments to the party constitution proposed by the Oahu County Convention, several of which seem to be aimed at blocking a repeat of the controversy over the candidacy of Laura Thielen.

Thielen, who headed the Office of State Planning and, later, the Department of Land and Natural Resources during the administration of Gov. Linda Lingle, joined the Democratic Party earlier this year and last week filed to run for the 25th District Senate seat now held by Pohai Ryan. The same Oahu County party apparatus unsuccessfully sought to block her entry into the race, as has the party’s state central committee.

The proposed amendments would require anyone wishing to seek election as a Democrat to be a party member “in good standing” for 12 months, double the current 6-month requirement. It would eliminate a procedure that currently allows new party members to seek exemptions from the “good standing” requirement. and would “mandate automatic expulsion from the Party, effective with the 2014 election, for filing as a candidate of the Democratic Party of Hawai‘i if not a member in good standing.”

The party can already feel like an insiders club that is difficult to penetrate by anyone newly interested in its internal workings. The proposed amendments to the constitution will just create higher barriers to entry, further limiting participation by anyone who hasn’t been thoroughly vetted and approved by the party leadership prior to seeking office under the party’s banner.

I’m not a party insider, and have never been interested in entering there, so the whole who-is-doing-what-to-whom lineup is somewhat of a confusing mystery. Perhaps others more deeply involved in these debates can provide a bit of background as to the different party factions, along with the key players and perspectives in those factions.