Hanabusa is speaking with campaign lawyers about potential recourse. Hanabusa: 'Irregularities' in vote

Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, who’s trailing in the too-close-to-call Hawaii Democratic Senate primary against incumbent Brian Schatz, warned Monday of voting “irregularities” in precincts crippled by a massive tropical storm last week and said she’s speaking with campaign lawyers about a potential recourse.

“There are irregularities that have occurred in terms of just access, and I’m hoping that the Office of Elections will look at it,” Hanabusa told POLITICO in a phone interview on Monday.


Although much of the focus in the wake of this past Saturday’s primary has been on two precincts in the Big Island’s Puna District — home to some 8,200 registered voters — where polls were closed Saturday because of the storm and residents will vote instead this Friday, Hanabusa’s comments indicate for the first time that she’s examining the impact in surrounding communities as well, where polls were open but some voters were unable to leave their homes.

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“We’ve got a lot of people coming up to us saying, ‘We couldn’t get out to vote but they didn’t close us down,’” she said. “We have a lot of people who are talking about the election because they felt in fact they were disenfranchised.”

Hanabusa emphasized that her conversations with campaign lawyers are nothing new; she has regularly consulted with them throughout the campaign. But the latest conversations about voter disenfranchisement come at a sensitive time in the race.

Voters in those two Puna precincts are dealing with parallel challenges: recovery after Tropical Storm Iselle and their new role as potential kingmakers in the Senate primary.

Puna voters whose precincts were closed on Saturday will cast their ballots this Friday, state elections officials announced Monday afternoon. Polls will be open from 7 a.m. until 6 p.m., the state’s usual voting hours. Roughly 1-in-5 voters in these precincts participated in early voting and isn’t eligible to vote again on Friday. Results are expected Friday evening.

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Unless Hanabusa is able to run up a massive margin of victory in those precincts — or mount a successful legal challenge — Schatz appears poised to hang onto his seat by a hair. He led by 1,635 votes after Saturday’s contest, and analysts say the challenger needs a miracle to catch Schatz.

In the meantime, both candidates are betting, in part, on shoeleather and elbow grease to carry them to victory.

Schatz and Hanabusa are both in Puna participating in a disaster recovery effort — delivering ice to stranded elderly residents, dodging downed trees and power lines to check on people who have lost power and running water. Both camps note it’s a fine line between earnest disaster relief and overt politicking, but one they’re treading carefully.

“It’s definitely a balancing act,” said a Schatz aide, who noted that the senator had personally done no actual campaigning in Puna. “His main priority is seeing how he can be most helpful. The humanitarian situation is taking precedence right now.”

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Schatz said in a statement that he’s “going to do my level best to help in any way possible.”

“I’m working with civil defense to bring federal resources to the Big Island for the recovery immediately. There are downed trees, power outages and urgent water shortages,” he said.

But Schatz’s allies are more willing to talk about the political stakes.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is soliciting funds on Schatz’s behalf for the sprint to the finish. “Brian will need a super-intense grass-roots operation to reach these voters,” the group’s leaders said in a nationwide fundraising pitch to members on Sunday. A spokeswoman for the group said all proceeds of the drive will go “directly to the Schatz campaign.”

Schatz has an obvious political advantage, in addition to his edge in the current vote count: As a sitting senator, disaster recovery anywhere in the state is part of his portfolio. He’s promising to leverage federal resources on residents’ behalf. Hanabusa would have a hand in recovery efforts, too, but Puna falls outside her congressional district, so her role in federal recovery efforts is tangential.

Schatz allies note that the electoral math for Hanabusa is daunting, provided the count remains the same. She’d have to win close to two-thirds of the remaining vote to make up enough ground — and that’s only if the bulk of registered voters affected by the poll closures turn out. That’s a margin of victory that she wasn’t able to run up even in her own Oahu-based House district. Schatz fared well in the neighboring Puna precincts where polls were open on Saturday. It’s unclear how many eligible voters in the two inactive precincts cast early or absentee ballots ahead of the election.

Like Schatz, Hanabusa spoke only of the recovery efforts in Puna, not retail politics. She plans a helicopter flyover Tuesday and expects to be in Puna for another couple of days. And she says she’ll be back more than once.

“I haven’t even really thought about the campaign,” Hanabusa said, adding that she and Schatz haven’t spoken since Saturday’s vote, nor are their camps coordinating any disaster recovery efforts.

Rick Ridder, a pollster with RBI Strategies, called the situation “Dixille Notch in reverse,” a reference to the tiny New Hampshire community that always votes first in presidential elections. In this case, Puna residents are voting last and could be decisive.

Ridder said Hanabusa’s only path to victory is mass turnout among Puna’s Japanese-American voters, who have tended to back her, and weak turnout among Schatz’s base. If Schatz fails to deliver any disaster relief, he added, that could come into play as well.

Puna District voter Dennis Alstrand captured that sentiment in a comment to the Honolulu Star-Advertiser: “If these guys show up with ice and water — and maybe a chain saw — they have my vote.”