We held a special meeting on Tuesday, May 16th to vote to endorse either Ed Case or Daniel Akaka for the U.S. Senate seat. Only people who had been members of PDH for two weeks prior to the vote were eligible to vote.
Our membership voted overwhelmingly to endorse Daniel Akaka!
On April 25th, we sent questionnaires to both Senator Akaka and Representative Case, asking them if they could answer 6 questions on issues of importance to members of PDH. We asked both candidates to return their answers by May 9th, so we could get them to our members for their consideration before the May 16th vote. Senator Akaka completed and returned his questions by then. Ed Case's campaign repeatedly said that Representative Case was "too busy" but would try to complete it when he had time. To this date we have not received a completed questionnaire from the Case campaign.
These two other sources of information were provided to our members to help them compare the views of Senator Akaka and Representative Case. On either site, you can learn about the methodology they used to come to their determination and you can review the actual votes and legislation that the two men voted on, which formed the basis for the ratings.
- The rating from the National Journal, who has rated each member of the US House and Senate on a wide range of issue.
- The rating from Progressive Punch, a site that rates members of Congress and the Senate, according to issues of concern to Progressives.
If Ed Case ever returns a completed questionnaire to us, we will gladly post it here for public review. We would still like to know the answers to these important questions and think the rest of Hawai‘i's voters are also entitled to know exactly where each of these men stand, unambiguously, on the issues of the day.
Senator Akaka's answers are here as a pdf file.