PDHblog
This is a place for members of Progressive Democrats of Hawai‘i to express their thoughts
and exasperations about political happenings. The opinions and views are not necessarily
those of PDH's steering committee or membership as a whole.

OK… We knew we were opening ourselves up for trouble sponsoring a forum for the 2nd Congressional District in the 1st Congressional District. The criticism is starting to come in… so here is part of the rationale behind our choice of a venue.

1. Feasibility for us: We have contacts that help obtaining use for McCoy Pavilion at a very good price. Perhaps a bad excuse, but since we are a new group with zero funds, this made a big difference as to whether we could sponsor such an event.

2. Lots of CD2 residents work in town: Part of why we thought it would still be useful to hold a CD2 forum in town is that many residents of the 2nd Congressional District actually work in the vicinity of downtown Honolulu. We thought that scheduling an event for an evening in the middle of the work week would be convenient for this sub-set of people.

3. The 2nd CD is big! If we hosted the event in Windward Oahu, people would complain that we weren’t reaching out to those who live in Leeward Oahu, and vice versa. No matter where we hold it on Oahu, we are inaccessible to all the neighbor islands. It is impossible for one event to reach all of the 2nd CD.

4. We hope this will be only one of many events. While we would love for our group to grow so that we have active groups throughout the State, our core is currently concentrated in the 1st CD. We were hesitant about going into another area where we might be stepping on the toes of groups that may already be active there.

In summary, we fully recognize that there may be pit-falls to the format and location of the “Political Speed Dating” event that we are helping to put on. Despite these potential problems, I hope that we will be able to reach a significant number of the sub-set of 2nd CD residents that work in the 1st CD. Furthermore, I hope that we demonstrate to other groups that just because a forum accomodating the 10 Democrats that have filed for this race can be quite formidable and difficult, it is not impossible.