I've said before that I didn't think Case had anything to worry about in his race against wingnut extraordinaire Mike Gabbard, but it's nice to have some polling to back it up.
According to a poll conducted by the Honolulu Star-Bulletin (MoE 4.67%), Case leads Gabbard 67-18 in a race that's got some interesting tidbits under the surface.
Both men still have a primary ahead of them on Sept. 18, but neither is expected to have much trouble winning those races.
Case is a moderate Dem, and Gabbard is...well, Gabbard is a really unique sort of wingnut. He led the charge against same-sex marriage in Hawaii as the president of the 'Alliance for Traditional Marriage' (he's also affiliated with many other antigay groups), and his wife, as a member of the Board of Education, has said that she thinks creationism should be taught in schools and has done everything she can to prevent anti-bullying rules protecting gay and lesbian students in Hawaii schools. Your typical religio-conservative types, right? But that's where it gets interesting.
Gabbard's wife, Carol, was until a couple of years ago the secretary and treasurer of a non-profit foundation called the "Science of Identity Foundation" - a cult that splintered off of the Hare Krishnas. While the Gabbards claim today to be Catholic, both Carol and Mike Gabbard appear in videos with the group's founder, Chris Butler, laughing and nodding in agreement as he bashes Christians as "fanatics", and refers to the Christian god as a "sadist". Personally, I find it just a little hard to believe that they just suddenly up and converted to a religion they considered fanatical and sadistic. Definitely not your everyday kind of right-wingers, this couple.
Gabbard becomes quite agitated whenever his religious background is brought up, denouncing mentions of his SIF affiliation as smears on his reputation, despite the obvious truth of the allegations. But that's nothing new. In his 2002 City Council race, Gabbard took out two full-page ads claiming that his opponents were under investigation by HPD for destroying his campaign signs - despite the fact that the police report was filed five days after the ads were submitted and offered no evidence or witnesses to support his allegations.
His entire campaign strategy appears to be based on lying about his past and his opponents (he's called Case a 'social extremist', a phrase that evokes an image of some sort of polysexual anarchist in my mind) and claiming that he's being smeared whenever anyone dares to bring up the truth with him. Luckily, Hawaii residents seem to have gotten the message about what kind of a guy Gabbard is - intolerant, dishonest and just plain nuts - and are on their way to roundly rejecting him in November.
Some Gabbard 'food for thought' links:
http://www.edcase.com/congress/news_072104_Questions%20to%20Gabbard.php
http://www.kaleo.org/vnews/display.v/ART/2002/12/04/3ded95047e3c8
http://starbulletin.com/2001/03/06/news/story11.html
On another Hawaii-related note, Duke Bainum is leading Mufi Hannemann 39-32 in the Honolulu mayoral race, although he'll probably miss the magic 50% mark and face a runoff after the open primary in September. Both men are Democrats (the major Republican in the race is "Uncle Frank" Fasi, who was Mayor of Honolulu throughout most of my childhood, but who since has gotten quite senile and runs for just about every position in the state), although the Honolulu mayoral race is putatively nonpartisan.
I don't know much about this race, although I've met both men (liked Bainum better; Mufi's got that slimy old-style Hawaii Democrat feel to him). Bainum is trying to paint himself as a "new" Hawaii Democrat, not beholden to the old, corrupt, "Democratic Machine" establishment; his years on the Honolulu City Council make that a tough sell, but he's been able to point to the thousands of dollars in illegal contributions that Hannemann has had to return and may make some inroads there. Mostly this race is very boring, though - two City Councilmen duking it out, focusing on ways to fix the City's budgetary woes and crumbling roads and sewers.