Poor Paul Ryan: His selection as Mitt Romney's vice presidential nominee is about to get overshadowed by all the action in Hawaii, which rather curiously chooses to hold its primaries on a Saturday. There are two big races to watch tonight, both on the Democratic side. Polls don't close until midnight Eastern time, so we probably won't be liveblogging, but feel free to use this thread to follow the results.
• HI-Sen (D): It's a race that, on paper, feels like it should have been over before it began: Rep. Mazie Hirono has the support of the entire Hawaii Democratic establishment to succeed retiring Sen. Dan Akaka, while Blue Dog ex-Rep. Ed Case remains permanently in the doghouse in the wake of his unsuccessful primary challenge to Akaka six years ago. Hirono's also raised far more money and has a more liberal profile that should make her more appealing to your typical Democratic primary voter. But the polling has been weird, with some surveys showing a tossup and others showing Hirono with a clear lead. Hawaii is a notoriously difficult state to poll, and the contest is complicated by the fact that the primary is open, which means Republicans and independents can cast ballots for the more conservative Case. Still, Case hasn't released any internal polling in a while, and Hirono looks like the definite favorite to take on ex-Gov. Linda Lingle in the fall.
• HI-02 (D): With Hirono looking to move up to the Senate, that left her 2nd District House seat open, and surprisingly, no big-name progressives emerged despite the very blue nature of the turf. Rather, Dems wound up with former Honolulu mayor Mufi Hannemann, a social conservative with strong union ties, and Honolulu city councilor Tulsi Gabbard, who also compiled a very socially conservative record during her short political career but has recently tried to re-invent herself as a liberal. For a long time, though, Gabbard looked very much like a bit player: Hannemann ran a city larger than the district he's currently hoping to serve, and his internal polling showed him with crushing leads.
But Gabbard waged a vigorous campaign and in recent months has surged in the polls, aided in part by outside spending from the veterans group VoteVets (Gabbard herself served in Iraq). Hannemann shockingly chose not to go negative even as the race tightened, and he hasn't shown any contradictory numbers to the public polling we've seen. Those numbers have made the race look like a tossup, but the momentum and enthusiasm seems to be firmly on Gabbard's side. Whoever wins the Democratic nod is all but assured of representing the district in Congress come January.
8:32 PM PT (Steve Singiser): Results are slightly delayed (the polls were to have closed about a half hour ago), but when results do start to come in, here is the AP link to those results.
10:41 PM PT: Via Darth Jeff in comments:
Hawaii Office of Elections spox tells me Big Island extension will delay results for the whole state. Everything shifting 90 mins at least.
— @oskargarcia via HootSuite
So that means polls finally closed at about 1:30am Eastern.
11:25 PM PT (David Jarman): Hey, we've actually got some numbers! In the Dem primary in the Senate race, with 7% reporting, it's Mazie Hirono 58, Ed Case 41. And in HI-02, with 5% reporting, it's Tulsi Gabbard 50, Mufi Hannemann 39 (with 6 for Esther Kia'aina and 4 for Bob Marx).
Sun Aug 12, 2012 at 10:36 AM PT: In the end, the Senate numbers barely changed, with Hirono crushing Case 58-41. Meanwhile, Tulsi Gabbard smoked Mufi Hannemann, 55-34.