So here's a brand-new ad from Linda Lingle, the Republican Senate candidate in Hawaii.
Look at all those Democrats pledging their vote to Lingle! Democrat Mazie Hirono must be really worried that she's losing Democratic support, huh?
Or not.
“I’m a Democrat, and I’m voting for Linda Lingle,” says a woman identified as Elaine Slavinsky. But in 2004, Slavinsky ran for the Hawaii state Senate as a Republican, calling for less government spending. “I think we keep adding more and more programs and not tightening our belts to shrink government,” Slavinsky said during her 2004 campaign.
Another woman in the ad, identified as Jan Shishido, says that Lingle is “going to work with both parties to get things done.” Shishido appears to have been a Democrat many years ago, but in 2000 she ran the Maui County Republican Party, a position Lingle appointed Shishido to when she was governor, according to a Pacific Business News report from 2000. Shishido also ran for the Hawaii state House in 2004 as a Republican.
World War II veteran Takashi Kitaoka also endorses Lingle in the ad. Kitaoka, who served as a Maui Circuit Court judge in the 1960s, was appointed by Hawaii’s Republican governor at the time and identified himself as a Republican in an interview from the Center for Oral History at the University of Hawaii.
It's not completely out the realm of possibility that all these people have changed their voter registration so that they then appear in an ad as "Democrats" for Lingle. But is it likely? That's some pretty sloppy work on Lingle's part, picking Republicans who'd run for or held office as Republicans, for Pete's sake.
She has an uphill battle, much like Scott Brown has in Massachusetts, to convince voters in a Blue state that she's really not a Republican. And, like Brown, she has to go to pretty extreme lengths to try to pull it off. Of course, lying isn't extreme for a Republican. It's just what they do.
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