Today, Colleen Hanabusa held a call-in phone conference to explain why she is leaving her House seat (just when we've got a chance to take it back from the Republicans) to primary our progressive incumbent senator, Brian Schatz.
Here's the bottom line: She's running to help defense contractors work with the Pentagon.
Really?
That is all she could come up with? In an hour long phone call?
Colleen Hanabusa has a reputation for ducking questions, coming down on both sides of an issue and leaving constituents puzzled as to where she actually stands.
Like the time she appeared at the corporatist New Democrat Coalition, standing next to Rep Ron Kind, presumably agreeing with him that "We're ready to deal. Everything is on the table." In this case "everything" included cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
And yet a couple days later when her constituents got upset about this, her Hawai'i staff assured everyone that she "would not vote to cut Social Security."
She's on both sides of many issues. Trans-Pacific Partnership? She's against fast tracking it but she refuses to say she'll vote against the TPP itself. (Her New Dem group is all gung-ho over the TPP)
Choice? She refused to over-ride Gov Lingle's veto of emergency contraception but now she's claiming to be pro-choice and even has Emily's List fooled. (Not unusual - Emily's List has backed a few women even worse on choice than Hanabusa.)
During the phone call she kept harping on her "experience."
But if the experience is blocking emergency contraception & civil unions in the legislature, then serving a couple of years in the do-nothing Congress, and learning the art of the evasive answer, is her experience that appealing?