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Election 2010 Candidate Profiles
August 05, 2010
Primary Election: September 18
General Election: November 2
Web site: www.hawaii.gov/elections
Phone: 453-VOTE
E-mail: Elections@hawaii.gov
Over the next month we'll examine the various state and county races, culminating in endorsements before the September 18 primary election. This week, we begin our coverage with a look at the contest for one of Hawaii's two U.S. Senate seats, which has been held by Dan Inouye since 1963.
Name: Jim Brewer
Party: Green
Profile: Brewer has previously run for Governor, most recently in 2006, when he earned 1.6 percent of the vote. In keeping with the philosophy of his party at both the state and national level, he's far-left—staunchly pro-environment, anti-war and anti-big business.
Web site: Greenhawaii.org
Name: Cam Cavasso
Party: Republican
Profile: Cavasso challenged Inouye in 2004, losing by more than 50 percent. He's back, apparently undaunted. Cavasso does have government experience, having served a stint in the state House from the mid-'80s to early-'90s. He's a hard-line right-winger across the board who, as blogger Ian Lind pointed out in June, is affiliated with Oahu-based Pacific Christian University, which teaches, among other subjects, classes in "Fear of the Lord" and "Angeology."
Web site: Camcavasso.com
Name: Dan Inouye
Party: Democrat
Profile: The incumbent. The longest-serving member of the U.S. Senate. Chair of the Appropriations Committee. Fourth in the line of presidential succession. Medal of Honor recipient. Also, by definition, deeply imbedded in the Washington establishment, which is seen by many as a bad thing these days.
Web site: Inouye.senate.gov
Name: Jeff Jarrett
Party: Independent
Profile: According to his campaign profile Jarrett is a "champion for the causes of the elderly and helpless," born "in 1961 in Salt Lake City, Utah" and raised with a "mid-west stong work [ethic]" and "religious foundation." His platform is all over the map, jumping from support for Arizona's immigration law to demands that all Americans receive the quality (government-run) health care enjoyed by members of Congress to railing against the Federal Reserve ("a private corporation run by the globalists"), but he shares a sense of populist angst and anti-government paranoia that should play well with the Tea Party crowd.
Web site: J4h.org
Name: Lloyd Mallan
Party: Libertarian
Profile: Mallan is a true Libertarian in that he embraces issues on both (extreme) ends of the political spectrum. On the one hand, he supports drug legalization, opposes the death penalty and backs a version of Hawaiian soverignty several steps past the Akaka Bill (which he opposes), including the sale of ceded lands back to Native Hawaiians and "a public referendum to answer the question whether the State of Hawaii should peaceably secede from The United States." On the other hand, he supports the privatization of "all government services" and the abolition of the IRS, INS and income tax. Oh, and "no more rockets on Kauai!"
Web site: Freedominourtime.org
Name: Eddie Pirkowski
Party: Republican
Profile: We tried. In all honesty, we tried. But when the only Web site we can find is titled "Friends Eddie US Senate Hawaii 2006 2010" it sort of seems like you're not even trying. And when the first few sentences of your "platform" read like the musings of a sleep-deprived third-grade social studies student with a learning disability, well, that's kind of the end of the road.
Web site: Mauisenator.wordpress.com
Name: John Roco
Party: Republican
Profile: Good lord. This is a joke, right? Right? Seriously: watch the video on the front page of Roco's Web site regarding HB444 (sample line: "Being blonde, or perfering blondes, may someday become more important in determining a future partner than whether or not one is a man or a woman") and try not to imagine that it's a living incarnation of that weird, automated, Stephen Hawking computer voice. No really, check it out. It's awesome, in the scariest possible sense of the word.
Web site: Roco4senator.blogspot.com
Name: Andrew Woerner
Party: Democrat
Profile: Woerner seems to be a product of Obama Letdown Syndrome—disillusioned by the distance between the President's lofty rhetoric and the realities of his policies, but still loyal to the ideals that underpin them. He even goes so far as to say he has "the greatest respect for Senator Inouye" and is "truly in awe of the contributions he's made." One might question why Woerner, who admits his "chances are extremely slim," is running in the first place. His answer? "I will constantly push the conversation toward addressing the root causes of the growing dysfunction in our government."
Web site: Andyforussenatehawaii.com