38 in Hawaii Vie for 5-Week Seat in House

Cabdriver John Parker is taking a shot at being congressman for a month.

He’s in good company. There are 38 hopefuls in a winner-takes-all election today to serve out the last five weeks of late Rep. Patsy T. Mink’s term.

Parker’s pitch is all economics: He says he won’t spend a penny campaigning and promises to send anything he is paid back to the national treasury.

“You can’t get a better deal from any candidate,” he said.

The sentimental favorite is Mink’s widower, hydrologist John Mink, who has no professed political ambitions and won’t be running in the more important race on Jan. 4 to determine who serves in Congress for the next two years.

Critics of the costly election to fill out Mink’s term say voters today may share her husband’s lukewarm attitude toward politics: Ballot stations will be competing with the Hawaii vs. Alabama college football game, the start of the holiday shopping season and surfing contests on the North Shore’s gigantic waves.

In fact, even some candidates are showing apathy.

Many haven’t bothered to provide information about themselves on a free state Web site.

Congresswoman Mink, a Democrat, died Sept. 28 of pneumonia at age 74 while campaigning for reelection. Constituents voted her in anyway.

The January election, in which 44 candidates are running for Mink’s seat, has much riding on it.

Republicans see it as a chance to win their first Hawaii seat in decades after their candidate, Linda Lingle, won the governorship from the Democrats for the first time in 40 years.

One person taking today’s election seriously is former state Rep. Ed Case, who hopes victory will give him something of an incumbent’s luster that will carry over into January. The cousin of AOL Time-Warner Chairman Stephen Case lost the Democratic gubernatorial primary and is one of the few candidates to actively campaign.

Several candidates backed out of the race in deference to John Mink, who said he is running only in the hope of letting his late wife’s staff wrap up her affairs in Washington.

One of those who dropped out of the race and all but endorsed the widower was Mink’s Republican opponent in the November election, former state Rep. Bob McDermott, who is running only for the full term.

Even the head of the state GOP, Micah Kane, called John Mink “the right individual” for the short-term job.

Votes from outlying precincts are to be flown uncounted to Honolulu after the polls close. Counting is expected to be completed and a winner announced by Sunday afternoon.