Aloha State Has Become a Surprise Campaign Battleground

Days before the election, the heated presidential campaign is suddenly raging this weekend in an unlikely outpost in the Pacific.

Former Vice President Al Gore and one of Sen. John F. Kerry’s daughters, Alexandra, went to Hawaii on Friday for a hastily scheduled campaign stop for the Democratic presidential nominee.

Gore’s successor, Vice President Dick Cheney, planned to dart out into the Pacific to rally the island state late Sunday for the Republican ticket.

What’s more, the state’s television and radio stations and newspapers are suddenly ablaze with campaign news and advertisements.

Former President Clinton has plugged Kerry in a round of satellite interviews with Hawaii reporters. And Kerry did a number of satellite interviews with them Friday.

Is Hawaii, long a Democratic bastion, the latest swing state?

Republicans, pointing to two polls showing President Bush in a statistical tie with Kerry, hope to nab four potentially critical electoral votes with Cheney’s lightning foray to a state that is six hours behind White House clocks and usually a distant afterthought in presidential politics.

On Friday, Cheney and his wife boasted about their upcoming weekend political getaway as they cruised one of the mainland battlegrounds.

Introducing her husband to a partisan crowd in Montoursville, Pa., Lynne Cheney exulted: “Can you believe it? We’re going to win Hawaii!”

While they acknowledged that the race was closer than they would like, senior Democratic strategists scoffed at the suggestion that Kerry could lose Hawaii to Bush.

“I hope the vice president enjoys it,” Michael Whouley, a top Democratic Party strategist, told reporters here. “We’re not very concerned about a state that [2000 presidential nominee Al] Gore won by 18 points four years ago.”

Some independent analysts backed up the Democratic view. No Republican has carried Hawaii since President Reagan’s reelection landslide in 1984. Charles Cook, editor of a nonpartisan newsletter in Washington, said he rated Hawaii as a safe-to-likely Democratic state.

But Cook said he understood the state’s allure for Republicans who were exploring every possible electoral scenario to reelect Bush.

“Who would want to lose the presidential race and realize that you lost Hawaii by 3 points?” Cook said.

Michael Barone, author of “The Almanac of American Politics,” conjured up a scenario in which a cliffhanger election night would turn on post-midnight results trickling in from far out in the Pacific.

Suppose, Barone said, neither Bush nor Kerry locked up the 270 votes needed to win the White House from the mainland states.

If both are just shy of 270, and you’ve got four electoral votes left, it matters a lot, Barone said.

The spotlight swung to Hawaii after the Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, the state’s leading newspapers, published separate polls this month that showed Bush and Kerry running neck and neck.

Neither candidate has traveled to the state this year. Nor have they targeted it with advertising, although some political commercials have been shown there through nationwide cable TV channels. Hawaii differs from the Midwest battleground states in that it boasts a relatively low unemployment rate and has an economy based mostly on tourism and the military.

“It’s a pretty big surprise,” said Neal Milner, a political scientist at the University of Hawaii. He suggested that the quiet Republican surge in the state reflected Bush’s stature as an incumbent in a state that has a high population of military families. In addition, he said, Bush’s national campaign talking points apparently have penetrated the state without an answer from Kerry.

Democrats, backed by strong labor unions, have controlled state politics with few exceptions since Hawaii became a state in 1959. Among Republican presidential candidates, only Reagan in 1984 and President Nixon in 1972 have carried the state.

While Hawaii routinely sends Democrats to Congress, it elected a Republican governor in 2002 for the first time in more than 40 years.

Gov. Linda Lingle, a moderate on some social and fiscal issues, is pushing to drive the state into Bush’s column. But the state Legislature is solidly Democratic, and Democratic U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye is expected to easily win an eighth term Tuesday.

To defend against Bush’s late play for the state, the Democratic National Committee has purchased more than $200,000 in advertising in the closing days.

There is no evidence yet that national Republicans are targeting the state with similar advertising. But at this stage of the campaign, few things are more precious than a candidate’s time.

So the decision to dispatch Cheney, announced Thursday, was a significant step. Republicans said it was not a huge gamble because Cheney could sleep on Air Force Two on Sunday night and Monday morning instead of in a hotel.

The last major-party candidate to campaign in Hawaii was Republican nominee Nixon in 1960, who boasted that he visited all 50 states. He barely lost the newly minted state that year to Democrat John F. Kennedy -- and his Hawaii trip was criticized afterward as a waste of time.

Times staff writer James Gerstenzang contributed to this report.