As was widely anticipated, Republican Charles Djou won tonight's special election to the US House seat in Hawai'i District One. The seat was vacated by former Rep. Neil Abercrombie in February in order for him to begin his campaign for Governor this fall.
With two candidates splitting the usually strong Democratic vote in the district (Urban Honolulu), Djou won 39% of the vote. Colleen Hanabusa got 30.8% of the vote and former Congressman Ed Case finished third with 27.6%.
It's expected that Hanabusa and Case will face off again in a September closed primary. Today's special election was wide open to all voters, so there was probably some crossover from unhappy Dems and some independents.
The most interesting thing about the results is that Hanabusa caught and passed Case. Most polling done during this campaign indicated that she was well back in third place. I'm sure she'll take heart from that, and I expect that Case will be severely disappointed.
Djou is expected to run in the fall election, but very few observers expect him to win a full term when there's only one Democrat running against him.
Posted by Linkmeister at May 22, 2010 07:41 PM | TrackBack