i L i n d

Longtime Democratic Party activist Bart Dame is an experienced and knowledgeable observer of the legislature and its dynamics.

Following the overwhelmingly Democratic legislature’s defeat of a bill to raise the state’s minimum wage, despite the party’s strong support for such a measure, Dame told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser:

“It looks like the legislative leadership of both chambers is just out of touch with the real conditions facing working people in Hawaii, who are struggling to pay basic expenses,” he said. “They’re just so out of touch with the actual conditions faced by working people that they can play games and kill a bill like this when there’s no good reason for doing it.”

In a Facebook comment, he added a more detailed assessment of the potential for moving forward politically from here.

Here’s a lengthy excerpt, reprinted with his permission from a longer Facebook comment.

Given the current composition of the legislature, given the limited number of activists working to raise the minimum wage, given the level of organized public support (and resistance from the business owners) the drive to raise the minimum wage this year failed. So how do we create new circumstances which increase the chances of raising the MW next year?

Both the Senate and the House are controlled by lawmakers who have found it is much more important to have good, mutually supportive relationships with business owners and their lobbyists, who are well-organized, with a lot of resources, than with the poorly-organized, under-resourced “do-gooder” activist types, who are either volunteers (and amateurs) or who hold low paying jobs with public interest nonprofits.

“Community” or party-based activists can rarely arise above the level of being a nuisance, presuming a right to make demands on lawmakers.

So how do we set about to “create facts on the ground” that will increase our chances of greater success next year? Next year is an election year, a time when our ability to be a “nuisance” that affects those elections
Increases, if only slightly.

The internal dynamics in both chambers could become more supportive with the election of a few more Democrats who actually hold “Democratic” beliefs, values. In the Senate, recent votes show the factional alignment of votes, and with them, “leadership” is pretty shaky. Leadership in both chambers tried to push through an approach to AirBnB (and Expedia) that pretty much surrenders to the power of the market, legal or illegal, only asking for payoffs in the form of taxes. The “Leadership and Lobbyist Alliance” prevailed easily in the House, but failed in a 12-12 floor vote last night in the Senate. (It would have been 13-12 against, but one Senator was absent).

The attempt by the “Leadership and Lobbyist Alliance” to pass the A&B; “Water Theft Bill” also passed easily in the House, But has stalled out (so far) in the Senate (with a slightly different alignment of senators). Another sign the Senate leadership’s control is shaky.

The “facts on the ground” in the Senate appear to be more conducive to change. The “facts on the ground” in the House are much less so. The current leadership has a much more stable control, which leads me to adopt a view that we need to change the “Gestalt” within the Democratic Caucus in the House. To not aspire to replacing the leadership but to strengthening the influence of progressives within the caucus with an assumption the leadership’s policies would shift to reflect that more progressive composition. Some incumbents need to be knocked off and replaced with Democrats who actually uphold “Democratic” values more than a cynical, amoral “professionalism.”

Progressive efforts have started with HAPA’s Kuleana Academy. But need to step up and to become a bit more realistic in what it takes to build a movement AND to recruit and produce electable candidates.