Hawai’i’s state legislative session begins this week as the annual scramble unfolds with an estimated 3,000 proposed bills to be vetted, discussed, researched, heard, voted on, and/or quietly put aside in 60 bewildering, working legislative days. On average, maybe 10% of the bills will be passed on for the governor to sign (or veto) by mid-July.
You might assume that Hawai`i is America’s most partisan state; if you look back over the past 33-years, Hawai`i does lead all states in years in which it’s had a blue “trifecta”, as it’s called- where one political party rules the House, Senate, and sits in the governor’s office. Only the eight-year Linda Lingle Republican reign in the governor’s chair interrupted the Aloha State from having 33-years of a single (Democratic) party in charge in all three places.
Yet other states easily top Hawai`i’s single party dominance in any year since 1992. Utah has been Republican red (governor + both legislative bodies) for all of those 33 years. South Dakota (31), North Dakota (30), Idaho (30), Ohio (26), and Nebraska (26) also rank above Hawai`i in single party rule since 1992; all have been Republican red.
Maryland (21) and California (19) rank behind Hawai`i as true blue (Democratic) trifecta states often over the past 33 years, while other red-heads include Florida (25 years), Arizona, South Carolina, Texas, Wyoming (each with 22 years of one-party domination), and also Georgia (21).
Presidential political pundits quadrennially assess which way 85% of the country will vote before we mail in our ballots or wake up to vote on Election Day. In the all-or-nothing presidential stakes, a statewide 51% vs. 49% presidential outcome means the same as a 65% to 35% “runaway”, since 48 of 50 states award the winning candidate 100% of its electoral votes. The color purple be damned, it seems.
Only Nebraska and Maine split electoral votes based on the percentage of votes earned by a presidential candidate. Interestingly, Nebraska is the only state with a unicameral system- one legislative body (since 1937). Many states have explored unicameralism, including Hawai`i, but no one’s joined Nebraska’s single legislative reality in 87 years now.
Anyway, let the legislative labor begin! Here’s hoping for answers and solutions to age old problems and issues, rather than redundant rhetoric and posturing pontification, followed by annual deferral and avoidance. The future is today, before our leaking population base shrinks even further.
Think about it…