The DCCC has been telegraphing this for most of a week (ever since Colleen Hanabusa’s press conference to announce that she wasn’t dropping out), but it’s official today:
The DCCC is pulling out of the race to replace ex-Rep. Neil Abercrombie (D-HI), effectively ceding the heavily Dem seat to the GOP as intra-party feuding splits the vote.
“The DCCC will not be investing additional resources in the HI-01 (Abercrombie-open) special election. Local Democrats were unable to work out their differences,” DCCC communications director Jennifer Crider said in an emailed statement. “The DCCC will save the resources we would have invested in the Hawaii special election this month for the general election in November.”
It had been at least a week since the Dems invested any money in this race, but they’d spent $314K on anti-Charles Djou advertising (as well as sending around a Barack Obama robocall advising a vote “for a Democrat”). With about one in five (60K out of 317K) of the election’s mail-in ballots already returned (the deadline is May 22 for the all-mail election), the die is already looking pretty well cast, meaning the outcome could be set even with a last-minute NY-23 bombshell where one candidate bails out.
Good thing the DCCC has such a large advantage of the NRCC.
If you’ll win there, it’ll be spun as a massive victory and the beginning of Dem comeback. With this big caveat hanging over it, the GOP could hardly use HI as a symbolic victory hearlding things to come.
Burns has about 300k for the final stretch while Critz is sitting on 73k.
to hear that inner party squabbling is not primarily restricted to the Republican Party.
but I understand. You can not spend money when in your team they are people working wrong.
The result: A new advantage for Djou.