Hawaii 2nd District

The 2nd District encompasses all of the islands in the Hawaii archipelago, including most of Oahu’s acreage beyond Honolulu, which belongs to the state’s other congressional district. It takes in Wheeler Army Airfield and the farmlands north of Pearl Harbor, between two jagged chains of mountains that lift the island out of the sea. Over the mountains to the west on Oahu is the Leeward Coast—calm, sultry, and lightly populated. Over the mountains to the northeast is the Windward Coast, with many prosperous, Republican-leaning subdivisions in and around Kaneohe and Kailua. The 137 islands have distinct personalities. Hawaii, the Big Island, is the size of Connecticut and boasts huge cattle ranches; the active volcano Kilauea, which started erupting in 1983 and has not stopped since; and Mauna Kea, the highest mountain in the world if the count begins at its base far under the ocean. Tourists are told that it is bad luck to take pieces of lava home. On the north shore, with heavy rainfall and tropical foliage, is the old port of Hilo and Hawaii’s macadamia nut industry; this is a blue-collar Democratic area in a natural wonderland. On the Kona Coast, where there is little rainfall and the landscape is dominated by lava flows, there are retirement condominiums and a higher-income, more Republican population. Even before the recession of 2008, tourism dropped sharply on the island, and tourist officials are encouraging new visitors from China. Energy prices are among the highest in the nation, and “vog” emissions from volcanoes are a growing health concern. The island of Maui, favored more by North American than Asian tourists, has dozens of luxury condominiums and upscale resorts. Workers are employed chiefly in tourism, the military, social services, and agriculture. Kauai, much of which was devastated by Hurricane Iniki in 1992, is the least developed and most agricultural of the main islands. Parts of it have the nation’s highest rainfall, while others seldom get wet. Its large farm workforce—a reminder of what most of Hawaii was like a century ago—makes it the most Democratic of the islands. Overall, the district is Democratic. In 2008, voters on the Big Island effectively decriminalized small amounts of marijuana possession by requiring that police make such arrests their lowest priority.