Rep. Ed Case (D) Elected Nov. 2002, 1st term
Born:	Sept. 27, 1952, Hilo
Home:	Honolulu
Education:	Williams Col., B.A. 1975, U. of CA Hastings Col. of Law, J.D. 1981
Religion:	Protestant
Marital Status:	married (Audrey)
Elected  Office:	Manoa Neighborhood Bd., 1985-89; HI House of Reps., 1999-02, Maj. Ldr., 1999-00.
Professional Career:	Practicing atty., 1983-02; L.A., Sen. Spark Matsunaga, 1975-78; Clerk, HI Supreme Ct. Chief Justice William Richardson, 1981-82.
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The 2d District of Hawaii includes not only the Neighbor Islands but most of Oahu's acreage beyond what is generally regarded as the city of Honolulu (juridically, it includes all of Oahu). It has Wheeler Air Force Base, still looking much as it did in December 1941, 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 is the Leeward Coast--calm, sultry and lightly populated; over the mountains to the northeast is the Windward Coast with many prosperous and Republican subdivisions in and around Kaneohe and Kailua. The Neighbor Islands have distinct personalities. Hawaii, the Big Island, is the size of Connecticut and boasts huge cattle ranches, the active volcano of Kilauea (which erupted most recently in 1984), and Mauna Kea, the highest mountain in the world if you count from its base far under the ocean to the peak; tourists are told that it is bad luck to take pieces of lava home, and many send them back. 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. 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. Maui, favored more by North American than Asian tourists, has dozens of luxury condominiums and vast upscale resorts. But there is risk in paradise: Many of Hawaii's native plants are facing extinction due to the pigs, goats and diseases introduced to the islands since Captain Cook arrived in 1776. 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 work force--a reminder of what most of Hawaii was like a century ago--makes it the most Democratic of the islands.

The congressman from the 2d District is Ed Case, a Democrat who managed to win two special elections after the November 2002 general election and still get sworn in with the other members of the 108th Congress in January 2003. A fourth-generation Hawaiian, his father founded the local chapter of the Association for Retarded Citizens; his mother was a librarian and was elected to the Hawaii School Advisory Council. He is a cousin of former AOL Time-Warner chairman Steve Case. Ed Case attended local schools before venturing to the Mainland, where he graduated from Williams College and Hastings Law School in San Francisco. He spent three years on Capitol Hill as an aide to Senator Spark Matsunaga. After returning home, he became a partner in a Honolulu law firm, where he specialized in land and commercial law. He narrowly lost each of his first two bids for public office: for the state House in 1986 and the state Senate in 1988. Finally he was elected to the state House in 1994, where he was majority leader in 1999 and 2000.

The year 2002 was an extraordinarily busy campaign year for Case by any measure. On September 21 he lost the gubernatorial primary to Lieutenant Governor Mazie Hirono by a 41%-39% margin. He ran as a reformer in a state where the dominant Democratic machine had held the governorship for 40 years and was buffeted by criticism for overspending and corruption. Then 2d District Congresswoman Patsy Mink, first elected in 1964, defeated in a Senate primary in 1976 and elected again to the House in 1990, died on September 28; she had been hospitalized since August 30 with viral pneumonia that resulted from a case of chicken pox and her family had given no information on her condition. State law prohibited changes in the general election ballot after September 26, and so Mink's name remained on the ballot. On November 5 she was posthumously reelected 56%-40% against Republican state Representative Bob McDermott.

This was the first of three elections in three months for this district. Outgoing Governor Ben Cayetano called a special election for November 30 to fill the rest of the term, even though Congress had adjourned and seemed highly unlikely to reconvene. It was a winner-take-all contest, in which 12 Democrats, 13 Republicans and 16 candidates of other parties filed to run. The initial favorite was John Mink, Patsy Mink's widower, who said that he wanted to honor the work of his former wife and keep her office together. Case entered the race soon after losing the primary for governor, running as a reformer with more moderate views on economic and labor issues than other Hawaii Democrats. Only 45,000 voters turned out in a district of more than 600,000 people; Case won a surprising 51% of the votes to John Mink's 36%. Case never took the oath of office for the 107th Congress, but he did accrue seniority over freshmen in the 108th Congress. And he was able to run as the incumbent in the January 4 special election to fill the seat in the 108th Congress that was empty because of Patsy Mink's death. In all, 44 candidates filed to run in this winner-take-all contest--12 Democrats, 16 Republicans, 13 from the Natural Law party, one Libertarian and two Greens. McDermott ran again, but the Republican party remained neutral. Case's chief opponent was former Democratic state Senator Matt Matsunaga, a son of the late Spark Matsunaga and the Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in November 2002. Matsunaga had the endorsement of the AFL-CIO and was the candidate of the Democratic machine that had held the governorship from 1962 to 2002; Case ran as the reform candidate. Case said that he could support unilateral military action against Iraq only if there was "a clear and present danger" against the United States; Matsunaga ran election-eve ads claiming that Case supported the legalization of marijuana and lower pay for teachers. On January 4, 75,000 voted, more than on November 30 but far less than the 179,000 who voted November 5. Case led Matsunaga 44%-30%. He won decisively in Kauai, where the Case family has roots, and on the Big Island; he led by a wide margin in Oahu, where Matsunaga may have lost votes to state Senator Colleen Hanabusa. Democratic candidates won 82% of the votes and Republicans only 16%, but Case's critique of the long-ruling Democrats was similar to that of incoming Republican Governor Linda Lingle: This was another repudiation of Hawaii's Democratic machine.

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DC Office
128 CHOB 20515, 202-225-4906; Fax: 202-225-4987; Web site: www.house.gov/case

State Offices
Honolulu, 808-541-1986.

Committees

• Agriculture (12th of 24 D): Conservation, Credit, Rural Development & Research; General Farm Commodities & Risk Management.
• Education & the Workforce (17th of 22 D): Education Reform; Employer-Employee Relations.
• Small Business (11th of 17 D): Rural Enterprises, Agriculture and Technology; Workforce, Empowerment & Government Programs.

Election Results (More Info)
	Candidate	Total Votes	Percent	Expenditures
2003 spec. gen.	Ed Case (D)	33,002	44%	$124,973
	Matt Matsunaga (D)	23,050	30%
	Colleen Hanabusa (D)	6,046	8%
	Barbara Marumoto (R)	4,497	6%
	Bob McDermott (R)	4,298	6%
	Other	4,681	6%
2002 spec. gen.	Ed Case (D)	23,576	51%
	John Mink (D)	16,624	36%
	John Carroll (R)	1,933	4%
	Other	2,754	6%
2002 general	Patsy Mink (D)	100,671	56%	$320,130
	Bob McDermott (R)	71,661	40%	$85,813

2000 presidential
	Gore (D)	104,830	56%
	Bush (R)	67,118	36%
	Other	14,577	8%
For 1992 and 1996 presidential results in the Second District, please see the Almanac 2000 online. Please note that these older returns reflect district lines as they existed prior to 2002 redistricting.

• Cook Partisan Voting Index: D +11
• District Size: 10,605 square miles
• Population in 2000: 604,819; 83.8% urban; 16.2% rural
• Median Household Income: $48,686; 11.7% are below the poverty line
• Occupation: 19.3% blue collar; 56.7% white collar; 24.0% gray collar; 13.3% military veterans
• Race/Ethnic Origin: 28.0% White, 1.5% Black, 28.0% Asian, 0.3% Amer. Indian, 11.3% Hawaiian, 21.7% Two+ races, 0.2% Other, 9.0% Hispanic origin
• Ancestry: 5.4% German, 4.2% Portuguese, 4.0% Irish
• Click here for statewide demographic data.