Strong showing in council primary could be enough

LIHU’E – Kaua’i County, last outpost in the state where County Council members

are elected at-large instead of by district of residence, has another election

quirk, compliments of voters in 1996.

Kaua’i voters that November approved

a change to the county charter, saying any council candidate who gains 30

percent or more of all the votes cast in a primary election will automatically

be elected without needing to run in the general election.

That means,

theoretically, that the race this year could be over Sept. 23 for one or more

candidates, should they gain that percentage of all votes cast in the

primary.

But election observers say that would take an extremely strong

candidate with many supporters who vote only for that candidate.

To show

how difficult that may be, consider that in the last two primary elections, the

top council vote-getters (former council member Mary Thronas in 1996 and

current Councilman Bryan Baptiste in 1998) didn’t even get half the percentage

of votes necessary to win in the primary.

Thronas got 10,079 votes, good

for 14.5 percent of the total vote. Baptiste drew 11,630 votes, which figured

out to just 8.3 percent.

Also in the 1996 general election, voters approved

of mayoral and council elections on a non-partisan basis (candidates don’t

declare party affiliation on the ballot), which began in 1998’s

elections.

So, instead of weeding out a few Democrats at the primary and

having the Republican and other-party candidates (usually less than seven)

advance to the general election, this month’s council primary will serve only

to eliminate two of the 16 candidates. Fourteen will advance to the general,

where the top seven vote-getters will win election to the council.

Unless

someone gets the magic 30 percent in the primary.

Staff Writer Paul C.

Curtis can be reached at 245-3681 (ext. 224) and pcurtis@pulitzer.net