"I believe that the reasons are plantations, The Big Five companies in HI and rise of unions as the offspring of the two.  Plantations are mostly history and the Big Five (AMFAC, Alexander & Baldwin, Castle & Cook, C. Brewer and TH Davies) are now shadows of their past powers, but their legacy lives on in HI.   The HI democrat party was built on racism and it still carries on today even though lots of dems are now from the mainland."

The Republican Party primarily represented the interests of the Big Five, who were predominately Caucasian and notoriously racist to all non-whites.  It was the domination of the Big Five and their predecessors who overthrew of the Hawaiian Monarchy that were the primary reasons for the animosity of Caucasian Americans by Hawaiians and local Asians alike back then that lives on today.   

 
Kuleana

friends at work, speaking with them it would seem you are talking to a full on republican or libertarian,  but come down to voting, it's either "I don't vote because (excuse)"  or "republicans are (insert swear word), I only vote democrat!"   

Any type of reasoning is out the windows after that....   

I'm taking off the moderator hat in this thread.

  Hawaii?  The rest of the country seems to be pulling their heads out of their ass, yet Hawaii continues to push it up further!   Sam Slom is unseated, now NO republicans in the state senate to represent 2A!  Karl (Marx) Rhodes 75%, Wil (put you on a list) Espero 61%......  Shitz 74%? Hanabata 72%   More of the same....    I am utterly disgusted!!!!



Better get ready for a fight folks.  Cali is going to look like a free nation compared to what we will be soon facing!

I have been warning the wife that I am looking at property in northern Arizona.    This place is going the way of California, and I bailed out of there almost eleven years ago.

Actually I was impressed Trump won many counties in CA.

I believe that the reasons are plantations, The Big Five companies in HI and rise of unions as the offspring of the two.  Plantations are mostly history and the Big Five (AMFAC, Alexander & Baldwin, Castle & Cook, C. Brewer and TH Davies) are now shadows of their past powers, but their legacy lives on in HI.   The HI democrat party was built on racism and it still carries on today even though lots of dems are now from the mainland.   As many older locals die off, I believe the younger locals are more independent without the history lessons from  parents or they can see as they grow into the working world. 
Most of HI locals are conservative but as a bad result of this conservatism is not wanting change.  Prime example of this is Long's Drugs.  There is no Long's Drugs, it's now CVS but the pushback from locals was they want to shop at a store named Long's not CVS.   That should tell anyone the mentality here.  But in this world, NOTHING lasts forever no matter what.

That's a great point about Long's and CVS. Someone else pointed it out to me once here that the majority of people here have the herd mentality and I didn't want to believe it at the time but it's kind of true. What I also noticed is that people are generally slow to anger but when the rage takes over the consequences can last for decades. At some point Hawaii will have had enough. Lord help us when that day arrives.