HONOLULU — U.S. Senator Mazie Hirono and the state’s incumbent congressmen won the Democratic Party’s primary on Saturday.
Hawaii is a mail-in state. Ballots were sent to registered voters, who had to return them by mail or in mailboxes across the islands. Voters also had the option of casting their ballots in person at a handful of election service centers in each county.
In order for the ballot papers to be counted, they had to be received by the election offices of the respective district by 7 p.m. on election day.
Here is an overview of the most important races in Hawaii:
US Senate
Hirono is seeking a third term after first being elected to the office in 2012 to replace Daniel Akaka, who became the first Native Hawaiian to serve in the U.S. Senate after statehood.
She won a three-way race against Ron Curtis and Clyde McClain Lewman. Curtis lost to Hirono in the general election six years ago when he was the Republican nominee for the same seat. Lewman finished seventh in the 2022 Democratic primary for governor with 249 votes.
Hirono became a state representative in 1980, Lieutenant Governor of Hawaii in 1994 and a member of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2007.
She underwent surgery for kidney cancer in 2017, a year before she was last elected to a second six-year term in the Senate.
Former state Rep. Bob McDermott defeated five lesser-known candidates for the Senate nomination. McDermott last ran for a Senate seat two years ago, when he lost the general election to Democratic U.S. Senator Brian Schatz by 44 percentage points.
US House
U.S. Representative Ed Case won the Democratic Party primary for Hawaii’s 1st Congressional District, defeating Cecil Hale.
Case was first elected to the Honolulu city seat in 2018 after representing Hawaii’s 2nd Congressional District from 2002 to 2007.
Patrick Largey faced no opponent in the Republican primaries.
In the race for the 2nd Congressional District, U.S. Representative Jill Tokuda was unopposed in the Democratic primary and Steve Bond in the Republican primary. The district includes the suburbs of Honolulu and the neighboring islands.
State House
House Speaker Scott Saiki faces a tough election campaign against Kim Coco Iwamoto, who is running again after losing to Saiki by just 161 votes two years ago and 167 votes in 2020.
Her legislative district covers downtown Honolulu and Kakaako, where a construction boom has transformed warehouses into high-rise condominiums.
Saiki, a lawyer, has been speaker of the House of Representatives since 2017 and a state representative for three decades. On his campaign website, he touts a law passed this year that he says would give working families a 70% tax cut.
Iwamoto is an attorney who represented Oahu on the state Board of Education from 2006 to 2011. Her website says she fights to expose corruption and waste in government and to provide adequate housing and social workers to solve the problem of homelessness.
When she won her seat on the country’s Board of Education 18 years ago, Iwamoto was the highest-ranking openly transgender person ever elected.
