Ed Case-- The Silver Spike Must Have Been Aluminum

The best member of Congress from Hawaii was Patsy Mink-- a legendary FDR progressive-- served in Congress from 1965 2002, with a break to serve in the Carter administration. She was the first woman of color to be elected to Congress, as well as the first Asian-American woman elected to Congress. And a stalwart progressive. In 2002 she was succeeded by Hawaii's worst member of Congress, Blue Dog Ed Case, who served from Mink's death in 2002 until 2007 when he unsuccessfully challenged progressive U.S.Senator Daniel Akaka for his Senate seat. since then he's run against progressives several times and has always lost.

Finally, after being beaten by Mazie Hirono, in 2012, the Joe Liberman of Hawaii announced his political career was finally over. Now he's running again, for Congress, against Hawaii's most progressive political leader, Kaniela Soto Ing. Ironically, he'll probably make it easier for Ing to win, since he is now the 4th conservative Democrat to jump into the race, joining Donna Kim, Doug Chin and Beth Fukumoto.

In 2011 I wrote about Case:

Although he had one of the worst attendance records of any member of Congress, he consistently supported the GOP on job-killing trade legislation and on special interests legislation like abolishing the estate tax for the super-rich, making it easier for banksters to rip off consumers, screwing over working families on pensions and GOP proposals to shift the tax burden to the middle class. He generally voted with the most reactionary Democrats when they joined the GOP to stifle reform and anyone who likes Chamber of Commerce pawns and Patriot Act-type Dems like Dan Boren and Jim Marshall will be perfectly happy with Ed Case-- especially if xenophobia and war-mongering and making sure that victims of big corporations have no recourse to the courts are your cup of tea to boot.

Monday night news started leaking out that Case is trying it again and wants to run from the Honolulu-based congressional seat. "The 65-year-old Democrat," wrote Nathan Eagle, "pulled nomination papers Monday to run for the 1st Congressional District seat, according to the state Elections Office. He has until the end of business Tuesday to officially file for the Aug. 11 primary ballot."