Hawaiʻi’s Democratic incumbents easily won reelection Tuesday in their bids to return to Congress in 2027 this time as members of the majority party.
U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda led her Republican challenger, state Sen. Brenton Awa, 67.2% to 27.2% while U.S. Rep. Ed Case was ahead 71.9% to 18.6% over his GOP opponent Adriel Lam, according to early results from the Hawaiʻi Office of Elections. Those included all the mail-in ballots processed statewide through Saturday, as well as ballots from some voter centers on Maui and Oʻahu.
Tokuda and Case’s victories come as Democrats won seats across the country to retake the majority in the House and Senate, aiming to place a check on President Donald Trump during his final two years in office. Just after the polls closed in Hawaiʻi, Democrats had already won 219 seats in the House and 53 in the Senate.
Tokuda’s race against Awa for Hawaiʻi’s 2nd Congressional District was viewed as the more intriguing of the two contests in large part because of Awa’s ability to garner attention via social media and the fact that as the Senate’s minority leader he had a resume that lent him instant credibility as a viable candidate.
The race, however, never lived up to expectations.
Awa pitched himself as a bridge to the Trump administration and vowed to serve only a single two-year term to help the islands navigate the president’s final two years in office. Housing Native Hawaiians, he said, would be his top priority. If he had won, Awa would have been just the third Native Hawaiian to represent the islands in Congress since statehood.
Tokuda, meanwhile, ran a frontrunner’s campaign and barely engaged with Awa aside from a Civil Beat candidate forum in October, in which she seemed more prepared than her opponent. She leaned heavily on her record of congressional accomplishments, including her response to natural disasters and her efforts to pass legislation that reduces the tax burden on disaster survivors, including victims of the 2023 Maui wildfires.
Both Tokuda and Awa had made affordability a centerpiece of their campaigns.
Tokuda easily outpaced Awa in terms of fundraising while he focused on running a more grassroots campaign. Federal records show Tokuda’s campaign spent about $1 million during the election cycle compared to $120,000 by Awa.
While both candidates openly worried about the possibility of outside money coming into the race, especially given the national Republicans’ outsized fundraising advantages, those fears never materialized.
A Fifth Consecutive Term
Case, 74, easily won reelection for a fifth consecutive term representing Hawaiʻi’s 1st Congressional District, which covers urban Oʻahu. A moderate Democrat, Case faced a feisty challenge in the August primary from state Sen. Jarrett Keohokalole. But after easily defeating him, he had a clear run to another term.
His pitch throughout the campaign was built largely around his experience in Washington and his seat on the House Appropriations Committee where he helps decide how federal dollars are spent. He’s said that bringing federal resources back to the islands will continue to be a top priority for him.
Case faced several opponents in the general election, including Lam, a retired U.S. Army officer who has run unsuccessfully for state and federal office before. He also beat out two other challengers, including Jordan Conley, a Green Party candidate who had received 2.9x% of the vote and Nathan Berning, an anti-abortion activist from the mainland, who had earned 1.2% in early returns.
