������Ƶ

Hawaii’s open Democratic primary process — upheld Monday in a ruling from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on a challenge from 2013 — allows any voter to participate, so long as they are registered Democrats or register as Democrats on the day of the vote. Likewise, the Democratic “presidential preference poll” allows both long-term party faithful and those who register at the poll to vote.

That inclusive approach was certainly in effect this year, when thousands of previously unregistered and independent voters swamped Hawaii polling sites in March, propelling Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders to a 70 percent to 30 percent win over Hillary Clinton in the preference poll. (Clarification: The first two paragraphs have been amended to recognize the distinction between the primary and the preference poll.)

North Shore grassroots activist Tim Vandeveer was one of the most prominent Sanders supporters, who were collectively engaged in no small part by their candidate’s unvarnished assessment of the Democratic elections system: It’s dumb, Sanders famously charged, and remained mostly silent as his followers took it a step further, .

Many of those same newly minted Democrats showed up en masse at the state Democratic Party convention in May and elected Vandeveer the party chairman over three better-known party regulars.

Two-and-a-half months later, though, Vandeveer seems to be applying a different standard for who’s a Democrat and who’s not when it comes to candidates for public office.

On the eve of �����ٳܰ��岹��’s primary, he sent an email to state Rep. Jo Jordan relaying that he and other party leaders had sought to disqualify her principal opponent, Cedric Gates, because Gates had only registered as a Democrat at the same March preference poll where Sanders — and ultimately Vandeveer — won big.

Gates, a former Waianae Coast Neighborhood Board chair, defeated Jordan by more than 10 percentage points in the primary, making Jordan the only incumbent state legislator to lose a re-election bid in this year’s primary.

According to Vandeveer, even though Gates registered as a Democrat at the March poll, he “is not a member of the Democratic Party of Hawaii.”

“Although his attempted re-reenrollment (sic) in the Party during the Presidential Preference Poll in March 2016 appeared valid in our system for a short time, it did not conform to our bylaws regarding resignation from the Party,” wrote Vandeveer. “This re-reenrollment was not caught in a timely manner, which prevented any action through the Office of Elections, although it is doubtful that any meaningful change could have been achieved due to cost and the need for adjudication to take place in court.”

Cedric Gates defeated Jo Jordan by more than 10 points in the primary, making Jordan the only incumbent state legislator to lose a re-election bid in this year’s primary.

This is hardly the first time the Democratic Party of Hawaii has sought to make it difficult for a candidate to align with its brand. Sen. Laura Thielen endured what can only be described as a bizarre hazing ritual when she initially sought to run for the state Senate as a Democrat in 2012. Thielen had previously been head of the state Department of Land and Natural Resources under Republican Gov. Linda Lingle. Her mother, Rep. Cynthia Thielen, is a longtime Republican legislator.

Laura Thielen survived the party pushback, was elected as a Democrat that year and re-nominated in �����ٳܰ��岹��’s primary. She’ll face Republican Robert Nagamine in the general election.

Many anticipated similar party shenanigans in 2014, when House Minority Leader Aaron Ling Johanson announced his switch to the Democratic Party two months after his re-election. In a show of leadership support, House Speaker Joe Souki and then-Senate President Donna Mercado Kim stood with him at a press conference announcing his party switch. Despite insider grumbling, the party officially accepted him in a vote the following month.

In an interesting twist, Johanson’s successor as minority leader, Rep. Beth Fukumoto Chang, is widely rumored to be considering switching parties, too, though she thus far says she has no plans to do so. Chang ran unopposed in her primary on Saturday and faces Democrat Marilyn Lee in the general election for House District 36.

But back to Jordan, Gates, Vandeveer and “rigged elections.”

Vandeveer’s note to Jordan seemed more than just an apologetic communication from party chair to legislative incumbent. In it, he made an explicit case that Gates’ candidacy ran afoul of party rules requiring that any candidate who resigns from the party to run as a candidate of a different party be barred from party membership for three years. Gates did so to run as a Green Party member in 2014.

That would mean Gates wouldn’t be eligible to run as a Democrat for another year, wrote Vandeveer. He said a lack of good party record-keeping and enforcement of party rules resulted, in part, in Jordan being “unnecessarily harmed” and apologized to Jordan “for what role the Party had in this failure.”

Jordan emailed Civil Beat on Sunday, asking for a correction to an article reporting that she had lost her primary race. “The truth is the Democratic Party lost a State House seat for their failures over a 2 year period and further clarification can be made by the Democratic Party Chair Vandeveer,” Jordan wrote.

I reached out to Jordan on Tuesday to ask whether she plans to challenge Gates’ nomination or take legal action against the party. I also sent a note to Vandeveer asking whether the party will support Gates in the general election, and whether Vandeveer sees any irony in this dispute, given that he is in his current role mostly because of his support of a presidential candidate .

Nothing from Vandeveer. But Jordan emailed that she is weighing her options.

The matter is closed for the Hawaii Office of Elections. According to Voter Services section head Nedielyn Bueno, anyone who wanted to challenge a candidate’s affiliation had until June 14 to do so, one week after the filing deadline of June 7. No one challenged Gates.

To be fair, Vandeveer is new in his role, and is dealing with a matter here that he inherited. According to his email to Jordan, Gates and Jordan have been in conflict for at least two years and the party missed multiple opportunities to resolve what became a “protracted dispute.” Vandeveer also made clear that his position was informed by party leadership and a “thorough analysis” by the party rules chair.

But one wonders: Why should these decisions be seen as any more credible than actions by other party leaders who Sanders supporters decried as crooked, even criminal, last spring?

For instance, when the late U.S. Rep. Mark Takai, who will be laid to rest this week, affirmed his intent after the March presidential poll to honor his commitment as a super delegate to support Clinton, he was met with shocking rebukes from a wave of Sanders supporters posting on the Civil Beat site and on Facebook.  They called into question his integrity, said he was an example of an official rigging the process and promised to defeat him in his re-election bid this fall.

The attacks troubled Takai, already more ill with cancer than any of us knew; the incident was among the last public matters he participated in before his death, and he relayed to me in an April phone call how much the acidic criticism bothered him.

Civil Beat won’t be correcting its elections coverage. Jordan lost that race fair and square. The voters in House District 44 will get a new state representative this fall and they’ll get him through an election that won’t be crooked, won’t be rigged but will be an honest expression of the will of the people.