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There’s no race for governor, and the three congressional contests hold no suspense. Only the Big Island offers so much as a mayoral runoff.

Is there no high-profile matchup that might convince Hawaii residents to bother voting in the general election?

In fact, there is: Kamala Harris versus Donald Trump.

True, there’s little doubt that Hawaii’s four electoral votes will go to the Democrat. But to the extent we see any increase in voting in this traditionally low-turnout state, it’s in November of presidential election years.

Not that the national candidates ever come here for anything other than a chance to get sand between their toes. The last time the top of a major party ticket flew to the islands to actually campaign was also the first time: Richard Nixon in 1960, a year after Hawaii gained statehood.

The Republican vice president was keeping a promise to personally campaign in all 50 states, something political pundits criticized as a waste of time in his tight race against John F. Kennedy.

“A distant afterthought in presidential politics,” is how the Los Angeles Times once described the Aloha State.

And yet, a little bit of the islands — sometimes a lot — has wafted like a tropical breeze into every presidential election since statehood.

1960: Repercussions even today. The margin of Kennedy’s victory over Nixon was razor-thin nationally, and especially so in the nation’s newest state.

Hawaii had only three electoral votes back then, and the initial count had Nixon winning by 141 votes.

Democrats sued for a recount. By the time it was completed, showing JFK ahead by 115 votes, competing slates of electors had already convened at Iolani Palace and cast votes for their candidates.

Even though the deadline had passed for certifying electors, a Circuit Court judge ruled the Democratic slate should prevail. And it did on Jan. 6, 1961, with Nixon himself, presiding over a joint session of Congress as vice president, pushing for acceptance of Hawaii’s votes for Kennedy.

Fast-forward to modern times, and Trump lawyers are pointing to the that should exempt him and his allies from being prosecuted for attempting to set up fake electors to overturn the 2020 election.

1964: Talk about ballot-splitting. President Lyndon Johnson crushed Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater by a massive 57% margin to win the islands’ four electoral votes.

It might have seemed the Democratic Party’s takeover of Hawaii, which began when it was a territory in the mid-1950s, was complete. Except for the fact that in the same election, Republican U.S. Sen. Hiram Fong was reelected by 53% to 47% over Democrat Thomas Gill.

1968: No tolerance for intolerance. Third-party candidate George Wallace, campaigning in favor of racial segregation on the basis of states’ rights, got 13.5% of the national vote and actually won 46 electoral votes in the South. His worst showing was in Hawaii, where his support dipped to 1%.

Nixon was back on the Republican ticket, and his running mate, Spiro Agnew, was campaigning on Maui when he for having referred to a reporter as a “fat Jap” days earlier.

Democrat Hubert Humphrey easily won the state but lost the election.

1972: Joining a GOP landslide: Nixon finally won Hawaii — and every other state except Massachusetts — clobbering Democratic anti-Vietnam War candidate George McGovern, 62% to 37%.

The Aloha State briefly had when U.S. Rep. Patsy Mink ran in the Oregon Democratic presidential primary and received more than 5,000 votes. She also appeared on primary ballots in Maryland and Wisconsin.

1976: Who put him over the top? In the aftermath of scandals that toppled Nixon and Agnew, Democrat Jimmy Carter narrowly won Hawaii and the presidency over incumbent Gerald Ford.

Late on Election Night, that “the Aloha State clinched it for Carter.” The Associated Press, however, gave credit to Mississippi (this was the last time a Democratic presidential candidate won most Deep South states).

1980: A lonely bit of blue: Hawaii was one of only six states, and the only one west of Minnesota, to support Carter’s reelection bid as Republican Ronald Reagan rolled to the White House.

Being a spot of blue in a mostly Republican-red West was a common occurrence for Hawaii up to this point, except for the  landslides of ’64 (Johnson) and ’72 (Nixon).

1984: Making the Reagan diary. While Reagan never campaigned in the islands, he did fly to Honolulu on Easter Sunday of 1984 on the first leg of a trip to China and went to the Cathedral of St. Andrew, which inspired this entry in :

Attended an Easter Svc. at the Episcopalian Cathedral. The Bishop got in some digs in his sermon at our defense buildup. It turns out he’s a marcher in peace & anti-nuke parades.

A few months later, Reagan swept 49 states in a reelection landslide. It was the second and final time (so far) that Hawaii ended up in the red column and it wasn’t close: 55% to 44% over Democrat Walter Mondale.

1988: Consolation prize in Manoa. As he campaigned, George H.W. Bush became known for gaffes. On Sept. 7, he declared it to be the anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. Still, he won the presidency while serving as vice president, a rare feat.

Hawaii supported the loser, Democrat Michael Dukakis, who returned to Oahu months after his defeat as a visiting professor of political science at the University of Hawaii Manoa.

1992: The blue Pacific. Speaking on the tarmac of Hickam Air Force Base in late October 1990, Bush basked in the glow of success in the still-unfolding first Gulf War as he praised an audience of soldiers for “what history will judge as one of the most important deployments of allied military power since 1945.”

Two years later, after breaking his pledge to never raise taxes, Bush lost his reelection bid to Democrat Bill Clinton, who carried not only Hawaii but the entire West Coast (minus Alaska) — an accomplishment Democrats have been repeating ever since.

1996: Hawaii’s first vacationer-in-chief. Well before Barack Obama made Kailua something of a Winter White House, Clinton was a president who frequently vacationed in Hawaii with nearly annual three-day visits.

His 1996 visit came after he easily won reelection over Republican Sen. Bob Dole. Clinton liked the islands and they liked him back, supporting him over Dole 57% to 32%.

2000: When the recount stopped. In an infamous election that wasn’t settled for five weeks, Texas Gov. George W. Bush defeated Vice President Al Gore after the U.S. Supreme Court ordered an end to partial recounts in Florida.

There was no such suspense in Hawaii, which Gore won by an 18% margin. But there was Rep. Patsy Mink seeking to even after the high court’s ruling. Speaking in the U.S. House on Dec. 12, she pointed back to that 1960 Hawaii case in which a recount flipped the state’s electoral votes even later in December.

There was still time to finish a full Florida recount, the Hawaii congresswoman argued in vain.

2004: Halloween in Hawaii. Republicans got excited when Bush II had a shot at winning the Aloha State in his reelection bid. Lynne Cheney, wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, exulted at a rally: “Can you believe it? We’re going to win Hawaii!”

They didn’t, despite the veep making a quick visit to the islands on Halloween. Democrat John Kerry carried the state, 54% to 45%, but Bush-Cheney won the election.

2008: A favorite son. He was an Illinois senator, but Barack Obama boasted plenty of island cred, having spent most of his childhood in Honolulu. So when he campaigned to become not only the first Black president, but the first Hawaii-born president, he got plenty of support here.

Obama took a quick trip to Honolulu just 10 days before the election to visit his sick grandmother, who raised him for most of his teenage years. He was back in late December as president-elect to begin his tradition of Secret Service-escorted vacations in Kailua over the holidays.

In between, he won Hawaii by 72% to 27% over Republican John McCain.

2012: Here he comes again. By the time Obama ran for reelection, Oahu residents had grown used to seeing the first family from Christmas to New Year’s — or at least getting stuck in traffic jams caused by presidential motorcades.

The home-grown president remained immensely popular here, defeating Mitt Romney by 71% to 28% in Hawaii on his way to a second term — and four more years of wintertime visits to Windward golf courses and beaches as the vacationing leader of the free world.

2016: Insult to injury. Not only did Hillary Clinton lose to Donald Trump in a shocking upset, she suffered a couple of Hawaii-related indignities along the way despite easily winning the Aloha State, 63% to 30%.

First an Oahu delegate at the Democratic National Convention was seen flipping the bird as Hawaii’s nomination votes were announced, in a scene that went viral. Then one of the state’s four Clinton-committed electors , casting his vote for Bernie Sanders.

2020: Gabbard makes a run. In an election season that ended with Trump denying the results and an insurrection at the Capitol before Democrat Joe Biden was sworn as president, it’s easy to forget that for the first time since Obama, one of Hawaii’s own was running for the Democratic nomination.

Tulsi Gabbard’s campaign didn’t last long, but it was another step in raising the national profile of the former congresswoman who has now become a Trump-supporting Republican.

For the second straight election, Hawaii voters repudiated Trump, albeit by a smaller margin than in 2016.

And now the seemingly permanent Republican nominee for president is on the ballot again.