Boo-Ya!!!

Alrighty, then...

So the Kula Candidate Forum just finished. It's a big deal because it's the only one the Upcountry candidates get before the primary. They tape it and it gets played over and over again on the cable access station here - which holds waaaay more influence than the one in Rochester.

It started at 6pm and Summer's race was last. So she was there at the beginning, schmoozed, did all the right things. Her opponent? Showed up at 8:45, right before it was time to go on.

So at about 8:30, Summer finds out that among the questions their going to be asked, is to ask your opponent a question...the opponent answers then you get one minute to react. So Summer, Summer's Dad (who I haven't really talked about, but I should soon) and I went outside and started come up with some strategery. We shaped the question so that Kyle would have no choice but to either avoid the question or straight out lie...about the fact that he has 0% of his campaign money from the district he supposedly represents.

Explanation Break: The stat here is 0% of people who have contributed $100 or more, because that is who you have to report name & addresses for. So in theory, Kyle could have gotten thousands of $5 donations from different people in the district. But seeing as how these Oahu donors were sleezy developers, and Maui is so small, we would have heard if he had that going on, we doubt that's the case. I'm going to crunching more numbers tomorrow. Back to the story...

So now it's Summer & Kyle's turn. They lobbed a softball question for Kyle and he was vague even when he wasn't put on the spot. What accomplishments in the House are you most proud of? Summer's version is what do you hope to achieve when in office...she did OK with that one. The second question was how you deal with the communities in the district that are so diverse. Neither one did that great of a job with the question, but Kyle never even addressed it.

Then they came out with the big one...ask your opponent a question. Summer was first. You can see she was nervous about it, but nailed his ass. She asked him if he thought it was important for a representative to have the financial support of his district, blah, blah, blah. He gave another vague, lame-ass answer. In her response she lowered the fucking boom. She went into the stats and the second after she said "zero percent", the moderator said time was up. It was theatrical. A murmur was heard throughout the room.* Some doofy redheaded guy was trying not to laugh his ass off in the back of the room. BOO-YA! I wanted to do that Jim Carey thing in Liar Liar when he won the case...that weird fist-jab, kick thingy.

Oh, but that's not all, my friends. Because now Kyle had to ask Summer a question. He was pretty condescending about it. Something about how hard it is to work in the Legislature and that sometimes there are disagreements and how would she handle this. It was really bad...I was waiting for him to call her a little girl.

What happened next is what I've been waiting for the whole campaign. She stopped thinking and just let her experiences take over. When I talked to her afterward, she hadn't even realized it, but her instincts told her that she was being insulted and she proceeded to - rhetorically - rip him a new one. She wasn't shy or halting. She didn't look at notes. She let it go. And it rocked.

To bring this around to the main subject...me...I've been dragging lately. It's felt like the campaign was going in a way that I didn't like and that I didn't have control over it. It was slipping away. Combined with all the school foolishness, I haven't been sleeping and I've just been a big crankypants. Still am. But this really gave me a boost.

Summer's really worried that she's fired the first shot, that now they're going to come after her...or her family. Which is really, really possible. Kyle is tied to the good-ole-boy network here. I've heard some gnarly rumors. But I told her at the beginning to expect it. While her Dad is one of the good ones, he still is a "developer" and they're going to throw that around because only Republicans like developers in these parts. So Summer was freaking a bit in the parking lot afterward.

But now's when I get to do MY job.

*There's actually a Republican opponent in this race. Someone younger than Summer. He's not in a primary race so he wasn't on the agenda for tonight, but he showed up with some supporters. Made sense. But they were the white version of the Klumps. Another politician there is big on the swag...he's got bumper stickers, canvass bags and these creepy-looking snack cakes. The Klumps were all sitting in the back chowing on these...uh...tasty morsels when that 0% thing came up. And I heard all of them kind of choking on their little treats. I think most of them ended up wearing their Little Bodega Debbies.