I will be interviewing Hawaii gubernatorial candidates Neil Abercrombie, Duke Aiona, and Mufi Hannemann in early July. The interviews will go up on Huffington Post and my blog as well as here on DailyKOS. If you have any suggested questions for the candidates, please post them at www.davidthielen.info. Also, any useful information to use in follow-ups to the questions is greatly appreciated.
I have two goals in my interviews. The first is to add to the conversation – if we learn nothing new then it was a waste of both the candidate's and my time. So I don't ask questions that they've already been asked multiple times. Second, it's to try and get a good picture of who they are. A large part of the impact they have as governor is the million medium level decisions they make, what they focus on, etc. That comes back to who they are. For examples of my interviews, here are my ones of the front runners for the Senate in Colorado – Michael Bennet [D] and Ken Buck [R].
And please, background details on suggestions are greatly appreciated. I get some details about Hawaii politics from my mom but not that much. Not being plugged in has some advantages (I come at this truly not having a favorite in the race), but also some major disadvantages. Background helps a lot.
Thank you very much – dave
P.S. – I asked Charles Djou and Colleen Hanabusa for interviews also – but never got a reply to my emails. No idea why.