Hawaii trends left to far left on union and labor issues, taxes, and generally making the lives of businessmen more difficult.
Hawaii is not "woke" or politically correct though. Hawaii voters strongly rejected a gay marriage bill. Their state supreme court is what pushed that on them. I was living out there during that big controversy.
Almost everything in the islands is based on ethnicity, so much so that's it's difficult for most mainlanders to fathom. The Filipinos out there were overwhelmingly opposed to gay marriage. I think this is the most numerous ethnic group in the State. At the time, the Governor Ben Cayetano was a Filipino. They're usually either Catholic, Pentecostal, or members of a weird ethno-religious cult called Iglesio Ni Cristo (that claims Jesus Christ was a Filipino and some guy named Felix Manalo was a prophet
). The Portagees--overwhelmingly Catholic and generally opposed. The AJAs mostly didn't care one way or the other. Ditto for the Chinese and Koreans. My sense was the Hawaiians didn't really care, but they came to see it as a bunch of Mainlanders trying to push it on them--because of that, they mostly opposed it. Samoan = Mormon = opposed to gay marriage. The (non-military) Caucasians were probably the only group generally in favor of gay marriage--other than the activist judiciary. The military Caucasians, Blacks, and Hispanics were generally apolitical--other than voting absentee for President.
For another clear example of non-woke Hawaii: In Hawaii, ethnic/racial jokes are also seen as an acceptable form of humor. It's everywhere, from the beaches, to the bus stops, to the workplaces, at every level of society, top to bottom. And their humor picks on every racial/ethnic group that sets foot on the islands in significant numbers. That's not the case in the Mainland. It's a major non-woke cultural difference.
(Check out Frank De Lima, Hawaii's #1 comedian. You won't find that kind of ethnic/racial humor on SNL...)
In other words, Hawaii is very "liberal" and left-leaning, but it certainly is not "woke." It's a unique place. There's also a strong current of 'Mainlanders don't get to tell us what to say or do...'
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