Hawai’i Rep. Ed Case will hold on to his seat after the first primary election results came in Saturday.
Case, who is running for his third consecutive term as representative of Hawai’i’s first congressional district, faced four challengers in the state Democratic primary, most significantly Jarrett Keohokalole, the state senator for Senate District 24, which includes Kāne’ohe and Puohala Village.
But on Saturday evening, the first results released by the Hawai’i Office of Elections showed Case with a commanding lead over his opponents: about 60% of the roughly 97,000 votes counted in the first results were for Case.
Votes for Keohokalole accounted for about 35% of the first results. The other three candidates — Jennifer Booker, Nick Kiswanto and Ben Fatula — together received the remaining five percent of the vote.
Keohokalole conceded the race Saturday evening. He told Aloha State Daily he "doesn't like losing," but intends to stay hard at work in the state Senate.
"We're gonna do a deep dive into the numbers and do some outreach and sort of figure out [what happened]," Keohokalole said. "We're gonna take the kids to the beach tomorrow and try and relax and decompress, and then we'll take a look at the good, the bad and the ugly ... and then I go back to work in the Senate. There's plenty to do. A lot of the issues are gonna be the same. The role is gonna be a little different, but you know the the work doesn't stop."
Keohokalole said he felt that he could have done more in Congress had he won, and that challenging the incumbent Case was healthy for democracy.
"No one is entitled to an elected seat," Keohokalole said. "We should have challenges in races. You don't have a functioning democracy unless there's choice."
Keohokalole will retain his Senate seat until the 2028 elections. As the Senate has no term limits, he is eligible to run again.
Case did not respond to requests for comment Saturday.
Case will face another three challengers in the general election in November. His Republican opponent, Adriel Lam, ran unopposed in the primary and received 15,224 votes. His other challengers are non-partisan candidate Nathan Berning and Green Party candidate Jordan Conley.
Meanwhile, Hawai’i’s other representative, Jill Tokuda, easily defeated her three primary challengers, receiving 84% of the vote by first results. She will face Republican challenger and state senator Brenton Awa, who was unopposed in the primary, in November.
