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Stories tagged with “Linda Lingle”

Election

Pro-GOP Chamber Of Commerce Ad Extols Bipartisanship, Implies Obama Re-Election

By Josh Israel and Scott Keyes on May 11, 2012 at 5:23 pm

Former Gov. Linda Lingle (R-HI)

Former Gov. Linda Lingle (R-HI)

The Chamber of Commerce has released 21 new May 2012 “independent” political ads — 20 of which either attack Democrats or praise Republicans. But while most of the ads take partisan swipes at Democrats and Obamacare, the Chamber’s ads in solidly Democratic Hawaii improbably endorse bipartisanship.

The narration for the 30-second spot in support of former Gov. Linda Lingle (R-HI) reads:

Working together to create jobs will bring Hawaii’s economy back. That’s the independent record that Linda Lingle has built. Governor Lingle believes in a bipartisan plan for increasing tourism, working across the aisle with President Obama, finding solutions to boost our local economy for more opportunity. She understands tourism, will create jobs for Hawaii and our economy. Call Linda, tell her to keep supporting tourism and putting jobs above partisanship. Paid for by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. 100 years standing up for American enterprise.

Watch the ad:

Another ad from the Chamber — which has defended Mitt Romney and frequently attacked President Obama’s legislative agenda — hits a Democratic candidate in Florida over the mere possibility that she might support Obamacare.

But in the Aloha State, the group abruptly takes a pro-compromise position.

Amusingly, Republic Report noted, the on-screen citation for the claim that Lingle is a bipartisan leader is a newspaper reprinting of a press release from Lingle’s own campaign.

More subtle is an implied concession to President Obama’s home state that Lingle and the Chamber believe Obama will be re-elected. Lingle, if elected in November, would take office in January 2012 — meaning that for her “bipartisan plan” for “working across the aisle with President Obama” to really work, President Obama too would have to win this November.

Or perhaps they simply wanted to inform voters that Lingle would diligently seek bipartisan solutions with President Obama for the 16 days between when she took office and Mitt Romney’s possible inauguration — but in that case, she had better be prepared to move very quickly indeed.

Health

Third Republican Woman Comes Out Against Blunt Amendment

By Alex Seitz-Wald on Mar 7, 2012 at 11:26 am

Former Gov. Linda Lingle (R-HI)

Former Republican Hawaii governor Linda Lingle, who is running for Senate in the state, said this morning that she opposes an amendment pushed by Senate Republicans last week that would allow any employer to drop health insurance coverage for contraception and other health services on moral grounds.

In a statement, Lingle’s campaign manager said she shares the position of her Democratic opponent, opposing the amendment sponsored by Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO). “Governor Lingle and [Democrat] Mazie Hirono share the same position on the Blunt amendment,” the statement said. “[N]either supports the broadly crafted language of the amendment.”

Nonetheless, Lingle, who is pro-choice, attended a fundraiser for her campaign which featured Blunt last night in DC. Lingle’s campaign defended the decision to travel nearly 5,000 miles to attend the fundraiser, decrying alleged Democratic “personal attack[s]” on Blunt.

Lingle joins Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-ME), who voted against the Blunt amendment, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who said yesterday that she regrets her vote for the measure, in publicly criticizing the Blunt legislation. It was narrowly defeated on a near party-line vote last week.

Economy

Hawaii GOP Senate Contender Lingle Breaks With Republican Presidential Hopefuls On National Right To Work Law

By Scott Keyes on Oct 26, 2011 at 6:15 pm

A leading Republican Senate candidate broke with her party on the issue of labor rights at a GOP conference late last week. Former Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle (R), running for Senate in 2012, told ThinkProgress in an interview that she opposes her party’s support for right to work laws, particularly the proposal from leading presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Perry to enact national right to work legislation:

KEYES: There’s been a push, particularly among the leading presidential contenders of the Republican Party, in favor of a national right to work law. [...] Where do you come down on the issue?

LINGLE: I think I’d put that in the category that it’s up to the individual state. It’s not something I supported at home and wouldn’t feel as important part of a platform for a candidate such as myself.

Listen to it:

Lingle is right to oppose right to work laws, both at the national level and for states as well. Studies have shown that while right to work laws provide no discernible boost to economic growth, they do act as a punitive measure towards unions. Also known as “right to work for less,” such laws would drive down wages, union membership, and erode health and safety regulations.

Lingle’s bid to become just the second Republican senator from Hawaii (and first since 1977) will no doubt continue to be complicated by the Republican Party’s hard right shift over the past few years. Though Lingle distanced herself from GOP support for right to work laws, she embraced her party’s orthodoxy on protecting the wealthy, telling ThinkProgress that she could “never” support a tax on millionaires.

Economy

Hawaii GOP Senate Contender Linda Lingle Says She Could ‘Never’ Support A Tax On Millionaires

By Scott Keyes on Oct 25, 2011 at 4:45 pm

ThinkProgress filed this report from the Western Republican Leadership Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Former Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle (R) declared late last week that she could “never” support a tax on millionaires if elected to the Senate next year. In an interview with ThinkProgress at the Western Republican Leadership Conference, Lingle, who is currently vying to replace Sen. Daniel Akaka (D-HI), expressed her opposition to a tax on millionaires. President Obama has proposed using the tax to fund the American Jobs Act, which would put 1.9 million Americans back to work.

Lingle objected to the phrase “millionaire’s tax,” preferring instead to call it a tax on small business. “I could never support something like that,” said the former two-term governor:

KEYES: It sounds like you’re against the millionaire’s tax that President Obama has proposed?

LINGLE: I guess I’d have to explain a little bit about my state to you, Scott. In my state, the majority of businesses are small businesses. The majority of them report their income as personal income. So while people may want to call it a “millionaire’s tax,” in fact, it’s a tax on small business, because almost every business in Hawaii will report their income as personal income. They have an LLC, they have a sole proprietorship, and that means if their business only earns $250,000, now they have to pay higher taxes at a time they’re struggling to keep people employed. So for me, they put that label on it, others put that label. I call it a small business tax, and therefore I could never support something like that.

Listen to it:

Conflating millionaires and small businesses in order to argue against increasing taxes on the wealthy is a common tactic on the right. However, as ThinkProgress economics editor Pat Garofalo explained in U.S. News & World Report, “fewer than 2 percent of small businesses make enough to file in the top two income tax brackets.”

A millionaires tax isn’t just supported in Hawaii, one of the most liberal states; it’s supported across the country. Polls regularly show overwhelming support for raising taxes on the wealthy — 73 percent of Americans, including two-thirds of Republicans, supported the idea in a September poll. Under the American Jobs Act, that money would be used to put 5,000 construction workers and teachers back to work in Hawaii.

Politics

Gov. Lingle Compares Same-Sex Marriage To Incest, Doesn’t Realize Cousins Can Marry In Hawaii

By Amanda Terkel on Jul 8, 2010 at 3:30 pm

Yesterday, Hawaii Gov. Linda Lingle (R) vetoed legislation extending civil unions to both same- and opposite-sex couples. In her announcement, she said that civil rights should be subjected to the “collective wisdom” of majority rule. As Igor Volsky pointed out, Lingle conflated civil unions with same-sex marriage. “Unlike marriage, civil unions are only recognized in the state in which they are performed and couples do not carry the benefits of civil unions across state lines,” he wrote.

In her first radio appearance after her veto, Good As You noted that Lingle continued to pretend that the legislation would undermine traditional marriage. She also claimed that if people believe marriage equality for same-sex couples is a “civil rights issue,” they should also be concerned that close relatives can’t marry either:

LINGLE: For those people who want to makes this into a civil rights issue, and of course those in favor of the bill, they see it as a civil rights issue. And I understand them drawing that conclusion. But people on the other side would point out, well, we don’t allow other people to marry even — it’s not a civil right for them. First cousins couldn’t marry, or a brother and a sister and that sort of thing. So there are restrictions, not to put it in the exact same category. But the bottom line is, it really can’t be a civil right if we are restricting it in other cases, and it’s been found to be legal in those other cases, that the restrictions.

Later in the segment, “Joe from Silver Spring, Maryland” called in and pointed out that in Hawaii, first cousins actually can get married. Lingle said that she had no idea whether or not that was true in the state she governs:

JOE: And the second point is, Gov. Lingle, you talked about restrictions on marriage. I have a first cousin named Kate, and I’m looking on the Department of Health website for Hawaii, and I could marry my cousin Kate in Hawaii, but I cannot marry the love of my life in Hawaii, so — or in terms of a civil union with him. So, I hope you will take that into consideration. [...]

LINGLE: Whether or not a first cousin can marry in Hawaii, I’ll have to go back and check. I don’t know that that’s untrue, but let me go back and check on that.

Lingle also claimed that “almost everyone I know” has friends who are “gay and involved in committed relationships,” but she stressed that same-sex marriage and civil unions are “not about a decision for individual couples. It’s about the impact that it has on society.” Listen here:

Lingle’s argument is popular with conservatives. Recently, former Arkansas governor and current Fox News personality Mike Huckabee said that legalizing marriage equality would “be like saying, well, there are a lot of people who like to use drugs, so let’s go ahead and accommodate those who want who use drugs. There are some people who believe in incest, so we should accommodate them. There are people who believe in polygamy, so we should accommodate them.”

However, these statements are just a “dodge” to “distract people from the injustice of denying same-sex couples the same opportunity to marry that different-sex couples want to preserve for themselves,” as Jon Davidson of Lambda Legal has written:

The problem with “slippery slope” arguments…is that they assume that society and the law can’t make distinctions between situations that are different from one another. But we can tell apples from oranges. For example, that women got the right to vote does not mean that infants are next.

Davidson also notes that while there may be “compelling reasons to ban incestuous and polygamous marriages, including genetic concerns about the children of incestuous marriages, the importance of preventing coercion and abuse within families, and concerns about how young girls and women have fared under polygamy,” there are no such reasons to ban same-sex marriage.

Transcript: Read more

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