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With the crucial midterm elections a bit more than six months away, the Democrats appear to be imploding. One scandal after another keeps enveloping the party. From corrupt state legislators to the sheer incompetence on display on an almost-daily basis at the White House, the Democrats are showing the American people why it’s time for a change in leadership. Now we have another example of their ineptitude: Rep. Kai Kahele (D-HI).
Kahele replaced Tulsi Gabbard as the representative for Hawaii’s second district, and despite a lot of big talk at the beginning, he’s been a disaster. In fact, he’s barely bothered to show up for work in Washington. He’s completely abused the vote-by-proxy rules that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pushed through in 2021. According to a report out of Honolulu, Kahele has voted by proxy–meaning he allowed another legislator who was at the Capitol to cast his vote–more times than all but three of the 429 other members of the House of Representatives.
That’s a disgraceful disregard for a job he was elected to do. To make matters worse, Kahele has also been moonlighting as a pilot for a commercial airline while he’s avoiding travel to Washington and doing the job he was elected to do.
So you have a guy being paid by the airlines, while he serves on the committee to watch over the airline, while he refuses to come back to Washington. Now, I mean, I love Hawaii. I can appreciate why you’d like to stay in Hawaii, but there’s something profoundly wrong about the total breakdown of the legislative process.
If members don’t come to Washington, if they don’t get to know each other, if they don’t talk through legislation, if they don’t get smarter by being a collective group working on things, and they just sit around randomly back home voting by proxy, the whole legislative process breaks down. Which is fine if you’re Speaker Pelosi and you wanna run a dictatorship, because all you want is the votes in your pocket. You get to vote the way you want to, which is apparently what he’s been doing.
You have to remember, Nancy Pelosi encourages the vote-by-proxy rules because it allows her to solidify her power and influence. Legislators like Kahele gladly hand over their vote so they don’t have to go to Washington and do the job. It’s another example of the corrosive impact of Pelosi’s strong-arm leadership tactics, and yet another reason why Republicans must regain control of Congress in the November midterms. The country deserves better leadership.
