In another sign that Democrats are taking seriously the Hawaii special election on May 22, but also showing how difficult the winner-take-all primary rules have made it for them, Organizing for America has begun to recruit volunteers to work on the race from its vast pool of California organizers. However, their message is a generic “vote for the Democrat” rather than specifically Ed Case or Colleen Hanabusa, making for a muddled message.

In a letter to California volunteers, OFA says they need help phonebanking into the HI-01 district for the all-mail election. They explain why they need volunteers to work on such a safe Democratic district:

However, two Democrats are running against one Republican, the Democratic vote is split, and the candidates are neck and neck. We need to help increase Democratic turnout as much as possible across the board to ensure one of the Democrats wins.

The election is on May 22, 2010, and is by mail-in-ballot only, so we will be calling voters to raise awareness of the election, emphasize how critical it is that they vote, and make sure they send in their ballots by the deadline.

There are a few troublesome things about this. First of all, while there are two major Democratic candidates and one major Republican, the race features multiple other candidates from both parties, and so pushing to “the Democrats” may not have the intended effect. In addition, a nonspecific ask like “vote for a Democrat” just seems like an ineffective message.

However, this is just a broad sketch of what OFA is doing in the HI-01 race, so maybe it gets more refined. The call link for the special election is here, but the call script is not yet available.

While OFA probably has a decent list of high-propensity voters in the district, it is notable that they are not pushing either Democrat specifically. The rumors that the DCCC has jumped into the race for ConservaDem Ed Case behind the scenes over Colleen Hanabusa has angered the Democratic political establishment and labor unions in Hawaii. This puts OFA in the unenviable position of pushing voting for a nonspecific candidate. We’ll see how effective this is in defeating the major Republican in the race, Honolulu City Councilman Charles Djou.