Sen. Mazie Hirono on Monday declined to say whether she would endorse fellow Hawaii Democrat Rep. Tulsi Gabbard’s bid to become president.
“I’m going to be looking for someone who has a long record of supporting progressive goals and ideals,” Hirono said during an interview on MSNBC. “I wish everyone well, but for myself in these times of what I would call not normal times, I want someone who very much has been on the page in terms of supporting equal opportunity, choice, all of the kinds of issues that I have been fighting for for decades.”
“It sounds like you don’t think Tulsi Gabbard has done that,” MSNBC host Kasie Hunt pressed.
“I wish her well though, as I do all of the other candidates,” Hirono replied.
Gabbard told CNN last Friday that she had “decided to run,” and she said a formal announcement would be made “within the next week.”
Gabbard, the first American-Samoan and Hindu member of Congress, is an Iraq War veteran who raised eyebrows in 2017 by meeting Syrian President Bashar Assad. She was previously the Democratic National Committee’s vice chairwoman, but she resigned in 2016 amid tensions with then-DNC chairwoman Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla. Gabbard later endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., for the party’s presidential nomination over eventual winner Hillary Clinton.
Hirono and Gabbard exchanged barbs last week after Gabbard wrote a stinging opinion piece in the Hill called, “Elected leaders who weaponize religion are playing a dangerous game.” Though the four-term House lawmaker didn’t mention Hirono by name, she referenced the senator’s questioning of Brian Buescher, President Trump’s judicial pick for the U.S. District Court for Nebraska, over his Catholic beliefs.
