Gov. Josh Green is giving a good example of how to pick your political battles.
Even in a one-party state like Hawaii, support for contentious issues gets tricky.
Republicans in recent years have made vaccinations a point of argument.
The question is not just which side you want to be on, but first whether you even want to put on the boxing gloves and step into the ring.
Yes, whether or not to get in line for a vaccination comes down to politics these days.
A New York Times survey of political opinion polls in 2021 showed that Republicans have been far less likely than Democrats to say they plan to get vaccinations. Polls by Monmouth University and Quinnipiac University indicated that nearly half of Republicans did not plan to get vaccinations. Only around 1 in 20 Democrats said the same.
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For Green, his medical concerns override any caution about making health care and politics the same battleground.
Last week Hawaii’s governor flew to Washington, D.C., holding 10 meetings and appearances to endorse vaccinations and to blast Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as the nation’s secretary of Health and Human Services.
Green and Kennedy have history on this issue — and Democrat Green is able to cite his own medical qualifications as a practicing medical doctor.
Green reminded folks that in 2019, as then-lieutenant governor, he was a leader in an effort to speed up vaccinations in Samoa. As Green described it in a news release, he joined an international effort to combat a devastating measles epidemic in Samoa, saying he worked on the front lines to vaccinate thousands of residents, helping to curb the outbreak.
According to reports at the time, just 31% of Samoans were vaccinated against measles at the time of the outbreak, with Kennedy calling the outbreak “mild” and suggesting that deaths increased after the introduction of an Indian-manufact- ured vaccine.
In an opinion piece in last week’s New York Times, Green wrote that “Thousands of preventable cases of measles sprang up, leading to the deaths of 83 people, mostly children.”
At the same time, Green points to Kennedy as a leader in the movement to halt vaccinations. Kennedy was a figure opposing Green’s support.
“Mr. Kennedy continues to spread misinformation about vaccines. In a podcast … he claimed that ‘there’s no vaccine that is safe and effective.’ This is false. Such talk is reckless and dangerous. I saw this in Samoa,” Green said in his commentary piece.
The political edge to this is that, according to the Times report, “both willingness to receive a vaccine and actual vaccination rates … were lower, on average … where a majority of residents voted to reelect former President Donald J. Trump in 2020.”
Green went on to disprove the claims that public health vaccinations are either useless or harmful and to argue that, “Vaccination programs are one of the greatest public health achievements in human history. Vaccines have saved more than 150 million lives over the past 50 years.”
When Green goes to battle, however, he knows that Kennedy has the backing of those who both support Trump and oppose vaccinations. This is another example of the need to keep the doctor’s office and the voting booth separate.
Richard Borreca writes On Politics on Sundays. Reach him at 808onpolitics@gmail.com.