Richard Port, a former Democratic Party of Hawaii chairman and an influential activist within the party, announced this afternoon that he would not run again for Democratic National Committeeman.

Port said he wanted to announce early to give others the opportunity to campaign prior to the party’s state convention in May.

Port will remain a superdelegate to the Democratic National Convention in Denver in August, where he plans to support U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York for the party’s presidential nomination.

The party’s DNC man and woman — the Big Island’s Dolly Strazar — have coveted roles in the party’s hierarchy in addition to serving as superdelegates.

A band of conservative provacateurs unhappy with the Hawai’i GOP’s direction under Gov. Linda Lingle has found some new ammunition.

Eric Ryan, Garry Smith and a few of their allies have been toying with state GOP chairman Willes Lee over his refusal last weekend to remove a member of the party’s platform committee for donating money to local Democrats.

Smith was on it with a letter Monday in Hawaii Reporter, the conservative-to-libertarian Web site. Ryan, who is handy with a parody, sent out cartoons via e-mail that also appeared on the bombastic Zeroshibai.com.

By late Friday, conservative diva Michelle Malkin had jumped in on her blog, as did former state House staffer Doug White over at www.poinography.com.

So what went down?

Ryan, a member of the platform committee, wanted the party to dump H.K. Bruss Keppeler from the platform committee and the party because Keppeler donated to U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka’s re-election campaign in 2006 against state Rep. Cynthia Thielen, R-50th (Kailua, Käneçohe Bay).

The party’s rules state that a member could be removed for actively campaigning for a candidate from another party. Lee said he consulted with the party’s rules official and determined that Keppeler’s donations to Akaka did not constitute actively campaigning for the senator.

Lee told us on Friday afternoon that a donation is not the same as, for example, a public endorsement or a campaign commercial or working on a campaign. He said his decision does not mean, as Ryan and Smith have claimed, that he is encouraging Republicans to give money to Democrats.

“I’m always hesitant to just say somebody is lying, but it is certainly shading the truth,” Lee said. “Nobody asked the question if it was alright to give money to Democrats.”

Lee said he wished Ryan would use his communications and computer skills to help the GOP fight majority Democrats instead of tearing down the party’s leadership.

“Certainly as talented as Ryan appears to be with these pieces he builds, it would be nice — especially with our need to have the public hear more of our views — that he would participate with us instead of him supporting Democrats by trying to knock down Republicans,” Lee said. “But I haven’t quite got him to do that yet.”

We did some checking around after we talked with Lee and — uh, oh — it turns out Keppeler did publicly endorse Akaka, although it was during the senator’s primary against former congressman Ed Case.

Keppeler, a real-estate lawyer active in the Hawaiian community, was quoted in a press release from the Native Hawaiian Chamber of Commerce endorsing Akaka.

“The Native Hawaiian Chamber of Commerce board has worked closely with Senator Akaka for many years. We have the utmost confidence in his ability to support not only Native Hawaiian businesses but Hawaii businesses as well,” stated NHCC Governmental Affairs Chair, H.K. Bruss Keppeler. “In recognition of his significant contributions to Hawaii and Native Hawaiians, NHCC bestowed on Senator Akaka in 1991 our highest honor, the `O`o award,” he said.

Ryan believes Lee made the wrong call.

“He’s saying you might not be able to give time like stuffing envelopes or licking stamps for the opposition, but if you’re a Friend of Lingle and she likes your politics, you can keep giving thousands to Democrats and still help lead the GOP and even write its policies,” he said in an e-mail. “Pretzel logic, for sure. No wonder the party’s been in decline since Lingle became governess.”

White, at poinography.com, notes that the Democratic Party of Hawai’i also has a rule against actively supporting another party or another party’s candidates.

U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye, the state’s top Democrat, has famously broken that rule through his longtime friendship and support for U.S. Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska.

The state Senate passed a resolution today asking the state Department of Education to develop strategies for teaching English to students who speak pidgin.

The department opposed the resolution “due to its low priority and the increased costs associated with its implementation.” The department already has standards for teaching English to students who are learning how to speak the language.

From the resolution:

WHEREAS, Hawai‘i’s multicultural society has produced a unique indigenous language commonly known as “Hawai‘i Pidgin” or “Pidgin English” or just “Pidgin,” and among some linguists as Hawai‘i Creole English; and

WHEREAS, it is widely acknowledged by linguists that Hawai‘i Pidgin is a complete language system in itself and not “broken English”; and

WHEREAS, it is estimated by linguists that six hundred thousand Hawai‘i residents have Pidgin as their mother tongue, and an estimated one to two hundred thousand Hawai‘i residents use Pidgin more fluently than standard English; and

WHEREAS, it is widely acknowledged by linguists and second language studies experts that Hawai‘i residents being more fluent in Pidgin than standard English may be a major factor in the below average reading test scores among Hawai‘i public school students;

State Sen. Sam Slom, R-8th (Kähala, Hawai’i Kai), was the only senator to vote against the resolution.

“We better get our teaching strategies on English straight first,” Slom told his colleagues.

State Sen. Norman Sakamoto, D-15th (Waimalu, Airport, Salt Lake), the chairman of the Senate Education Committee, explained afterward that the resolution was not about promoting pidgin.

Sakamoto said some educators see pidgin as similar to a foreign language and believe that specific strategies are needed to help students who speak pidgin learn English.

“It’s not in any way to glorify pidgin, but to recognize that there is a different strategy to teaching students English,” he said.

Insiders who are wondering why smoking advocates David Kawika Crowley and Jolyn Tenn have not been patrolling the state Capitol over the past few weeks might be interested in a manifesto the colorful duo have released to the news media.

Entitled, “It’s The Ballot, Stupid!” Crowley and Tenn explain how they are done lobbying for a special smoking license so bars can avoid the statewide smoking ban and will now take their activism directly to the ballot box.

Judging from history, we’re guessing Crowley mostly wrote the six-page manifesto, which vows revenge on a hit list of lawmakers.

A sample:

They wanna’ play dirty? They want war? How about over 40,000 pissed off Hawai’i smokers SMOKING their sorry-asses OUT come November 8. (Our exploding constituency is expected to reach close to 60,000 by then).

They had their chances to fix this. We didn’t ask for much …just a small ADJUSTMENT. They blew it. And now it’s Payback Time.

The hit list?

*Senate Majority Leader Gary Hooser
*Sen. Rosayln Baker
*Sen. J. Kalani English
*Sen. David Ige
*Sen. Clarence Nishihara
*House Majority Leader Kirk Caldwell
*House Speaker Calvin Say

Crowley had sent a letter critical of Hooser that was published in the Garden Island, the Kaua’i senator’s hometown newspaper. The manifesto describes an encounter between Crowley and Hooser near the senator’s second-floor office after the letter appeared.

When I ran into him a few weeks back, he was pissed, turning red, all unhinged, at the sight of me walking past him into his office to drop-off one of our fliers. I passed him and with a low growl I stated, “Mr. Hooser.”

He didn’t say a word as he must have wanted to scream something at me. I swear I saw a set of horns popping out of his sorry head.

Asked about the exchange, Hooser laughed and agreed he probably did not greet Crowley with a smile and a hug. But the senator was diplomatic when told that he topped Crowley’s hit list.

“You know, you can make some of the people happy some of the time, but you can’t make all of the people happy all of the time,” he said.

State Sen. Clayton Hee, D-23rd (Käne’ohe, Kahuku), picked up an important endorsement today from Unite Here! Local 5, which represents about 12,000 hotel and healthcare workers.

Eric Gill, the union’s financial secretary-treasurer, said the union is backing Hee for re-election because of the senator’s “commitment to the working class values of our people and his unwavering support for maintaining the viability of the Turtle Bay Resort while preserving the open space on O’ahu’s North Shore has been clear from the very beginning.”

Reb Bellinger, a former state representative and vice president of Makai Ocean Engineering, has pulled papers for a potential primary challenge against Hee.