Following are a few observations on the morning after the election:

• I want to thank all the people of Hawaii—people of every race, ethnicity, religion, and political party. Carol, our daughters Tulsi Gabbard Tamayo and Davan, and I will always remember and cherish the outpouring of aloha we experienced on every island, as we went door-to-door and business-to-business.
  
  
• We would have won this election if we had two more weeks. We had the momentum, our numbers were going up dramatically every week, but we just ran out of time. We got approximately 40% of the votes cast on Election Day, whereas we got only about 30% of the absentee ballots that were cast between the 18th and the 28th. Due to financial constraints, we were not able to afford a significant media campaign until the last seven days. If we had had the resources, we would not have needed to wait until the last week to advertise heavily, and I believe we would have closed the gap. We would have peaked sooner instead of running out of time like we did.
  
  
• Polls showed that I was getting only 8% of the vote when this campaign began ten months ago. Three months ago I was getting only 20%. In the past 3 months I picked up 15-20 points. Two weeks ago I was at 30%. Ten days later, on Election Day I was at 40%. If we just had two more weeks, we could have pulled this off. I believe we would have won if we had more time.
  
  
• Despite what some people in the media believe, only 40% of the people in the second congressional district knew the name Mike Gabbard when I began this race. Now my name ID in the second congressional district is 95%. This in itself is a big achievement and the majority of our effort went into creating just that basic name ID. The problem is, I didn’t have the time or the funds to be able to introduce myself more completely to the people.
  
  
• I didn’t have enough money to wage the kind of campaign I knew I needed to wage to win. I knew I needed at least $800,000 to do three direct mail pieces and the TV and radio necessary. But I ended up only having half that amount of money, so I was not able to get my message out in the way needed in order to succeed.
  
  
• If someone were to ask me what’s the single main reason you didn’t win this election, I’d have to answer as follows: People vote for who they know better and I just did not have the time or the money to introduce myself to the second congressional district as thoroughly as I needed to. We went door-to-door as much as we could, but there just wasn’t enough time to meet everyone. A lot of people didn’t feel they knew me quite well enough to vote for me. It was especially hard for some people because my opponent had been waging a negative campaign of character assassination for months. The only way to overcome that kind of negative campaign is to spend more time with the people so they get to know you better and I just didn’t have the time to do that.