Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie |
Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie’s much-publicized effort to find and make public Barack Obama’s Hawaiian birth credentials left him with “egg on his face,” according to a radio personality who says he’s a good friend of the former congressman.
Radio personality Mike Evans said in an interview with 92 KQRS Morning Show in Minneapolis that the governor simply wasn’t able to find any of the documentation he was hunting.
Evans, a long-time Hawaii resident, explained that Abercrombie, whom Evans has known for decades, gave up his search for Obama’s nativity records because the governor was unable to find in Hawaii’s vital records Obama’s long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate.
Moreover, Evans predicted the birth certificate controversy is likely to be a major issue dogging Obama during his planned 2012 presidential re-election campaign.
On the basis of his conversation with Abercrombie, Evans told the radio audience that Abercrombie was forced to conclude that no long-form, hospital-generated birth certificate exists for Obama in Hawaii.
“Although Abercrombie is an Obama lover, he’s the first to say he’s concerned this is really going to be an issue during the re-election,” Evans said.
On air, Evans recounted a discussion he had with Abercrombie in which the governor made clear he had to abandon his search for Obama’s birth records because the records Abercrombie expected to find in the Hawaii Department of Health vault were not there.
“Abercrombie was probably more shocked than anybody,” Evans said, explaining that Abercrombie ended his search after he was unable to find any Hawaii official nativity documents for Obama that named a Hawaiian hospital where Obama was born or identified a Hawaiian physician who attended Obama’s birth.
“Neil promised me that when he became governor, he was going to cut through all the red tape, he was going to get Obama’s birth certificate once and for all and end this stupid controversy that he was not born in the United States,” Evans said.
“Yesterday, talking to Neil’s office, Neil says that he’s searched everywhere using his powers as governor at the Kapi’olani Women’s and Children’s Hospital and Queens Hospital, the only places where kids were born in Hawaii back when Barack was born,” Evans continued, “and there is no Barack Obama birth certificate in Hawaii – absolutely no proof at all that he was born in Hawaii.”
Evans went on to say that Abercrombie purposely conducted this search “to get rid of that question” [whether or not Obama was born in Hawaii], but now Abercrombie “has some egg on his face, I mean, now he [Abercrombie] admits publicly there is no birth certificate.”
The Evans interview with KQRS cast further doubt on whether Abercrombie had any personal knowledge of Barack Obama until long after Obama was an infant.
“I asked him [Abercrombie] when do you remember Barack, your first memory,” Evans recounted on air.
Abercrombie told Evans his first memories of Obama were when Obama was playing in a T-ball league, around 5 or 6 years old.
“I go, ‘What about before that?’ and he [Abercrombie] goes, ‘Well, I really don’t remember him [Obama] much before that,’ which I thought was very odd,” Evans said.
In an interview broadcast on C-SPAN that Evans conducted in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 21, 2009, the day after Obama’s inauguration, Abercrombie also stated that he first remembered seeing Barack Obama Jr. when Obama was old enough to walk around Hawaii as a child, together with his grandfather, Stanley Dunham.
Here is a key section of the C-SPAN interview transcribed:
EVANS: What was the first time you set eyes on Barack Obama?
ABERCROMBIE: Well that, of course, [laughs] was after he was born [laughs]. Barack Sr. had met his mom [Barack Obama Jr.’s mother, Ann Dunham], in a Russian class. She was just scarcely out of high school, really. And, they got married and, with statehood essentially, within a year or so of statehood, Barack Obama was born. Barack Hussein Obama was born.
EVANS: Do you remember him growing up?
ABERCROMBIE: No, I remember him as a little boy, with his grandfather. Because his mother and father separated. That story’s pretty well known. And, the father, Barack Sr., went on to the mainland to go to school, and then back to Kenya. And, his mom went on, married again. In the process, I would see “Little Barry,” as his grandfather called him, Little Barry and his grandfather mostly, all over. They walked everywhere. Stan Dunham, his grandfather, took him everywhere and they met everybody and knew everybody … I mean it’s Hawaii, right? It was easy. You want to be friendly, you want to see people and know people? You can do it. And he [Stanley Dunham] did and Little Barry went with him everywhere.
There is nothing in the C-SPAN interview that would suggest any specific memories Abercrombie has of seeing or being with Barack Obama Jr. as an infant.
Nor did Abercrombie seem aware that Ann Dunham had left Hawaii with her infant child within three weeks of the baby’s birth, to attend the University of Washington in Seattle, and that Ann Dunham did not return to Hawaii with Barack Obama Jr. until after Barack Obama Sr. left the islands to attend graduate school at Harvard, in June 1962.
In a interview published by the New York Times on Dec. 24, 2010, Abercrombie distinguished that he did not see Barack Obama Sr. and Ann Dunham at the hospital with their newborn son, but he remembered the couple bringing the baby to social events.
The New York Times did not press Abercrombie to describe any specific social events where he could remember seeing or being with Barack Obama Jr. in Hawaii with the parents.