• U.S. Congressman (D – Hawaii)
• Member of the radical Progressive Caucus
• Member of the House Armed Services Committee

Neil Abercrombie is a Democratic Member of Congress who represents the First District of Hawaii, downtown Honolulu and Pearl Harbor. He is a member of the radical Progressive Caucus in the House of Representatives.

Abercrombie was born in 1938 in Buffalo, New York. He earned his undergraduate degree in 1959 at Union College in upstate New York and thereafter became a schoolteacher. A self-described “hippie” who wore his hair in a pony tail, he later moved to Hawaii and at the University of Hawaii earned a Master's degree in 1964 and a Ph.D. in sociology ten years later.

In 1974 Abercrombie was elected to the Hawaiian legislature, and four years later he won a state Senate seat. In 1986 he was victorious in a special election for Congress, but he served only three and a half months. He was then defeated in the Democratic primary for the full term by Democrat Mufi Hanneman, who went on to lose the general election to Republican Pat Saiki. When Saiki quit her office to run for U.S. Senate in 1990, Abercrombie won a three-candidate Democratic primary for this congressional seat and handily won the general election.

In 2000 Abercrombie was the House sponsor of a bill to recognize Native Hawaiians as indigenous people with a right to self-determination. The bill was approved by the Senate Indian Affairs Committee but died in the Senate.

An anti-war protester during the Vietnam War, Congressman Abercrombie now sits as one of the more senior Democrats on the House Armed Services Committee and as a member of its Military Installations Subcommittee and its Projection Forces, Readiness, Tactical Air & Land Forces Subcommittee. 

According to the Almanac of American Politics 2004, Abercrombie "sees no contradiction between his protests … and votes for military spending in Hawaii and elsewhere." "I see my work on Armed Services as a fulfillment of my principles and the motivating force of my life," says the Congressman. "I never opposed the military. … It's not about pro-war or anti-war, but how do you keep the peace."

But as an analysis of the pre-9/11 votes of leftwing members of Congress published in 2004 revealed, Abercrombie was one of three key Democrats in powerful Armed Services Committee or Subcommittee positions who between 1993 and 1999 "voted for every fund-cutting amendment [for the military] that was offered during their tenures."

In June 2004, as ranking Democrat on the key subcommittee with jurisdiction over U.S. military land forces, Abercrombie told the Department of Defense that "by no means, under any circumstances should a round [from Israel] be utilized" in Iraq or Afghanistan -- though in December 2003 Israel Military Industries Ltd. had won a $70 million U.S. Army contract to manufacture small-caliber ammunition for American forces. Abercrombie’s nominal reason for banning Israeli-made ammunition from these theatres was that its use could become a propaganda weapon for Islamists.

It is decisions like these that feed the Palestinian propaganda machine and demean Israel," said Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America. "It makes it seem like there's a difference between terrorism against Israelis and terrorism against anyone else. And that is simply unacceptable."

Abercrombie is on record as a supporter of American Muslims for Jerusalem and the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.

Abercrombie has seniority not only on the House Armed Services Committee but also on the House Resources Committee and on its Fisheries Conservation, Wildlife & Oceans Subcommittee. 

Among Abercrombie's biggest campaign contributors are labor unions, above all the International Longshore and Warehouse Union that in its distant Marxist-dominated past once threatened to hold Hawaii hostage by shutting down all its shipping. In 2003-2004, organized labor provided $213,100 (nearly 65 percent) of Abercrombie's Political Action Committee (PAC) contributions. One big-union donor was the Association of Trial Lawyers of America. The Abercrombie campaign was also heavily funded by University of Hawaii professors and staff, who supplied more than one percent of Abercrombie's donations.

In the 2006 election cycle, Abercrombie’s campaign raised $1,074,345, some 52 percent of which derived from PACs. Of the PAC contributions, $249,693 came from businesses, and $276,770 from labor unions. Over the course of his political career from 1989-2006, Abercrombie received $6,853,048 in political contributions, 53 percent of which were from PACs. Of those PAC funds, $1,194,440 were from businesses and $2,234,115 from labor unions. 

To view some highlights of Abercrombie’s legislative voting record on major issues, click here.  

For a more comprehensive overview of his voting record, click here.