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U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is a young and increasingly polished politician, and has been eagerly sought for interviews at times by national media outlets such as Fox News and CNN. But is she ready to run for president? Read more

U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard is a young and increasingly polished politician, and has been eagerly sought for interviews at times by national media outlets such as Fox News and CNN.

She is outspoken and can be a powerful presence when she takes the stage to address a crowded hall, as she did at the state Democratic Party convention at the Hilton Waikoloa on the Big Island this spring. She is an Army National Guard officer and war veteran who isn’t afraid to take dramatic political risks.

But is she ready to run for president?

In the words of one longtime Hawaii political observer, Gabbard has been leaving a “trail of breadcrumbs” that suggests she is laying the groundwork to seek higher office, and at least some of her supporters hope that will be the presidency in 2020.

Gabbard’s fans have created a website called “Run Tulsi Run” and a Facebook page called “The People for Tulsi Gabbard” to promote that idea, although a spokeswoman for Gabbard said in a written statement that she and her campaign are not involved in any of the social media efforts to promote her as a presidential candidate.

However, the Washington, D.C.-based literary agency Javelin announced that Gabbard is now one of its authors. The agency has also represented the likes of Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who ran for president in 2016, and Democratic political strategist Donna Brazile.

Ambitious political figures often use a memoir to help tell their stories — for example, former President Barack Obama published “Dreams from My Father” near the outset of his political career in 1995 — but experts said Gabbard has a huge hill to climb if she does intend to run for president in two years.

“It’s not an uphill climb. This would be like climbing the Himalayas without using oxygen or something,” said R. Michael Alvarez, professor of political science at the California Institute of Technology. However, “it’s not impossible. I mean, in politics today you never want to use the word ‘impossible’ any longer about long-shot candidates.”

SMALL-TOWN CANDIDATE

A big part of the problem is that Gabbard is from tiny Hawaii. While the Aloha State is exotic and interesting to many on the mainland, the Democratic candidates on the short list as 2020 approaches tend to come from states with lots of Democratic voters, such as Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey or Sen. Kamala Harris of California.

Those candidates get enormous amounts of media exposure and also have access to vast amounts of campaign money, Alvarez said. In some cases they have spent many years building national networks of supporters and contributors.

Still, Gabbard has captured the attention of some in the national media who are eyeing the Democratic presidential primary field for 2020.

She has appeared in lists of women who should consider running for president in both the Washington Post and The New Yorker magazine, and was also the focus of a long New Yorker profile late last year that drilled down into her upbringing and religious background as well as her political history.

WIDE-RANGING RESUME

Gabbard, 37, served in the state House from 2002 to 2004, and served twice in the Middle East with the Army National Guard. She was elected to the Honolulu City Council in 2010, and in 2012 won her current seat in the U.S. House representing rural Oahu and the neighbor islands. She is the first Hindu elected to the Congress.

Many in the left wing of the Democratic Party warmed to Gabbard when she resigned as vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee to endorse Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders during the 2016 Democratic primary.

Gabbard said at the time she felt compelled to endorse Sanders because she believed he would keep U.S. troops out of “interventionist regime change wars” in places like Iraq, Libya and Syria.

Todd Belt, political professor at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, said candidates for high national office generally don’t win on their first attempt.

“Sometimes they catch fire when they’re seeking national office. Other times, the first go-round is just your first attempt at building a volunteer base, building the connections and building a contributor base and raising your profile on the national stage,” he said.

“I think everyone is taken seriously now,” Belt said. “This far out, you can’t overlook anybody, and you can’t dismiss anybody. Even a long-term senator like Bernie Sanders was still polling in the very, very low recognition polls early on, and he almost won the nomination, so anything can happen.”

LIGHT ON THE ‘BAGGAGE’

On the positive side of the ledger, it helps a presidential candidate to enter the race without “too much baggage,” Belt said. Hillary Clinton’s long years of public service meant that “she had ample time to make plenty of enemies,” he said.

“Tulsi really hasn’t been on the national stage that long and so there’s quite a lot of people who don’t know her, and this gives the opportunity to introduce herself in the way that she wants to,” Belt said. “She’s not really competing against the preconceived notions that people already have of her. She’s a real blank slate.”

Gabbard declined to be interviewed for this article.

According to a statement from her campaign, she is “focused on her re-election campaign and serving the people of Hawaii as their representative in Congress, as well as helping to elect House and Senate candidates across the country who are committed to working for peace, universal healthcare, our veterans, protecting our environment, and breaking up ‘too big to fail’ banks on Wall Street.”

One challenge for Gabbard will be to understand and speak to concerns of voters in very different environments all across the country, Belt said. “The concerns of people in the Democratic Party in, say, Iowa might be very very different from what she’s used to speaking to in Hawaii.”

Alvarez said the presidential candidates will need to travel extensively to early primary states in the months ahead, which suggests it will soon become obvious whether Gabbard is serious.

“It’s not just setting up a website and hiring a polling firm and getting some strategists in place,” Alvarez said of the campaign. “It’s building out those grassroots networks in those early states. It’s really at this point in time getting into those states personally, and meeting these voters in Iowa and New Hampshire, and getting on the ground and really shaking the hands and kissing the babies and going to the diners.”

That will be critical in the next couple of months because “by this time next year, we’re going to be in the thick of it in those states,” he said.