She just appeared on the scene and got largely voted in because she's got a lot of Samoan ancestry. Hawaiians always try to vote their own in where they can. She sort of started small and local and just became more and more well known. She went from local politics to state politics to now being a presidential candidate. I don't think she's really running for president ... I think she's just there to destroy the campaigns of a couple of other candidates ... which I wholeheartedly support.
She may end up getting voted out here in Hawaii. She's made a couple of statements which really ticked off the local population. The Hawaiian sovereignty movement is big here and she made a statement which they've been using against her in running opposition candidates. She said that if Hawaiians want to be free of the United States government they should start by not cashing the welfare checks. That didn't go over very well in the poverty stricken areas of Hawaii, which is where most of the Hawaiians live.
A lot of the older Hawaiians approved of that message, but the younger generation didn't and since they're calling for MORE Federal money as reparations ... it has become a problem for her. True or not.
She's a minority from a minority WAY smaller than Kamala Harris, a woman, and very young. But she doesn't support the entire Democratic platform, only some of it. And some of her platform looks like something Ronald Reagan would have said.
She's a moderate Democrat, more a liberal than a progressive. And she's very transparent. She went on the Joe Rogan show and talked about her ideas for three solid hours (now Bernie has done that too). I think she's wrong about a lot of her ideas, but I think she's coming from an honest position on them. She's literally the only candidate I've seen in the race, on either side, who genuinely wants to help her constituents more than to be elected to office.