Republican Bob McDermott said yesterday he was withdrawing from the special election to fill the last five weeks of the late Patsy Mink 's congressional term so that her husband could take the seat instead.

"If anyone has earned the right to fill out her term, it 's John Mink," McDermott said yesterday afternoon.

Yesterday, McDermott had said he would run in the special Nov. 30 election, but he decided last night that "common decency" compelled him to step aside in favor of John Mink.

"I slept on it overnight and talked to my wife and we just decided it was the right thing to do," said McDermott, who remains on the Nov. 5 general election ballot against Mink, who died Sept. 28, too late to have her name removed from the ballot.

If Mink is elected posthumously in the general election, another special election would be held Jan. 4 to determine the congressional representative from Hawai‘i 's 2nd Congressional district.

John Mink has said he would not run in that election. McDermott said he would be a candidate in that race.

Under state law, candidates in the Nov. 30 special election had until 4:30 p.m. today to withdraw.

Yesterday, McDermott said that the last-minute entry of John Mink into the special election was an orchestrated and calculated move by Democratic Party officials to create a sympathy vote for their party.

The 40 candidates will be competing for the right to serve five weeks in Washington at a time when Congress is likely to have finished most of its work for the year.