Plain talk from a sistah would set Rene Mansho straight

By Lee Cataluna
Advertiser Staff Writer

I'm sure every campus has one. Or two. Back at good old Baldwin High, there were several, and their names all ended in "ei": Minei, Rhondalei, and the baddest of them all, Zalei. (I think one wasn't a student but actually worked for campus security.)

These were the girls who set you straight. They were the ones who kept you in line. The word "tita" might apply, but their power was more nuanced than that. They'd scare you into submission with a flick of their two-inch fingernails, withering stares from ink-lined eyes or a well-chosen word that cut you at the knees.

All Zalei needed to say was, "Eh, what you did to your hair?" and your ninety-dollar spiral perm would wilt on the spot.

Zalei kept the smart girls from acting too smarty-pants, kept the pretty girls from flaunting their looks to full potential, and kept the cheerleaders from being too cheerful lest they think they own the school or something.

Zalei took the tantaran out of everyone.

Zalei never met Rene Mansho.

Or more correctly, Rene Mansho never met Zalei.

Gotta' be, or else Rene Mansho wouldn't be so amazingly tantaran.

Mansho's behavior both on the City Council and in public has long been described as "colorful." The mu'u mu'us, the electric car, the parking next to a fire hydrant, all that can be tossed under that heading. Even the thing about wanting "ALOHA!" to be the official City telephone greeting was sort of sweet and eccentric. But the happy, bubbly Carole-Kai-Wannabe schtick can't gloss over the mishandling of campaign funds or misuse of city workers. Anything that results in $80,000 in fines and restitution ordered by the State Campaign Spending Committee and the City Ethics Committee is more than a "whoops!"

What Mansho did, in the grand scale of things, wasn't malevolent or even horribly damaging. However, her behavior and the choices she made by sliding campaign money and city checks around seem careless at best and wantonly arrogant at worst. How can someone be in office as long as she has and still not know what you can and can't do with campaign money? Don't they give you a brochure when you first take out papers to run? How could she not know an elected official can't have city staff do campaign work on city time? She must have known. Someone must have mentioned it to her once or twice by the water cooler or out in the parking lot. Someone on her staff must have held up a hand and said, "Uh, try wait, yeah?" But she figured she's Rene. It's different for her. She can let stuff slide.

Should she be removed from office? Jeremy Harris seems to think it would be disruptive for her to leave before her term is up, a terribly cheeky thing for Mister I'm-the-Mayor-but-I-Like-be-Gov to say. Mansho has done good things for her district, and ultimately her fate lies with her constituents, especially since her conscience doesn't seem to have caught up with her yet.

But maybe Zalei, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, can catch Rene by the bathrooms and talk some straight into her, take her down a notch or two, let her know she shouldn't be so tantaran.

Lee Cataluna's column appears Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. Her e-mail address is lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.