Editorial
'Resign to run' law should be cleared up

"Any elected public officer shall resign from that office before being eligible as a candidate for another public office, if the term of the office sought begins before the end of the term of the office held."

— Hawai'i State Constitution

Do those words mean Honolulu Mayor Jeremy Harris should resign today since he has said he is a candidate for governor in 2002?

Former state lawmaker and judge Russell Blair believes they do.

The mayor thinks they do not.

And the attorney general's office — which often is called on to give advice on the meaning of laws and the like — says it really has never said what those words mean.

Someone should. And the sooner the better. Because this ambiguity, as entertaining as it might be to political junkies, casts a shadow over the political process in Hawai'i.

It might be possible to take this matter to the courts, where the Hawai'i Supreme Court would eventually make the call. But a quicker route might be to produce an advisory opinion from the attorney general that would be the controlling authority.

Barring that, the Legislature should adopt effectuating language that makes it crystal clear when the resign-to-run provision kicks in.

Harris says he will resign the day he files his papers as a candidate for governor. That's certainly clear enough. There can be no doubt that once a person files papers, he is a candidate.

Although he has not filed papers, Harris has said he is a candidate. He has been raising money as a candidate and is being treated as a gubernatorial candidate by the Campaign Spending Commission.

But he is correct in noting that the provision has been applied narrowly in the past, forcing people to resign only at the last moment when they file papers for office.

The irony of this provision is that it is generally accepted that its original target was Frank Fasi, Harris' predecessor as mayor and a frequent candidate for governor. Fasi had run twice for governor from the security of a mid-term mayoral seat before the Constitution was changed.

The next time he ran for governor as a sitting mayor, he had to resign.

But it was never clarified whether the provision should apply to a sitting incumbent who walks and talks like a candidate but has not officially filed.

This matter should be cleared up. It may be that the only concrete way to resolve things is to state explicitly that the resignation requirement is triggered only by a formal filing. If that's the case, say so.

However, Blair makes a fairly convincing argument that the intent of the provision was to get people out of office as soon as their political attention had shifted seriously elsewhere.

It may be unfair to change interpretations on Harris midway through the current campaign, if he was sincerely relying on past practice. But this is an ambiguity that must not be allowed to linger.