Harris discusses 'lots of hurdles' in Q&A

Advertiser Staff

Here are excerpts from an interview with Jeremy Harris about the investigation into his campaign money raising efforts:

Honolulu Mayor Jeremy Harris says "one of the things that is most painful" is the mark that allegations of campaign finance mismanagement is leaving on the reputations of three of his campaign officials. Bruce Asato • The Honolulu Advertiser

A. I'll be honest with you. Ramona and I sat down. I've been living in a bullet-proof vest for a couple months now. And she's been anguishing about that. Then all of this smear comes out. And we sat down and asked ourselves, you know, is it worth it? I mean, these folks are out to get us. Is it worth it? We thought long and hard on it and we met with our minister. And we just decided, 'Yes, we're going to do everything we can to stick it out and to run the race and to fight this and we're going to go.'

She's with me 100 percent. She's living through hell. People never understand or appreciate what it's like for the families. It's hideous for the families. The physical fear and just having to deal with all the attacks and everything. I'm just so proud of her. She's got a lot of moxie. When you're the politician, you sort of understand you're signing on for a tough road, you're signing on for lots of slings and arrows. And even though everybody thinks you've got a hide like a rhinoceros, every one hurts and hurts a lot. But the most painful thing is seeing it hurt the people that you love around you. When your wife is hurting as a result of it, or your best friends.

Q. You think it's the right thing to do?

A. Yes, I think it's the right thing to do. We're going to fight it out. We're just hoping that (city prosecutor) Peter Carlisle will be able to quickly get it done, get it investigated and then we'll be able to get back on track and raise the funds. And we're hoping to get the interpretation changed so that people who contributed to my mayor's race will be able to contribute to the governor's race. We've got lots of hurdles to overcome now.

Q. How involved are you in campaign fund-raising?

A. Almost not at all. They basically come to me with campaign spending reports the day it's due and have me sign it. Basically, what I've done is I've put an attorney in charge of fund-raising, Peter Char, and I've put a certified public accountant, Roger Liu, in charge of campaign spending reports and compliance, and I think I've got two of the best people on the island, and I think I've got two of the most honorable people on the island, and coupled with Lex Brodie, I think they are absolutely without a doubt men of unquestioned integrity. I have to tell you I think one of the toughest things about this whole event, one of the things that is most painful, is that these folks are involved, they're not paid staff.

These are folks who've just gotten involved because they believe in me, they believe in what we want to do for the state, what we do for the city, and now they've got reputations they've spent their whole life making a mark in this community, and now their names have been smeared, and there's no way to erase that. When Peter Carlisle finally comes out and says, these fellows didn't do anything wrong, they didn't break any laws, that's not going to remove the fact that their names have been plastered all over the media for months and all these allegations have been made against them. And that's heartbreaking, that's heartbreaking.

Q. There were some documented cases of people illegally giving money to your campaign by making donations in the names of people who didn't contribute, the Maple Garden case, for example. What actions did you take to ensure that contributions were all legitimate when you found out these allegations were being made?

A. Let me be clear: So far, we haven't been presented with any evidence that anybody associated with the campaign did anything wrong or violated any law. No one has showed us one thing that shows us that any of our people have done anything wrong, that Peter Char's done anything wrong or Lex or Roger Liu. We don't have any evidence that there's been any wrongdoing from our campaign officials.

Q. I understand that, but these people apparently gave more than they were supposed to, or didn't contribute but their names were listed. Whether or not someone in your campaign knew about that, that's what has come out. So once you found out about that, what do you do?

A. I leave it to Peter Char, basically, because he runs the operation. But anytime it's brought to his attention that someone has over-contributed, he instructs the accountants to reimburse the money. That's just standard, and it happens all the time, it happens all the time. Someone will send in and they'll go back and find out ... they're $500 over, in fact in most of these instances have been somebody was $500 over or somebody contributed $125 too much and didn't realize it till the end, so he immediately makes it right and sends a check back.

Q. At any point do you sit down with campaign staff to review contributions and practices to see if there were any patterns that people were donating illegally?

A. The whole campaign spending law is designed for the contributor. The law says the contributor is limited in how much he can contribute. It's against the law for the contributor to contribute too much. That's the reason they wrote the law that way, because there's no way for the campaign to know that you are somebody else's auntie and that somebody gave you a reimbursement for funds that you contributed. There's no way for Peter Char to know that, there's no way for Roger Liu to know that, and that's why they wrote the law that way, because they realized there's no way for the campaign to know it, and that's why they put the burden on the contributor, and the responsibility for the campaign is that once the Campaign Spending Commission, through its reporting, determines that there's been an over-contribution, or once it's been detected because of the software that the campaign commission has, that there's been an over-contribution, that it's returned ...

Q. At any point did you sit down with campaign staff to review contributions and practices to determine if there were any patterns suggesting people or groups were donating illegally?

A. The answer is, the absolute standard was we will not accept any illegal contributions, we're going to follow the campaign spending law to the 'T'; and Peter Char's practice, and we went over and over it again, is anytime there was any campaign contribution that he found suspect, he would return it, and he was always adamant about that ... That's the standard of the campaign. At the beginning of every campaign, I stand up and tell all of the volunteers we run a clean campaign, that my reputation is more important to me than winning, that the only thing I'm going to have at the end of my career, I'm not going to have wealth, I'm only going to have my integrity, and I intend to leave public office with my integrity intact, and so their actions reflect on me.

Q. Do you think you bear responsibility for ensuring the integrity of your campaign contributions?

A. I bear responsibility for making sure that I follow the law and that I make it clear to my campaign officers that they follow the law, and that I won't put up with any violations, and that anybody who breaks the law will have nothing more to do with my campaign. But I will say again there hasn't been any indication, there hadn't been one bit of evidence that any of my people have done anything wrong, and I think it's unfair for there to be an underlying assumption that these three gentlemen have done something wrong and are responsible for errors, or are responsible for illegal acts when nobody has shown anything that they've done wrong ...

Q. Why do you think these allegations are coming out now?

A. They are coming out now to affect the governor's race, and that's wrong. That's wrong. For instance, the allegations about not having the employer and employer's address, some of those were reports from 1996. Mr. Watada has had them since 1996, and they only make the front page, and I only get hit with fines 10 months before the gubernatorial election at the end of 2001 and beginning of 2002. Virtually every action is designed to hurt my credibility and hurt my campaign. It's discriminatory prosecution. Obviously, every other candidate is in exactly the same situation that I am, and yet only one is being dragged through the mud.

Q. What steps did you take to ensure at every level of your campaign that people — especially those who do business with the city — never felt pressured to contribute?

A. The people that have control over issuing contracts have absolutely nothing to do with the fund-raising. The guys who are out raising money don't have any control at all over the contracts that the city issues. We keep those completely separate so there is no relationship between somebody getting a contract and somebody making a contribution. And that's been my absolute policy.