COMMENTARY
Playing the political game in paradise

By Bob Dye
Kailua-based writer and historian

Campaigning practices, in brief

Hawai'i political candidates often save the aggressive attacking of their opponents for the general election, but that's not always the case.

Some Republicans

Linda Lingle is focusing on her likely opponent in the general election: Jeremy Harris.

John Carroll was dismissed by Lingle as a competitor.

Frank Fasi continues to bash Harris.

Some Democrats

Jeremy Harris probably will face negative comments about his record from his opponents.

D.G. "Andy" Anderson is developing position papers.

Ed Case is targeting his opponents early on.

In the general election, they run hard against a candidate from an opposing party, and it is then campaigning gets down and dirty.

So it's neither unusual nor impolite that in the race for the Republican nomination for governor Linda Lingle is benignly indifferent to her competitor, John Carroll. Instead, she is aggressively attacking her likely opponent in the general, Democrat Jeremy Harris.

The warm glow of the GOP state convention barely cooled before Lingle publicly questioned the ethics of Harris for announcing so early his run for governor.

Fewer than 100 days into his mayoral term! The point she makes, of course, is that she's the one, not Carroll, who can beat Harris in the general. She is showing voters she is up to doing that job if they'll elect her.

Republican Frank Fasi is also campaigning against Harris. Fasi, however, is running in the nonpartisan, special mayoral election, if it happens. "Mayor Harris has spent Honolulu into its worst fiscal condition ever, worse than that of any county or state administration in our history," he says.

The other four mayoral candidates, all Democrats, are skittish about attacking Harris. But as the date of the special election nears, Harris can anticipate they will run against parts of his record as well. To deflect the barbs until he resigns as mayor by July 23, Harris, no doubt, will push city managing director Ben Lee to the forefront of the raging budget debate. Lee becomes acting mayor if and when Harris leaves municipal office, so it will be on the head of a noncandidate that the abuse will fall.

Of the major candidates, Harris, too, is ignoring his challengers for the nomination — D.G. "Andy" Anderson and Ed Case. So far, he has been campaigning against folks who are not running for governor — bureaucrat Bob Watada, city council Budget Committee chairwoman Ann Kobayashi, former Judge Russell Blair and those unnamed conspirators who put "speed bumps" in his path.

His political point is difficult to fathom, unless it's a bid for sympathy.

Candidate Anderson says, "I'm campaigning as if there's nobody else there." He is working with special-interest groups to develop position papers. A paper on the Felix consent decree is ready for release this coming week.

Only Democrat Ed Case is going after real opponents in the gubernatorial primary. He suggests Harris is ethically challenged and that Anderson is nothing more than a political anachronism who switched parties.

Since no minor party has posed a serious threat in a statewide race, nor has anybody facing challenges in the primary, their candidates go unnoticed.

Will other major candidates eventually follow Case's lead? Will Lingle ever recognize that Carroll's candidacy is substantive? Will Fasi ever campaign against politically talented opponents Duke Bainum, Mufi Hannemann, Mazie Hirono and Keith Kaneshiro? Will Harris ever take seriously the challenges from Anderson and Case?

Probably not, unless a poll shows a primary race getting too close for comfort.

Ignoring a political opponent can be dangerous. Remember Eileen Anderson, the career bureaucrat in sensible walking shoes? Incumbent Mayor Frank Fasi ignored her challenge in the 1980 Democratic mayoral primary and she beat him.

Harris, who voluntarily halted his gubernatorial campaign while the state supreme court pondered what makes a candidate a candidate, is back campaigning. His troops are rested, his top aides eager to rejoin the fray.

The next big event for the Harris campaign will be the Democratic state convention at the end of the month in Waikiki. Case will be there as an elected official, and Anderson will attend as a working delegate and member of the platform committee on the economy.

Of course, Harris wants to overwhelm the Democratic convention, as did Lingle her GOP convention last week.

Harris and Lingle, the two front-runners in their respective primaries, are alike in many ways. In relevant work experience, each of them was a county council member and a mayor. They are disciplined campaigners, articulate speakers and lip-wise responders. Lingle is more charismatic, but neither of them is in the class of a Kennedy. Both are childless and career-driven.

So how can voters choose between them, if it comes to that? Negative campaigning will try to show them the way.

For campaigners to talk stink about an opponent is more effective than tooting their own candidate's horn, advise political experts. That's unfortunate but true, and it has become politically de rigueur on the mainland. With Mainland consultants already involved in Hawai'i campaigns, let's hope they don't spread noxious weeds in what was once a political Eden, or seemed so by comparison with the rest of America.

Only our major candidates for statewide office can keep the 2002 election from becoming one of the most aggressively negative in our short political history. Pray that they will!