Posted on: Friday, May 31, 2002

Democrats scramble to move into position

•	Mayor Harris withdraws from governor's race
•	Mayor's campaign troubled from start
•	Lingle says no change in strategy
•	Mayoral hopefuls left without a race
•	Hirono back in race for governor
•	Campaign investigation made 'bad publicity'
•	Reshaping Hawai'i's political landscape:
•	Major events in Jeremy Harris' effort to run for governor
•	Lee Cataluna: Democrats search for real leader
•	Interactive/Multimedia: Video of Harris announcement (courtesy of KHNL-News8) Do you think the mayor made the right decision? Take our survey. Join our discussion. • Submit a letter to the editor.

By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Capitol Bureau Chief

You can overcome a lack of organization with money, and you can overcome a lack of money with organization, but what happens when the candidate with the best organization and the most money quits?

When Honolulu Mayor Jeremy Harris withdrew from the race for governor yesterday, he took with him $1 million in campaign money, the best-developed Democratic campaign machine in the race and the most sophisticated fund-raising apparatus.

The relentlessly upbeat Democratic Party chairwoman Lorraine Akiba called yesterday's events "exciting." Others saw dangerous fractures within the party, disarray that could allow the Republicans to win the governor's office for the first time in 40 years.

The Democrats left standing at the close of the day were D.G. "Andy" Anderson, a longtime Republican who suddenly changed parties to run for governor; Ed Case, who may be best known for his bitter disagreements with the public worker unions that make up a critical part of the Democratic Party base; and Lt. Gov. Mazie Hirono, who jumped back into the governor's race yesterday after a five-month absence.

Akiba said there is plenty of time for the party to recover from yesterday's shock and still impress the public with its candidates. But even Gov. Ben Cayetano called it "unfortunate" that Harris would drop out "at this very late date."

Harris announced he was withdrawing because his polls showed him 22 points behind Republican Linda Lingle, a 30-point drop since last year. Harris said he concluded he couldn't win, and was stepping aside to give some other Democrats a better shot at Lingle.

Cayetano said he saw poll results that showed Harris within five percentage points of Lingle, and said Harris still could have won. Even if Harris was more than 20 percent behind, Cayetano said he has overcome larger deficits early in political campaigns in his own career.

But Yas Kuroda, a professor of political science at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa, said come-from-behind victories require a unified Democratic Party, and said he believes Harris withdrew in large part because of divisions within the party.

The Democratic Party has always been a collection of "little machines" built around candidates such as former governors John Burns, George Ariyoshi, or John Waihee, and those groups compete for power, Kuroda said.

Harris came out of the administration of former Honolulu mayor Frank Fasi, who usually ran as a Republican and publicly battled with the state's Democrats. Although Harris was a Democrat, he was not strongly identified as one and did not have deep ties to the party factions. He also did not climb the party career ladder step-by-step as politicians such as Cayetano, Neil Abercrombie and Patsy Mink did.

The most obvious sign that some party leaders opposed Harris was when Anderson was encouraged to switch parties and run against Harris by the likes of former Democratic Party chairman Walter Heen.

"I think it's probably better for his future to postpone it," Kuroda said. "I think it's probably more postponing his candidacy than giving up. But then the question is who can unite the party now to win the election over Linda Lingle?"

Some Democrats have said they aren't convinced or impressed by Anderson's late-career conversion to the Democratic Party. Case alienated many in the union movement, and leading Democrats have long expressed doubts that Hirono can win or is the right person to lead the party into the election.

Of the remaining candidates, Kuroda said, "I don't think any one of them by themselves is capable of raising that money and of that unity." He also noted that raising money takes time, and Kuroda said there may not be enough time left.

Cayetano said the consumer bills passed by the state Legislature to cap gas prices and regulate health insurance rates will help Democrats make their case to the public, but unity is still an issue.

"Standing up to the oil companies and the big insurance companies and doing what they thought was right for the person on the street, that's Democratic politics, and we're going to win in November if we can pull together and get that message across," Cayetano said.

Akiba downplayed the significance of Harris pulling out, arguing that "it's a long way from November."

"We've had a contested primary from very early on for the Democrats," she said, "so in terms of one of our candidates dropping out, whether he's a front-runner or not, we have other good candidates that are still in the race and other candidates that may join the race."