Posted on: Friday, November 8, 2002

Putting humility in civil service

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Linda Lingle held her first press conference yesterday since Tuesday's election made her Hawai'i's first Republican to win the office in 40 years and the first female governor. She later spoke with Advertiser staff writers Dan Nakaso and Robbie Dingeman in her office at her campaign headquarters:

Q. Was there one particular issue or event you considered to be key to the victory?

A. The Office of Hawaiian Affairs forum the Friday night before the election. (In that forum, Lingle and lieutenant governor-elect James "Duke" Aiona grew emotional when they spoke about the long waiting list for people seeking Hawaiian homestead land.) They saw the passion that Duke and I had on this issue. Whereas I think our opponents were speaking in more legalistic, analytical terms. We really feel that as a long-standing injustice, it has to be dealt with. ... (Voters) felt it was the least scripted of the appearances, the TV appearances, they had seen.

Q. We've had Gov. Ben Cayetano who, whatever you think about him, tends to bluntly say what he thinks. Now that you are moving from the campaign mode to the leadership mode, what do you think people should expect to see from you?

A. I think I've always been forthright. I always try to be candid. But I don't like to hurt people's feelings unnecessarily. And I think there is a way to, you know, as my mom always said, you can disagree without being disagreeable. ... I represent the people of Hawai'i, and I don't think the people like to see someone acting in a fashion that's antagonistic to other people or belittling someone else's opinion because they disagree with you. They want a governor who they can be proud of.

Q. On the night of your victory, what thoughts were going through your mind about that moment when you were on stage?

A. I felt so happy for the people that have worked for almost five years now. It was a long, long road. That's why you saw so much emotion in people. I think I'm the least emotional at something like that. You can ask the people around me. I swam that night at 6. They were all down here waiting for returns. I was in the pool. ... I felt very happy for so many of the business people who took a risk. There really was a downside to them coming out to help them and not winning in '98 for those who dealt with government. I had people who dealt with us in the campaign, a major, major food distributor here who's a big supporter who lost accounts because he supported me. So it wasn't just government retribution, although we're very certain that occurred. But it was even in the private sector.

Q. But no thoughts about your personal accomplishment?

A. No, no. I'm just so happy to get to work on these things that I've been talking about for so long. ... No. I didn't stand there and think about what a great accomplishment. But I did think about the people that had helped me for so long. ... There were over 18,000 individual contributors. My opponents never came close to that. They have big contributions from small numbers of people. ... We had mostly average people helping us. And I thought about them sending in mostly $25 to help us get to this point."

Q. How are the plans going for the inaugural ball?

A. First of all, we're not calling it a ball. It's more of a party, from our point of view. We want it to be something that all of the people feel comfortable attending. There may be more than one event because Hawai'i's very diverse and spread out. We may do a number of different things."

Q. You've talked about making the bureaucracy much more responsive and it always gets a big hand and everybody loves hearing that. But how do you do that?

A. When I was mayor (of Maui) and someone calls in about a question about nuclear energy, nobody in our government was allowed to say, "That's not a county issue. That's a federal issue." Our people were trained to say, "You know what, I don't think it comes under the county, but let me get you a name and a number of a person you can call to talk about that issue." I want every person to have the attitude that if a citizen went to the trouble of making a phone call, then you respond to that.

Q. But how do you make sure that the 20-year employee in a state office responds that way?

A. It's by the things you say, the actions you take, the people you select to run the departments. ... Some people are just never going to get with the program, no matter what. They've done it a certain way, they're going to continue, they're never going to get better. But that is a very small minority of people. Most people have pride, want to do a good job, want to be a part of an organization they can be proud of, not be the butt of jokes because they work for state government. ... My whole adult life has been spent virtually as a government employee, and I don't like when people knock government employees. But we have an obligation. People have given us better benefits than they themselves have. We have more sick days. We have more vacation days. We have more paid holidays, and we're going to have to be very humble and really produce for people. ... I'd also like to make the point that in a civil emergency, nobody calls the employees at Longs. They call us. We're very unique. We're very special. We're the first and last line of defense for the people, the government work force. There's good reason for us to have pride but we're going to have to earn it now. ... I also talk about ethics in government, and I tell people that if you can't decide whether to do something or not. ... Use this rule of measurement: Would you mind if your family, your friends read about it on the front page of tomorrow's newspaper. And if you don't mind, it's probably OK to do. But if you're going to be at all embarrassed or ashamed, don't do it.

Q. In addition to the people you'll be allowed to appoint, you'll also be working with a lot of government workers who are career people. How do you reach out to those people?

A. The approach I'm going to take here is to meet with (State Auditor Marion) Higa first. She's worked with all of the departments. She knows where there's some really good key people, and I'm going to ask her to identify them for me. But throughout my campaign, a lot of state workers came forward to help me because they've seen the waste and mismanagement in their department and they don't like it.

Q. A lot of them were in the closet, so to speak. And some of them are like (Honolulu Fire Department Capt.) Richard Soo, a city employer who supported you and is in administrative trouble right now because of it.

A. Now that I won, I don't think he's in trouble anymore. And that's one reason I felt this obligation to win because a lot of people went on the line for me.

Q. But what do you do about a culture like that?

A. You set a different standard. Sort of like after this Dobelle incident (in which University of Hawai'i President Evan Dobelle endorsed Lingle's opponent, Mazie Hirono). Some of my guys were very, very upset about it. They'd make a comment about his future. He did something, in my opinion, highly inappropriate, unnecessary. ... But that's over. It's got nothing to do with our my relationship to the University of Hawai'i. It's got nothing to do with my relationship with him. ... But our goal is the same. Our goal is to have a top-rate university that we can be proud of.

Hawai'i has a very centralized form of government, a very powerful governor, so you have the ability if you want to to use that for good or for ill. And I'm going to use it for good.