The Ben years: Governor came aboard in rough times
By Kevin Dayton
Advertiser Capitol Bureau Chief
More than any of Hawai'i's other governors, Ben Cayetano was confined by the times in which he governed. Elected in the midst of the longest economic slump in state history, Cayetano took on the job of telling almost everyone for the next eight years that they couldn't have what they wanted.
With his tough-guy persona, Cayetano seemed so comfortable saying no year after year that many people came to regard him as the problem, rather than the response to the problem. If Cayetano is finally remembered as the guy who always said no, some believe he richly deserves that legacy.
The official portrait of Gov. Ben Cayetano, by Daniel Greene, was unveiled Nov. 14. Cayetano leaves office Dec. 2, when Linda Lingle takes the oath to succeed him.
In the final months of his administration, Cayetano has tried to highlight his accomplishments, and it clearly matters to him how he's remembered, despite the characteristic shrugs and the you-can't-worry-too-much-about-what-people-think mantra that has guided some of his most unpopular decisions. Yet in each of the stories he tells about a goal reached or a challenge confronted, somewhere there is always a fight, with Cayetano in the middle, chin out and swinging away.
Cayetano cites his record of building 16 public schools, increasing starting pay for teachers, extending the school year for students and investing in new facilities such as the proposed University of Hawai'i medical school. The public more readily recalls the teachers' and university professors' strikes of 2001 after collective bargaining with Cayetano broke down.
Age: 63 Career: Attorney for 15 years. State House member, 1975-78; Senate member, 1979-86. Lieutenant governor, 1986-94. Elected governor of Hawai'i in 1994 — the state's fifth governor and the first of Filipino ancestry. Re-elected in 1998. Education: Farrington High School, 1958; bachelor's degree in political science from UCLA, 1968; law degree from Loyola University Law School, 1971. Family: Married to the former Vicky Liu, president and chief executive officer of United Laundry Services. Three adult children from a previous marriage, Brandon, Janeen and Samantha Cayetano; also, Marissa and William Liu; one grandchild, Micah Ancheta.
He reminds people of the replacement of the Bishop Estate trustees and changes in the trust that he triggered with his investigation by the state attorney general. But that also brings to mind the uproar over the rejection of Margery Bronster as Cayetano's attorney general in 1999 in a Senate floor vote that was an attack on Cayetano as much as it was on Bronster.
Benjamin J. Cayetano
Cayetano points to the extraordinary number of Hawaiian Homes lessees who were awarded land during his administration, more than all other administrations combined. But Hawaiians seem much more focused on the standoff between Cayetano and the Office of Hawaiian Affairs over OHA's share of revenues from ceded land, or on Cayetano's move to have the OHA trustees removed in 2000 after a court decision invalidating the process of their election.
With just over a week left in office, Cayetano jokes that his public approval ratings have tanked, but he doesn't seem regretful. He points to the hostility of public school teachers toward him after the strike as an illustration of the problem he faces in trying to build his legacy: His hard line saved the state millions of dollars that were needed for other government programs.
"I think I did the people of this state a service because we gave the teachers a good raise and yet we didn't give away the store and hurt the poor and the disadvantaged in other areas," Cayetano said in an interview. "It's the role of the governor to think like that, to look at the big picture. So, people get mad at me. And of course I'm the kind of guy — if you take a shot at me,
Associated Press library photo • Oct. 24, 2002
I shoot back. Now, people don't like that, too, so what can I do?
Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo bestowed a medal on Gov. Ben Cayetano here last month, praising his leadership among Hawai'i Filipinos.
"Maybe my greatest shortcoming is my inability to be a little more polished in how I deliver bad messages."
Indeed, in eight years, Cayetano never mastered the art of the spin or the empty sound bite. He mumbled and growled, spoke in bumpy fragments, but always made a point. He didn't dodge calls and rarely sent someone else to do the dirty work. While no one expected his 1997 marriage to gracious and enterprising Vicky Liu to grind off his rough edges, his final term found him opening his home to a wider array of guests than golf buddies and politicos. He got involved in projects like the creation of the Hawai'i State Art Museum and construction of a new residence for governors so Washington Place could be fully converted into a museum.
Hawai'i had no reason to be surprised at what it got in Ben Cayetano, who mellowed somewhat in his years as governor, but stayed basically true to form.
Advertiser library photo • Oct. 26, 1997
While in the state Senate, the dissident Cayetano repeatedly threatened to sue opponents to enforce his view of the law. Once he even waved a machete during a debate to punctuate his speech in defense of the performance of a judge.
In 1997, Cayetano welcomed Chinese President Jiang.
The tone of the Cayetano administration was set at the very beginning. He ordered a hiring freeze on hundreds of vacant positions in his second month in office, and announced in his first State of the State address in 1995 that his administration faced a budget deficit of $250 million.
"Make no mistake about it," Cayetano warned lawmakers in that speech. "No governor, no Legislature since statehood has faced a financial crisis of the magnitude and severity that we face today."
Neal Milner, a political science professor at the University of Hawai'i-Manoa, said that from then on, Cayetano spent most of his time explaining to Hawai'i residents they were were stuck in such bad economic times and, for the first time, government didn't have the solution.
In the years that followed, Cayetano's moves to lay off public workers, to slow the growth in the public payroll, to cut taxes and limit or reduce the cost of public worker pay and benefits all flowed out of that basic message.
Advertiser library photo • Oct. 10, 2001
"I'm always intrigued by how many people blame him personally for delivering that message, and don't speak to whether the message is true," Milner said. "They think he's done an enormous amount of bad stuff because he gave them a bad message.
In October 2001, Cayetano led a tourism-promotion delegation to Japan and met with Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
"I think a lot of it was the times that he was elected to. He was not a governor at a time when there were a lot of resources to share, but he sometimes gave the impression that he enjoyed saying no to people too much."
Richard Pratt, director of the public administration program at the University of Hawai'i, said he believes that Cayetano's plans for governing changed completely when he took office and grasped the scope of the budget problem.
"I think he's not an easy person, but he also had a challenging time to be governor in," Pratt said. "It was so dominated by economic crisis. In some ways, his personality helped him because we needed someone who would make hard decisions, and in some ways his personality didn't help him because he was confrontational when he should have been bringing in people to help him solve problems."
Milner said he doesn't believe that Cayetano fundamentally changed much about Hawai'i government or the economy. He dramatically increased state spending on tourism promotion and construction, but his privatization initiatives never really took off, the efforts to reduce regulation didn't seem to accomplish much and, in the end, tourism-dependent Hawai'i was completely left out of the 1990s boom years, Milner said.
State Sen. Sam Slom, one of Cayetano's most outspoken Republican critics, contends that the governor's tenure was characterized by missed opportunities.
Advertiser library photo • May 17, 2002
Slom said Cayetano wants to be remembered for improving the educational system or encouraging new industries such as high technology, but Slom believes that Cayetano actually invested little personal effort in those areas.
Cayetano joined his friend and fellow Democrat Bill Clinton on a golf outing here last spring.
"If he were the education governor, he would have come up with a number of these proposals early on and supported them in terms of making change in doing things differently," Slom said.
Cayetano did that when he demanded changes in collective bargaining and civil service reform and privatization, Slom said, "so from my standpoint, those are the best things that he did."
"He faced the public employee unions who had backed him, supported him and all that, he thought that was a big enough issue that there had to be a change, and he stuck by it," Slom said.
But Slom contends Cayetano did not make a similar push to improve the schools and will leave public education pretty much as he found it.
Advertiser library photo • April 18, 1985
In his own defense, Cayetano said he got personally involved in bargaining with the teachers' and university professors' unions to press for improvements such as merit-based pay and seven additional days of instruction for public school students.
While he served in the state Senate, Ben Cayetano, right, broadened his reputation as a dissident while forging political ties with fellow Democrat John Waihee. Cayetano later served as lieutenant governor under Waihee, who began his gubernatorial terms during an economic boom.
But changing the curriculum and those kinds of in-school changes are the responsibility of the Board of Education, Cayetano said.
"I don't know what the critics were expecting — me to teach the teachers to teach?" he said.
Attorney General Earl Anzai also contends Cayetano used his authority to make important changes to state government that aren't obvious to casual observers.
"If anybody studies state government carefully and objectively, you will find that the government has actually changed quite a bit," said Anzai, who also served as director of finance in Cayetano's first term and remains one of his closest advisers.
As Cayetano tried to shield the schools from the budget cuts that fell on other departments and to pay for the hugely expensive Felix consent decree to provide services to students with special needs, he increased public school staffing and spending as compared to the rest of the state budget.
With all that Cayetano did and didn't do as governor, it is possible he will be most remembered for a work he completed before he ever took over as the state's chief executive: the A-Plus after-school program.
Advertiser library photo • Dec. 7, 1998
If A-Plus does turn out to be Cayetano's most memorable accomplishment, it says a great deal about what the public expects from its government, and also why the Cayetano years may be recalled with little affection.
Associate Justice Simeon Acoba Jr. administered the oath of office for Cayetano's second term as governor. As first lady, Vicky Cayetano has managed to put a smoother tone to her husband's image.
A-Plus touched hundreds of thousands of lives, eased a bit of the burden on working parents, and quickly became so popular, so much a part of the network of public services, it would be politically impossible to dismantle it today.
But as popular as A-Plus is, it would have been extremely difficult to launch the program while Cayetano was governor because the state didn't have the money to start extensive programs in those years.
Another important part of the Cayetano legacy will be that he was the last in a 40-year chain of Democratic governors.
Cayetano said he believes many factors contributed to Lt. Gov. Mazie Hirono's loss to Republican Linda Lingle, but he acknowledges that some things he did helped create an environment that was "negative for Democrats."
Advertiser library photo • June 1, 2002
"We cut taxes. We did things that Republicans say the Democrats wouldn't do. And it cost us some because, especially on the labor side, we had to do things that eroded our base, the foundation of our party, which is the labor movement," Cayetano said. "But anyone who's trying to make changes, you're going to run into that kind of stuff. You've just got to deal with it.
Cayetano joined U.S. Reps. Neil Abercrombie and Patsy Mink at the Hawai'i Democratic Party convention in June. Special elections will be held to replace Mink, who died after September's primary election.
"After all, what did people elect me to do? Reform government. You know what reforming government means? Making it more efficient? It means making changes that people don't like."
In his final days as governor, the bookshelves in Cayetano's private office in the State Capitol have nearly been emptied, and boxes have been packed to clear the way for the transition. Cayetano, who talks while he signs one form letter after another, peers over the top of his reading glasses to stress that he is feeling pretty good about what he accomplished.
"What we do should never be, I think, judged by our contemporaries," Cayetano said. "We need to let some time pass and let people sit down and take a look and say OK, what did this guy do, what could he have done, and what did he do?"
"When that time comes, I think we'll do OK."
Reach Kevin Dayton at kdayton@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8070.
