Linda Lingle: 4 years perfecting her pitch

By Lynda Arakawa
Advertiser Capitol Bureau

When Linda Lingle sees herself on TV ads and on the local news, she sometimes does something she hopes voters won't. She changes the channel.

"I can't stand it," said Lingle, who considers herself to be shy. "I should watch it and try to understand how I could communicate better, but I just can't stand it."

But simply changing the channel may not provide much relief for Lingle, who seems to be everywhere these days. As the election grows closer, the Republican front-runner has dominated the airwaves, and it's become nearly impossible to watch TV and not see her face.

Linda Lingle, front-runner in the Republican primary for governor, enjoys small talk-story sessions and providing anecdotes that emphasize her nearly 30 years in Hawai'i. Here she chats with Vlasta Smrz during a visit to the Waikiki Community Center. Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser

After losing the gubernatorial race four years ago to Gov. Ben Cayetano by about 5,000 votes, Lingle has worked hard to keep her name in the public eye. She has headed the Hawai'i Republican Party, which has grown significantly under her watch, and worked to improve the image and visibility of the GOP in a state dominated by Democrats for nearly 50 years.

Lingle faces only nominal opposition in the primary election — a recent Advertiser Hawai'i Poll showed her 80 points ahead of fellow GOP candidate John Carroll — and is considered the most formidable threat ever posed to the Democratic Party, which has held the governor's office since 1962.

"I knew she would be in this position now because I know that she wasn't going to back off," said Maui Weekly editor Dave DeLeon, who worked as Lingle's executive assistant when she was Maui mayor. "She just applies herself. Before, she was the mayor of the county and she had other things to worry about. This time, she's got one thing to focus on. She can be pretty devastating when she focuses ... if you're on the receiving end."

Lingle, formerly Linda Cutter, was born in St. Louis in 1953 and is the second of three children of Richard and Mildred Cutter. She and her family moved to Los Angeles shortly before her parents divorced. Lingle has said her mother suffered from debilitating mental illness. Lingle later lived with relatives, including her late Polish immigrant grandmother.

Lingle said her mother's illness probably had the biggest impact on her life. She carries memories of her mother being taken away in restraints to the hospital and showing up at her junior high school in the middle of the day "because she was on a manic high and she just wanted to talk."

"She's been sick since I was 8 or 9 years old," said Lingle, who still visits her mother in a California nursing home. "And I think it's given me a compassion for people, an empathy for families who deal with all kinds of issues. As a young child, to try to understand and deal with something like that, I think it just has an impact on you that doesn't go away. And I do think that the basic impact is that it makes you a compassionate person."

Lingle received a journalism degree from California State University-Northridge in 1975 and came to Hawai'i that year to be with her father and uncle, who had moved to the state to establish the Cutter car dealerships.

For about a year, she edited a newsletter and edited press releases for the late Art Rutledge when he led the hotel workers and Hawai'i Teamsters labor unions.

Art Rutlege's son, Tony, said Lingle was enthusiastic about her work and the labor movement.

"She looked like one of the original hippies — long, straight hair, wearing T-shirts and jeans, very energetic," said Rutledge, now president and chief executive officer of Unity House. Because of her quiet demeanor, Rutledge did not see politics in her future.

"That's the last thing I thought she would get involved with," he said. "I thought she was a very shy person. ... I've seen her blossom and I kind of think she's a little too good for the state."

Lingle later moved to Moloka'i and edited and owned the Moloka'i Free Press with her then-boyfriend, Sam Peters Jr. While working there, she figured she could do a better job than some of the local government officials she covered for the paper.

During her Waikiki visit last weekend, Lingle encountered state Rep. Mindy Jaffe, another Republican candidate in the Sept. 21 primary. Lingle uses the GOP label on herself more freely now than she did in 1998. Cory Lum • The Honolulu Advertiser

Lingle capitalized on the public's anger and apprehension about the state's stagnant economy — as well as growing dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party — to nearly topple Cayetano in 1998. The loss was a painful defeat for Republicans and independents who saw Lingle as their best shot, and 1998 as the best time, to take the governor's office. Days after the election, blue-and-white "Don't blame me — I voted for Lingle" bumper stickers appeared statewide, and in some areas they are still ubiquitous.

Lingle ended up comforting her supporters after the election and assuring them she would be back.

"I had flown on one airline pretty much throughout the campaign," she said, referring to a flight to Maui two days after the election. "I'm coming down the jetway and one of the flight attendants ... looks up and she sees me and she busts out crying and I'm standing in the galley saying, 'It's OK, it's all right.' So I think having to console other people must have made it OK for me."

Lingle became the chairwoman of the Hawai'i Republican Party in 1999 and increased its ranks and presence in the state and government. Under her watch, the GOP grew by about 4,000 members, according to party officials. The Republicans also gained seven more seats in the state House in 2000 to become a minority of 19 members, the most since statehood.

While she avoided using the Republican label much in 1998, Lingle uses the "R" word freely now.

But at least some in the GOP have felt that she is exclusive, that she has an inner circle and leaves other party members in the cold. Others say that they are uncomfortable with the changes she has made to the party and that social conservatives suddenly have no place in the tent.

"Social conservatives will be left without a party and without a voice," said Jason Jones, former director of Hawai'i Right to Life, who is also working for John Carroll.

Lingle said that when she became chairwoman, she was aware of the challenges of making veteran Republicans comfortable, so she recruited longtime GOP members to serve as party officers and tried to keep a mix of new and established Republicans involved.

"Our strategy was to provide opportunities for those people who want to be a part of things, but I think many people had gotten into a routine of inaction, of talking about things a lot and we were very action-oriented, so it was probably true that we didn't spend lots of time talking about everything we were going to do because we had so much to do," she said.

"Again, you never please everybody and it comes with leadership a recognition that you need to do your best to succeed in a way that the majority feels you're doing a good job."

As for a conservative social agenda, Lingle said although she supports abortion rights, she opposes gambling and supports parental notification for minors' abortions. She also said she was one of the only public officials to welcome churches into the party in 1988 when they were making a push for then-presidential candidate Pat Robertson, a religious broadcaster.

"I wasn't for Pat Robertson, but that's their opinion, they get to vote," she said. "I befriended a lot of the people, even though our views on pro-life were different. We did find a lot of common ground."

Lingle's campaign this year is relying less on her accomplishments as Maui mayor than it did in 1998, focusing instead on her plans for reforming state government. She acknowledges that much of the prosperity enjoyed by Maui County in the early 1990s was due to economic forces outside her control, but she claims credit for improving the quality of life for residents through an ambitious program that built parks and public facilities, while at the same time controlling county spending.

But Lingle has had to answer questions about several events during her time as mayor that have been described as either politically motivated minutae or the shadow of major scandal, depending on whether it comes from a Lingle supporter or opponent.

Lingle served five terms on the Maui County Council, first winning office in 1980. She was elected mayor in 1990 and re-elected in 1994. Advertiser libary photo

The controversy involved developer Joel Cavasso, who said he began building a housing project on a 3.9-acre parcel in Makawao on the basis of a county zoning error. When the county ordered him to stop construction, he wrote to Lingle in 1995 and said he was considering suing the county because he was facing foreclosure as a result of the error.

The county bought the land for $1.95 million and turned it into an affordable housing project. The council approved the project in 1996 but was not told of Cavasso's letter or the circumstances surrounding the county's decision to develop the land.

The deal has been characterized as a bailout for the developer, but Lingle has maintained that the arrangement saved the county from potentially costly litigation and resulted in affordable housing for 22 families.

The council began moving toward an investigation, but last year rejected a proposal to hire former state Attorney General Margery Bronster to investigate Lingle. No action has been taken since then.

Despite her discomfort with how she comes across in public, Lingle is a poised and polished speaker who has clearly worked hard to master the ability to speak without notes, to graciously deflect tough questions and to salt major speeches and small talk-story sessions with anecdotes that emphasize her nearly 30 years in Hawai'i. She is even more focused, more deliberate than in 1998, leaving almost nothing to chance.

Those who have worked with Lingle say that she does not lose her temper, but that she does make it clear when she is unhappy or disappointed.

"She doesn't blow up and doesn't throw fits or anything," DeLeon said. "But you get the look. ... And sometimes it's well deserved and sometimes you go, like, why me? That's because she's so intense and she expects the same kind of intensity of other people. And sometimes it's a bit overwhelming."

Micah Kane, chairman of the Hawai'i Republican Party, said that when he once tried to fix something he did wrong without telling Lingle, "she sat me down like an auntie would and said, 'Bad news isn't like wine — it doesn't get better with age.'"

When she thought he was going in the wrong direction, she would smirk and simply say, "That's funny, Micah."

Friends say she often quotes sayings from her mother and grandmother — "Don't toot your own horn" and "You can get more flies with honey than with vinegar," for example.

Lingle has been divorced twice; she was married to Charles Lingle from 1972 to 1975 while in college, and to Maui attorney William Crockett from 1986 to 1997.

"She's my kids' favorite auntie," Kane said, referring to his three young daughters. "Every time she's out and about, she spoils them. She's out at craft fairs and she's buying them knickknacks. When she comes home from trips, she's always coming back with stuff. I'm trying to discipline my kids and Auntie Linda's there spoiling them."

Lingle lives in her Makiki condominium with her cat, Snooze, whom she picked up from the Maui Humane Society about eight years ago. She swims 3,000 yards four times a week before 6 a.m. and takes hourlong walks on Sunday mornings.

She's also a movie buff — she and her friends watched movies from noon to midnight at last year's Hawaii International Film Festival. Among her favorite films in recent years: "A Beautiful Mind," "Memento" and "Moulin Rouge."

She also likes reading and is alternating between a handful of books, including "The Tipping Point," which focuses on "a concept that says in order for a phenomenon to occur, it's usually built up and there's something that happens that causes you to tip."

Lingle has little free time these days. Among her campaign tasks is the making of those commercials.

"It's a very boring process," she said. "It's not natural — you're stopping, you're starting, the makeup. It just bores me to death to do that. I don't like to be the focus like that. That's like having your picture taken all the time. I'd rather be talking about issues."

Reach Lynda Arakawa at larakawa@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8070.

Correction: An earlier version of this story had incorrect captions under two pictures of Linda Lingle campaigning.