Kitty Lagareta helps shape Hawai'i policy and events
By Dan Nakaso
Advertiser Staff Writer
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| Although Kitty Lagareta, CEO of Communications Pacific, came from a strongly Democratic family, she was won over by Linda Lingle's message of business-friendly government and joined Lingle's 1996 gubernatorial campaign.
Photos by Deborah Booker • The Honolulu Advertiser |
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| Alan Hoffman is president of Communications Pacific in Honolulu. Since Lagareta took over, the firm has grown from 20 to 50 employees and it now generates about $4 million in annual revenue. |
Catherine Lagareta Nickname: Kitty Title: Chairman and CEO of Communications Pacific Employees: 50 Annual revenue: $4 million Age: 49 Born: Los Angeles, Calif.; raised in Victorville, Calif. Education: University of Hawai'i degree in English literature Family: Married to husband, Roland, a senior consultant for Morgan Stanley; sons Chad, 29, and Kalin, 24. Home: Kailua, across from Lanikai Elementary School. |
Lagareta blew past the plastic koi fish glued to a sea life mural, then turned the corner to another mural of a rainforest outfitted with fake vines, plastic gecko and glued-on, bright green, plastic frogs that squeak when squeezed.
The walls are "tacky ... tasteless ... wacky, hilarious and unexpected," Lagareta said. Their charm, Lagareta said, lies in their lack of subtlety.
She settled into her corner office that provides a sweeping view of Honolulu Harbor and paused before a series of photos of herself at the White House, including one of Lagareta smiling next to the woman she helped elect as Hawai'i's first female governor and first Republican governor in nearly half a century.
It's here, inside the colorful and eclectic Topa Financial Center headquarters of one of Hawai'i's most influential women, that Communications Pacific works behind the scenes to shape policies and events that affect nearly every aspect of life in Hawai'i.
From hospital labor talks to gasoline prices to the bankruptcy of Hawai'i's largest airline, Communications Pacific helps define the public relations and internal communication strategies of some of Hawai'i's biggest corporations and institutions.
CommPac — as it's known — has become a leader in a growing Hawai'i industry of managing companies' messages on everything from layoffs to the promotion of key executives. Where local public relations companies once limited their work to producing annual reports or drafting routine press releases, CommPac and a handful of other companies are now hired on a regular basis to help shape the tone of important messages, a commodity commonly referred to as "spin."
"We're on one side of the issue every day in a story on the front page of the newspaper," Lagareta said, "sometimes two or three stories."
Her cohort in charge of day-to-day operations is Alan Hoffman , a former local TV executive now president of CommPac.
Both Lagareta and her public relations company have grown in power and influence since the 2002 election of Gov. Linda Lingle. And the relationship between Lagareta, her company and the governor has only gotten stronger.
Lingle's chief spokesman, Russell Pang, was a CommPac vice president who represented American Savings Bank, Macy's and Chevron, among other clients.
Lingle also recently appointed Lagareta to the University of Hawai'i Board of Regents — a position that former Gov. Ben Cayetano compares in importance to the selection of a judge.
Lagareta, 49, hardly started out as a Republican confidant.
She was raised a Democrat in an Italian immigrant section of Los Angeles and surprised even herself when she crossed Hawai'i's Democratic establishment to serve as an adviser and spokeswoman during Lingle's 1998 campaign.
"My mom to this day gives me grief about being Republican," Lagareta said.
When Lagareta was a child, her family moved to California's Mojave Desert where she grew bored in a town of 5,000 people. She quit high school after the 10th grade, enrolled in college, got married at the age of 19 and had two sons. She later divorced, moved to Hawai'i in 1976 and started college again by enrolling at UH.
Lagareta studied English literature but also took drama classes and was hired for an improvisational comedy troupe called Hats organized by comedian Rap Replinger. She found a voice in talking about indelicate topics such as female masturbation, women's body images and raunchy names for male products that — unlike women's hygiene items — are never seen on television.
"Kitty doesn't have a filter," said her friend Becky Ward, president of Ward Research. "Whatever Kitty thinks, Kitty says. It gets her in trouble sometimes, and it's also what's so endearing because you know what she's thinking."
Democrat to Republican
At one Rotary Club of Honolulu meeting that she ran as the club president, Lagareta announced one day that some elderly male members had complained about her unkempt, wild hair.
"She said, 'Next week I'm going to appear with my new hairdo,' " remembered Rotary member Alice Tucker.
The following week, Lagareta "conducted the whole meeting with great decorum," Tucker said. But she wore a scarf that covered an enormous mound on top of her head.
At the end of the meeting, Tucker said, "Kitty took off this scarf and there was this horrible, outrageous wig. It was so awful you couldn't even stand looking at the thing." Then she pulled it off and it was the same old hairdo, Tucker said.
In 1986 Lagareta went to work for CommPac and by then was immersing herself in community work, such as helping to launch Hawai'i's Ronald McDonald House and serving on several community boards.
At one point she volunteered to help the Democratic Party, "but if you're a haole lady from the Mainland, all they'll let you do is lick envelopes."
Then in 1995 she heard Maui Mayor Lingle speak and embraced Lingle's message that government needs to be more friendly toward business. Lagareta joined the campaign in 1996 and in 1998 bought CommPac, which by then had slipped from a high of $4.3 million in revenue to about $1 million.
Her allegiance to Lingle was a personal and professional gamble that plenty of people said would cost Lagareta some of her nearly 60 clients. But Lagareta's determination is as legendary as her sense of style and humor.
"The most distinguishing characteristic about Kitty's personality is her willingness to fight for unpopular causes," Lingle said. "Once it's something she believes in, even though it may be difficult or uncomfortable, she does it anyway. Her involvement with my campaign in '98 was simply one more situation where she was willing to do something that a lot of other business people were unwilling to do."
Sam Shenkus, a member of an all-female investment club Lagareta helped found called "The Stocky Broads," called Lagareta's support for Lingle "a huge risk."
"Kitty's company guides clients via relationships with the media, via access to decision-makers," Shenkus said. "If doors close to you, that can be very challenging for a public relations company. You need phone calls returned. You're in the business of communication. If your call is not returned, if the doors are not opened, that's a problem."
Politics and business
Once the campaign began, the Department of Labor and Industrial Relations informed Lagareta that she had been randomly selected for a workplace audit, which involved interviewing her employees about workplace conditions. A few months later, the department informed Lagareta that she had been randomly selected for a second workplace audit, which resulted in a $500 fine for having poor lighting over a copy machine.
Lagareta said that when she got a third letter in 2000, she called Cayetano to complain and he told her " 'there are some people in the bureaucracy who do things to help me, and I don't necessarily like it,' " Lagareta said.
Cayetano disputed Lagareta's version and their conversation. He said Lagareta had only been notified of a second audit, which he canceled it because she had already been audited three or four months before.
"I don't think it had anything to do with politics," he said. "When these things happen, some common sense has to be used."
At the same time, Cayetano grew to respect Lagareta.
"I like people who are scrappers and she's one of them," Cayetano said. "Even though she was on the other side, I had a grudging admiration for the way she did her job."
Although CommPac's clients and employees grew increasingly nervous, Lagareta dived back in for Lingle's ultimately successful 2002 campaign.
Today, the number of Lagareta's clients remains the same. But they're bigger and more influential. CommPac grew from 20 to 50 employees under Lagareta and now generates about $4 million in annual revenue, making it one of Hawai'i's largest public relations firm along with McNeil Wilson Communications.
It's impossible to quantify how much of CommPac's recent success is directly related to Lagareta's relationship with the governor, Lagareta said, because the company was growing even after Lingle lost in 1998.
More than press releases
While CommPac employees certainly write press releases and organize news conferences, they pride themselves on their anonymity — ghost writing op-ed pieces for company CEOs, videotaping corporate leaders as they practice addressing sticky public issues and anticipating what will come next in ongoing policy debates.
Crisis management, once a relatively unknown concept in Hawai'i business circles, also has become a staple for CommPac.
Chris Pablo has his own staff of nine people working in the Kaiser Hawai'i Region's public affairs department, but hired CommPac last year during contentious contract talks with hospital nurses.
While some hospitals emphasized that a nurses' strike would hurt patients, Kaiser, CommPac and its other client, Kapi'olani Medical Center, devised a more conciliatory message.
Directly and through the media, the hospitals told Kaiser and Kapi'olani nurses that they're valued and deserve fair raises.
Kapi'olani and Kaiser nurses signed contracts just before Christmas. Days later, the nurses at the three other hospitals went on strike.
"All of the things we did with CommPac were in the repertoire of what we normally do," Pablo said. "But they helped guide us in our thinking. It's nice to call them and say, 'Hey, am I on the right track? What should I do?' "
David McNeil, a partner in McNeil Wilson Communications, found out recently that his company and CommPac were on opposite sides of one of Hawai'i's largest bankruptcies.
His company represents Hawaiian Airlines and was defending the actions of chairman John Adams as he tried to retain control. CommPac, McNeil discovered, at the same time had been representing one of Hawaiian's aircraft lessors, Boeing Capital Corp.
Boeing had accused Adams of irresponsible financial management and argued that an independent trustee should be appointed to replace Adams' management team.
About a week ago, a bankruptcy judge ordered a trustee to be selected to oversee the bankruptcy.
"That's the business," McNeil said. "It's nothing personal. CommPac's a good firm, and they're a good competitor."
While CommPac's fortunes grow, Lagareta's selection to the UH Board of Regents raises serious questions about UH President Evan Dobelle, who answers to the regents.
Dobelle drew Lingle's public anger after he endorsed her Democratic opponent, former Lt. Gov. Mazie Hirono. Lingle has since criticized Dobelle publicly over the way he responded to budget cuts.
Cayetano hopes Lagareta's appointment doesn't mean she will be used to punish Dobelle.
"He may have made a mistake," Cayetano said. "But it's not Evan Dobelle who's going to get hurt in all of this. It's the university that's going to suffer."
Lingle said she has not asked any of the regents "to take any particular action on President Dobelle or anyone else. What I did ask them to do is to devote a lot of time to this effort to make sure UH lives up to its potential. ... President Dobelle needs to be judged on his performance, just like anybody else."
Lagareta likes to judge her clients on how they react to her murals.
If clients can't appreciate the humor behind the tackiness of the walls, Lagareta said, then she probably doesn't want to work with them.
"We do serious work here," Lagareta said. "But we have to have a sense of humor."
Reach Dan Nakaso at dnakaso@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8085.
