Posted on: Wednesday, August 25, 2004
EDITORIAL
Negative hit ads do little public service ...
Joint public appearances by the two leading candidates for mayor of Honolulu this year have been generally polite, quiet and free of confrontation.
But beneath the surface, the war between Mufi Hannemann and Duke Bainum has become increasingly hostile.
As reported by staff writer Johnny Brannon, the campaign being waged in television and radio advertisements and in direct-mail brochures has turned negative.
The shame here is that the candidates are squandering money and time on effort that could better go toward informing the voters on the issues.
Bainum has distributed brochures stressing that Hannemann has received more than $61,000 in illegal (emphasis his) campaign donations.
Well, yes, sort of. Over the years, Hannemann's campaign has had to give back or forfeit that amount in excess contributions when they have been brought to his attention.
But neither Hannemann nor his campaign has been charged with any illegality.
One aspect of Bainum's ad is striking in its misuse of material from this newspaper. The brochures include clips of Advertiser editorials that strongly criticize campaign spending violations. The Bainum brochure clearly implies that the clips refer to Hannemann.
That is not the case.
The editorials cited were not about Hannemann at all, but rather about campaign spending practices in general.
On the other side, Hannemann's campaign has charged Bainum with supporting "wasteful" and "feel good" projects supported by Mayor Jeremy Harris such as median landscaping and community signs.
Well, yes. But most of those projects were part of much larger city budgets that Bainum supported during his years on the City Council. In other words, in supporting the budget, Bainum by implication supported some of the Harris "glamour" projects.
And as the Bainum campaign points out, Hannemann also voted for some of these projects as a city councilman.
The one area where there is a legitimate difference is on the matter of the Bus Rapid Transit program, which Bainum originally supported and Hannemann opposed.
Bainum said he supported BRT at the time as the only option available and has since lost his enthusiasm for the project.
What we end up with here is a lot of sound, fury and energy being spent on issues of relatively little substance.
How about more advertising, more brochures, on what the candidates would do today to ease traffic congestion, balance the city budget, deal with landfill and recycling issues, promote city-state cooperation and a hundred other items?
There is much to talk about. If the candidates or their campaign managers think the public will be swayed by misleading or negative attacks that have little to do with today's reality, they are mistaken.
