Posted on: Sunday, July 11, 2004

Cec Heftel making a comeback

By Jerry Burris
Advertiser Editorial Writer

It's likely not every wan-nabe candidate for the state school board this year will see his or her announcement of candidacy receive the media attention granted to Cec Heftel last week.

But then, not every candidate will be a high-profile former Honolulu broadcasting executive, 10-year member of Congress and former candidate for governor.

Heftel left the limelight in Hawai'i in 1986 after a bitterly disappointing loss to John Waihee in that year's Democratic gubernatorial primary.

It was a loss that left many, including Heftel, stunned. He had been ahead in the polls, had great name recognition and lots of money (mostly his own) and looked to be a shoo-in for the nomination.

But the Heftel candidacy ran off the tracks in the final few weeks. Explanations for the plunge were many, including theories that Waihee's jovial, "local-boy" style finally caught on, that Heftel's support was always a mile wide but only a inch deep and finally, that something sinister happened.

That is the explanation Heftel came to accept and he vaguely referred to it again last week in announcing his school board candidacy.

Unnamed "power brokers," Heftel claimed at the time, launched a vicious "whispering campaign" against him in the closing days of the campaign that destroyed his credibility in the eyes of the voters.

That whispering campaign, he said, included "lies" that he was racist, that he did not like local people, that he was anti-union or that he was corrupt and an alcoholic.

Anyone who knew Heftel would have recognized instantly that such claims were untrue. Unfortunately, not enough people did know him. Or, at least they felt they didn't "know" him in the way one relates to someone of similar background or experience.

The final and worst blow of all, Heftel said at the time, was the scurrilous circulation of an unverified state narcotics report which named Heftel as a participant in what he termed "illegal and repulsive" acts.

The report and the wo-man who was its primary informant were later largely discredited.

It is believed large numbers of voters either saw the report or heard enough about it to abandon Heftel in the closing days of the campaign.

That seems unlikely, since copies began anonymously circulating only in the last few days of the campaign, mostly to civic or political leaders and reporters.

No media outlet, radio, television or newspaper, carried any news on the report, and it is likely most voters had no inkling of its existence.

Still, the experience was bitter enough for Heftel to take himself and his business mostly to the Mainland, where he has been operating for the past decade and a half.

And now he's back. It will be interesting to see if the ideas and passion that drove him into public life 15 years ago burn brightly enough to propel him back into the spotlight as a member of the state Board of Education.

Jerry Burris is editor of The Advertiser's editorial pages.