 Think Tech Hawaii, civil engagement lives here. Aloha, and welcome to Talk Story with John Waihe. Today's guest is a professor at the University of Hawaii and actually becoming one of our political pundits here in Hawaii. You'll see him. You see him at every election. He's the guy that people turn to for any advice or any trends or anything dealing with politics. We are so lucky to have you back. You were here two, three weeks ago, and it was right after the debate at Kamehameha Schools, and we were talking about who were going to be the winners and losers and so forth. Now we know. At least we know from the primary election. So what are your thoughts in general? Tell us a little bit about this election. Well, I guess a lot of what we predicted was going to happen did happen, but it was really up and down. The most surprising thing, of course, is that Governor E. Gay won. He was down 20 points. Some internal polls had him down 24 points back in March and April, and he came back and he beat Colleen Honabusa by 7 percentage points. So in politics, that is really an incredible turnaround. That was pretty incredible, and he did it in a relatively short period of time. Exactly. Give me some of your thoughts on what are the factors that led to that. Sure. I think it's really two things led to this. The first was that Colleen Honabusa really didn't run a good campaign. I mean, it's difficult because there aren't big ideological differences between both of them. Yeah, that's one thing. I remember doing some interviews, and people asked me what the differences were, and I really, really, they weren't at all. Minor stuff. Minor ways of approaching it or something, but they were not ideologically too far apart. So really, it was a campaign based on personality, right? I mean, who do you trust more? And Colleen Honabusa wanted to frame this as really a referendum on E. Gay's leadership stemming from the false missile alert, and that was the darkest days of the E. Gay administration back in January, and he was still paying for it when those polls came out in March. The problem is, I think Colleen Honabusa and her team got a little complacent, maybe a little arrogant, certainly a little lazy. She made the decision not to resign from Congress, so she wasn't in the state for a crucial period, I think. And the way I can characterize the campaign, it seems like she was really harping on the missile alert. Then we almost didn't hear from her for several months, and then the campaign started up again in June, but in that time, E. Gay really was able to consolidate some support. I think she also got a little lucky, which is the second thing. I mean, I want to say lucky politically, not for the people who... Yeah, you're very careful how you say lucky. Right. Not lucky for everyone who had experienced, had to experience the floods on Kauai, or certainly the eruption on the Big Island, but for... Yeah. In fact, there was some pundits who said that Madam... Was that you? Who said Madam Pelly... I don't think it was me, but I agree with the sentiment that he... This allowed him to show leadership. He was on TV all the time. He was really visible in both of those disasters. So I think it caused some people to give him a second look. But also, I mean, really, Neil Abercrombie said this, and I agree with him, that David E. Gay can't win, but Colleen Honobusa can lose. And I think that kind of sums it up. I mean, it goes to show that a strong campaign is essential, even if you think you're going against an opponent who's really weak. It was amazing because, again, I don't have the stats, and you may eventually, or you may have it now, but it seemed like the amount of money that was spent on these... The governorship was actually a lot less than normal. It was less than normal. I mean, partly we're comparing it to when E. Gay defeated Abercrombie. Right. Abercrombie spent about $10 million. So that was... Yeah, Neil spent a lot of money. Yeah, that was a big money. And he was an incumbent, and you would expect an incumbent to have a lot of money. David didn't seem to know, frankly. And so you're right about that. I don't think people have talked about that much, but overall spending was lower. Really, when we talk about money and how that played a role in this race, you're really talking about one organization, which is the V-Change Now, the Carpenters, you know, and exactly. And you know, okay, we obviously know that David E. Gay won the Governor's Race and so forth. But the Carpenters, in my opinion, were the real losers. Oh, really? Yeah. Because they were back in Hanabusa. Well, not only Hanabusa, but in general, you know, yeah, well, they won the Lieutenant Governor's Race. Right. I mean, they're in Dorsey won the Lieutenant Governor's Race. They spent a million bucks on that race. And there are some people, myself including, who are a little cynical, and we see that if you spend that much money to win that particular position, which comes with no immediate, you know, no immediate anything, authority, you must be... You can do name changes. That's really... You have, yeah. Well, at least in the past, when I was Lieutenant Governor, you could... You were in charge of elections. I was in charge of elections. So we had something to do. I mean, we, in fact, you know, and I'm convinced that elections ran better when you had somebody who thought they could lose an election if it didn't run perfectly, you know? Exactly. But nevertheless, so what are you doing? Well, the only thing it looks like you're investing in is the fact that the common governor can only serve one more term. Yeah. And I think that's the investment. Yeah. And so, you know, you're looking for... And so maybe that would, in the long run, make them, or strategically, a winner. But for all the other races that, where they went negative and so forth, I don't think... I don't know of a single one where they won. No, I think you're right about that. I mean, if you're talking about the two most high-profile ones, they lost the governor's race because they really didn't start funding Hanabusa until late in the game. I think because they thought she'd win, they didn't need her help. But the second big one is the city council race, Carol Fukunaga's... Oh, they really were really nasty with Carol. Yes. And she, as it turns out, actually won enough not to be in a runoff. And the Carpenters-backed candidate, Tyler de Santos-Tom, he got third. He came in third. And I think it was largely because of that. There was a huge miscarriage. Well, I think there was a reaction to it. Yeah, absolutely. And it might have been, I don't know what the future will hold for negative campaigning. It's too attractive a drug, you know, it seems very addictive. But at least in this election, it seemed like the voters just said, you know, we're not going to be taken in by all of that. Yeah, I think I mainly agree with that. I mean, that was true about the false misalert that the Carpenters were running against Igay at the end. It seems like people really returned off with that. They got tired of it. Yeah. You know, one of the things about Igay was that it turns out to be pretty hard to run a negative campaign against David. Sure. Because he's a nice guy. People like him. He's a nice guy. He hasn't done anything. He's a pretty ethical guy. He hasn't done anything that could be considered negative, you know? And so, what else you got besides the, you know, the missile crisis, and then he, and all of a sudden he's found his voice. Right. He's been much stronger. You know, I watched him over the course of the election, and he actually really grew in terms of public persona. I think so too. But the Igay people, they did a little bit of negative campaigning. I think it was more subtle, and it made it more effective. I mean, they were reminding people of this land deal in Koalina that happened a long time ago. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. They were subtly suggesting, maybe Hanabusa wasn't that trustworthy. You know what is so funny about that is that the land deal that happened really was built around the idea of building on the quarry. There you go. Right. Right. And, you know, and so forth. But the many of the people or the organizations that were bringing that up in support of David, because I think there were some like pact-type suggestions, were people who had actually supported the deal. I didn't know that detail. That's great. That's the problem with building politics for too long. Were people who wanted the quarry, you know, and were lobbying for the tax. This is a kind of weird election. You know, the other ironic thing is a lot of the people on the Igay team were Abercrombie people. Well, almost a hundred percent. Almost a hundred. The people that the Igay, well, when Igay ran the first time, you know, you had Governor Ariyoshi and Governor Kaitano, and I was with Governor Igay, I mean Governor Abercrombie, you know, and along with all the people. And then when in this race, we all went over and actually helped Governor Igay. And so it says something about our party. I don't know what exactly. Maybe some scholar like you might find out, but it showed that there was flexibility in the situation anyway. It was surprisingly surprising. Well, for me personally, for me personally, I had a hard time in this election because I actually personally really like Congresswoman Honobusa. I actually helped her campaign twice. Yeah. And I am convinced that had she stayed in Congress, she would have evolved into one of the most, you know, most important people there. But on the other hand, you know, as with David Igay, he was the kind of person that actually grows. In my opinion, in the office, he actually visibly grew and doing this campaign he did too. But what about the lieutenant governor's race? Now outside of Josh Green, Josh, you know, Josh's, we were at the unity breakfast yesterday and I looked at the governor when Josh was up there giving his speech and I said, you're going to have a really interesting time in the campaign and later on. Because Josh is, well, he's a medical doctor, right? And he doesn't mind telling you that he is. No, I think it's every third sentence. But I mean, I said this, I was at the law school this morning, you know, and talking to the kids and I was talking about how things have changed in politics and I said, you know, here we got the lieutenant governor candidate talking about sharing a doobie. Right. And the state senator. And the state senator. And I'm thinking to myself, I remember when politicians were saying they didn't inhale, you know, and here we are all these years later and I said, this is going to be an interesting race. It is, it is. It's going to be an absolutely interesting race. I'll predict something though. I think that Andrea is not going to be someone that they can take for granted. Her party is in shambles. I don't know what kind of ground game if all that they have beyond a few, you know, probably district level people, but she is a very intelligent, very articulate. She connects well with people. I mean, she's a sort of Republican who can win in this state. She really has a lot of local support. She's been involved in her community for years. Well, she does. She's not ideological. Yeah. She can make it pass any type of ideological, you know, ideological trap that's out there that may not fit with people in general in this state. But the Republicans just have, at least here, just have a terrible time running in any event. I mean, Kacinich was on television the other day and he was talking about this is a party that just a few years supported free trade. Yeah. And now they're putting tariffs on that used to be a Democrat position in a sense. Oh, yeah. It was the worst of all. It's what caused us to start losing elections was that we started to become protectionist. Exactly. And that's going on. He says, as a family-based, supposedly family-based party, we're sponsoring policies that separate children and families. Even if you're worried about immigration, why would you do that? And, you know, debt, I mean, the wall is going to cause this country to go into huge debt. For no good reason. And so the parties really change, you know? And don't you think it's that brand that makes it so hard for Republicans here to get any sort of purchase? That's why I think that we had a discussion on the election night. I had a discussion. Oh, with Sam Sloan. Yeah, with Sam Sloan. And, you know, Sam, he's your nice little guy that, you know, forever upheld the Republican flag, a little to the right of Attila de Hond, but a nice guy, you know? And then I, and Duke Iota was there, and he's a little to the left of Attila, but not much. And then they're going to have an interesting time trying to rebuild a party. Well, they're going to go from five seats now to four, because they're Republican candidate for Andrea's seat was disqualified because they don't even have somebody running. No, no, no, they can't win it. They have no one running. So no matter what the best case scenarios, they go to four. Well, I tell you, we're going to take a short break right now. We'll come back and we'll talk about more winners and losers and other except exciting issues with this recent primary election in Hawaii. Aloha. My name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea. Law Across the Sea is on Think Tech Hawaii every other Monday at 11 a.m. Please join me where my guests talk about law topics and ideas and music and Hawaii Ana all across the sea from Hawaii and back again. Aloha. My name is Calvin Griffin, the host of Hawaii Uniform. And every Friday at 11 o'clock here on Think Tech Hawaii, we bring in the latest in what's happening within the military community. And we also invite all of your response to things that's happening here. For those of you who haven't seen the program before, again, we invite your participation. We're here to give information, not disinformation. And we always enjoy response from the public. Join us here, Hawaii Uniform, Fridays, 11 a.m. here on Think Tech Hawaii. Aloha. Aloha. And welcome back to Talk Story with John Wahee and my special guest, local political pundit, Colin Moore, professor at the University of Hawaii. And I guess you're the head of the public policy. Public policy. Yeah, so this becomes something that you should know a lot about. Yeah. Okay. Winners and losers. Okay. Biggest winner, biggest loser. Okay. Biggest winner, obviously, is David E. Gay and the E. Gay crowd. Losers are, well, certainly Colleen Honabusa, but beyond that, I think, is more generally, actually, the old Noe group of the old Noe political class here in Hawaii, actually, because Colleen Honabusa lost, Jiltacuta lost, who was also backed by some of the folks around Senator Inouye, strong political figures like Jennifer Sabas. And that I think is really, I mean, that's a big moment here, because those have been power players for a long time in the state. You know, that's right. That's right. And they have, yeah, they've been active. Oh, yeah. And all the people that they seem to be associated with didn't do well. And along with that, I mean, another person who is certainly an associate of the senator and a major political figure is Mayor Caldwell. I think he was a big loser last night, too, because the candidates he was backing, people like Bobby Bunda. Yeah, it's interesting. Colleen Waters didn't perform well. As a mayor, he went out and, you know, in a sense, tried to elect a council that was closer to himself politically, and that didn't happen. No. Frankly, there was one race that surprised me. Well, there were a couple of races that surprised me. But the one race that surprised me was Bobby Bunda losing on the North Shore. I didn't think that was possible. I didn't either. I mean, it's not that he lost. He lost badly. Right. It wasn't even close. And so maybe the third group, I'd say, of losers, are older established politicians trying to get back into politics. So you could say Clinton, he, Bobby Bunda, this sort of a group who joined Yukimura on Kauai. That's right. She's got third place against Kawakami, who dominated that election. Wow. So a lot of these old timers trying to get back in did not do well. How did Gary Hooser do? Or did he run at all? No, he didn't run. He didn't run. Okay. But he was actually smiling on election night and telling me that he was sort of happy with the results some of his progressives got, but I didn't see anything. So maybe, so the only person I can think of who would have been in that group who won is Amy Perusso, who won in District 45 or 42, which was filled by an appointee, Leigh Lermont. But that was a surprising victory, although overall I'd say the progressives didn't do well. I mean, so the most well-known who ran on that ticket is Kaniela Ng. Yeah. Kaniela was an interesting race, you know, because he took a lot of progressive positions. And I think that when the financial reports come in, he probably had a lot more money than people realize for a campaign that didn't take corporate contributions, which shows you the power of the internet, power of raising money. He was backed by national progressive organizations. I mean, the Democratic Socialists of America were increasingly influential. I mean, a lot of mainland interest in that race, who were convinced that he was going to perform well, but he got 6% of the vote. It wasn't even close. I know that for a lot of people that were early on thinking about, you know, giving him a chance at least, the whole episode on Danny Noy. Yeah, that was bad. The campaign spending violations. And the campaign spending violations. In fact, I heard some young people, which is, you know, I actually felt sorry for him on this, on that issue, but I heard some young people yesterday talking about the fact that, you know, if you're going to be a pure progressive, you better know something about your finances, you know. And what they were saying was they didn't vote for him because of that issue. And I said, well, you know, everybody ought to have a second chance. Which is, by the way, something that works better for the religious right, you know, because they start off thinking people are as sinful to begin with. And therefore, redemption can happen. The trouble with the left, the religious quote-unquote, the secular left, is that there's no redemption possibility. That's right, that's right. Yeah, yeah. He suffered with that. Although I'm not sure, no matter what, he would have been able to. What about the competitors and their guys? All right, so. Negative campaigning. Negative campaigning. A lot of negative campaigning with them. I mean, their one big victory, of course, was Josh Green. Right. The candidate, they put him there. And it was the one candidate which was pretty much positive. It was all positive. I can't think of or remember a single Josh ad that was negative. It was all positive. I mean, it was Josh Green with babies. It was Josh Green at the hospital. It was Josh Green ad nausea. Yeah, yeah, looking like the greatest guy ever. And they didn't go negative in that race. I mean, they could have gone negative against Jill Takuta, because I think one of their motivations in backing Josh was that they were angry at Jill. So that worked for them. I mean, and in a crowded race like that, you're really talking, I mean, that's really a moment when money can make a huge difference. A lot of unknown candidates. I mean, you know, we tend to think these people are really well known, but among most of the electorate, even if you're a state senator, nobody knows who you are. Oh, nobody knows who you are. So spending that kind of money can really raise your profile. I remember when I was the lieutenant governor, you know, my communications director was a gentleman called Chuck Friedman, who you might know. He works now for a set of shots. When I used to tell him, your job is to get me in the media every day. And then when I became governor, and he was my communications director, your job is to keep me out every day, you know, because politicians don't realize it. They think everybody knows who they are, but they really don't. And the cops did a good job with Josh Green's election. They did. But they didn't do a good job with everything. No, on the negative stuff, it just didn't work. It didn't work. It didn't work against EGAY, those false missile alert ads. I think they, in fact, what I heard from some internal polling was that actually it was hurting that those ads were less likely. Yeah, they were tiresome. And then they had this really brutal, I mean, one of the really dirtiest mailers I've seen in a long time against Carol Fukunaga. Oh, wow. Yeah, that was, you know, and that didn't work. And it hurt. In fact, it probably elected her. I think it did. I think she got more support. So it was a big failure. They endorsed Tyler, Dostoevostam. Who I thought, you know, as a young guy in the party, had a great future. He's a strong candidate. He's a strong candidate. And to have, you know, to see where he ended up, it's kind of surprising. It was to get third place. And I think that was due to that mailer. I really do. I think it hurt him. I don't know if people realize this, but isn't the first time that Carol had to face, not that particular issue, but a spirit-type campaign. In the first campaign she ran for the House of Representatives, it came right after the 78th Con Con. This is a little bit of history for you, history buffs. And she was in the crowded race in the Manoa Sea. And all of a sudden, her opponent, who was a protégé of one of the leading senators at the time. I'm not going to name names because we have all forgiven and forgotten each other. But anyway, they came out with a very negative ad accusing her of stealing furniture from the Constitutional Convention. Stealing furniture? Yeah, really, it's like incredible. So she's going to hate me for telling this story. She really is. But fortunately for her, right after that happened, the news people interviewed her. And she started a little teary-eyed saying, I never stole anything in my life. And she won the election. And so don't do that to her. Doesn't work. It doesn't work. OK, Ed Case. Ed Case. So no surprise that Ed Case won. Well, beautiful campaign. Yes. People talk about him going in late. That was all nonsense. He was running for at least three months before he filed. Absolutely. You know, Ed has ran before. And I never thought that he ran any campaign that was worthy of reproduction. But this time, he did everything almost perfect. And coming in late was a strategy. Look, none of those other candidates adapted to the reality that he was in the race. Plus, when he came alone, the day that he declared, the second later, his campaign was in full swing. Exactly. It wasn't one of these things where you declare and then you wait two or three weeks while you try to get it together. You know, he did it. And he was sign waving the next day. I saw him. And oh, his wife, Audrey, she's always been a real asset. But you know, his son is at the University of Hawaii now. And I happened to be at a class that he was at. And I told him. I said, you know, your dad ran a good campaign. And congratulated him, really. And he also did something that I thought was really interesting. His campaign was supported by a bunch of younger millennial types who were actually disenchanted with the far left rhetoric of the Kaniyala. And who were part of that group. In other words, they were part of the group that were Bernie Sanders's revolution. But they wanted to really work for somebody who, and I don't know what screening process they went through, but they ended up with it. With Ed. And they were, in my opinion, they are some of the best modern grassroots people that I know. Because I tell you, Bernie Sanders ran a great young people's campaign. And if we had to attract that, I might even decide to give him a second chance. I would have loved to have one time when we could have been campaigning at the same site. What do you think? So one question I wanted to ask you is the leadership of the legislature was against David Ige in this campaign. They all back clean. Do you think that's going to make it tough for him going forward? Well, I think that it would be both sides to forgive and forget and move on. And if I was David and if I were them, I would try to look for a coordinated package for the first session. I would try to meet together and go into some hard discussions and come out with a united package, which I did a few times when I was governor. But I would think if David had a chance he should do that. And if I was Scott Psyche, I would have tried to do that. Ron Cochie is probably more amenable to that sort of thing. He sort of stayed. He was with Hanabusa, saw it off. But not as deep as Psyche and Sylvia. It looks like they're gearing up for a fight, though, with these disputes about the amount of money requested by Harry Camp on the big island. That was really not. It didn't sound democratic. I mean, what you ought to say is we'll do whatever we can to help the people to be gone. You don't say, well, this is a payoff for this. Or we're going to make sure. I mean, you don't do that to people who just lost their houses. But maybe it's part of the maturation process. But if they want to be mature, then what we ought to do is have a democratic package. Well, anyway, thank you very much. My pleasure, my pleasure. And folks, we'll be back in two weeks. And maybe with more exciting political news and advice. Aloha.