 special guest this afternoon is one of the, I would say, the senior, the senior political commentator in the state of Hawaii right now, Richard Vereca. And I say senior, not necessarily in terms of age, but he's one of the few people that actually has institutional knowledge reaching all the way back from when I was in office. So I am so glad that he consented to be our guest. Welcome, Richard. It's a pleasure to have you here. Hello, Governor. I'm glad to see you. Well, everybody, you know, if you don't already know folks, what Richard does among many things is that he writes a column every week for the Star Advertiser. And I guess originally with the Star Bulletin, you know, for years. So you have done this and you talk about politics and just yesterday, last Sunday, you wrote an article about Kai Caheli and his interview where he seemed very emotional. What was that all about? It was very interesting. Caheli, of course, is running for governor this year. And it's interesting that this is the third race, the third different race he's been in in six years. So he's been all over the field and what he's running for. But it was an interview that was on the Star Advertiser's web page with Eunji Denise. And she was talking to him about his campaign for governor and he started at first just cheering up a little because he got emotional about how important it is to run for governor as you would know. But then he several times started not sobbing but crying and there were obvious tears glistening on his cheeks as he was talking. And Eunji twice had to mention during the interview that he was a little broken up with his emotion over that. Which is an interesting thing. You don't rarely ever see a political candidate do something like that. So that was what my column was about. I don't know whether, I think I saw Clinton want to do that. But it was, you know, the subject matter was interesting to me because he was also talking about the fact that he was limiting his contribution. Yes, $100 a contribution and not taking money from labor unions or political action committees. Or major, major donors that you usually see in the campaign year. And it was sort of like he was sort of like thinking like coming clean, so to speak. It was saying, from what I gathered, now I have to confess I didn't myself see the interview. And but I thought to some people after I read your column as a matter of fact. And it seemed like he was talking about change, you know, almost like I'm not taking any money, Bob, and the rest of it and confessing to that he, the fact that he had done what he was no longer going to do. Yes. So on the emotional level, it seemed like he was saying, I got to do this for a wife, my kids, and getting very emotional, which is I think we're giving him the benefit of the doubt. I can see where, you know, talking about your family and politics sometimes gets very emotional. I've been there, I know. But what about the idea itself, the idea of just taking minor contributions on my understanding is that the reason where you don't take sort of limit the contribution number is because that's what you need to do in order to qualify for public financing for the campaign. I guess that's what he's very he's he's he's very low in being able to raise, I believe it's $200,000, he's going to need to be able to qualify for the full match of public funding for the his campaign. So he's he's still just around according to the last figures I looked up is around $100,000 in campaign fundraising. So he's got a way to go. It's just to get money, period. And the other thing is that because he jumped into this race very late, although he's been rumored in and it's been an encouraged speculation on his part that he might do something like this, but actually doing it has happened until just last week. And so he's got a way to go to collect money. And the other thing is that there may not be that much money out there left to get if major donors such as the unions, political action committees, and then just fat cats with money who like to get involved in politics. So you think that may not be there as a strategic purpose for doing this as well as, you know, seeing the light, so to speak. Well, he may have a strategic purpose, but his his timing just looking at it on a technical basis, his timing is is not very good. There's not he he should have been doing this a couple of months ago instead of now. Well, let me ask Richard, because I am so out of touch with it. What is what is the amount of money you can get for governor's race, public planning? You can get I think at $600,000 for I may be a little bit off on that, but it's not a tremendous amount of money, but it's it's money that can go. The last candidate who used public financing for the campaign, of course, was David E. Gaye in his first his first election run for governor. Yes. And it worked just fine. Yeah, it seems to I mean years ago when I was running lieutenant governor, we we also did went after public financing, frankly, strategically, because I couldn't get any get any more money than the matching amount. But, you know, okay, but that brings up a broader issue, which is where I want to go and that is the the problem really is and let me just put it that way, because that's how I feel the problem of money and policy, you know, and it seems to me that we need to come up with some way of separating the power of money from politics. So let me give you an example. When I was running as you know, back in the day, people used to, you know, have these fundraisers. And the idea of the fundraiser was to have a thousand people show up or or some number paid like $25 fundraiser. And today what we seem to see is you rather have 25 people show up, eat a few herbs and each give you a thousand as opposed to, you know, working the numbers the other way. And I don't know. I think that somehow that at least gives the appearance of money being more in control than it might. I think so. I think that obviously campaigns have to start out with someone, you know, sprinkling some money around, they don't start out of those proverbial grassroots. You have to have some backers to go into it. But yes, it used to be the major candidates would have fundraisers down at Aloha Tower and you'd get thousands of people showing up. And that would be one way that we would judge the power and the clout that the campaign was going to have. Nowadays, it's almost completely a measure of how much money a candidate has raised. You know, we always complain about money and being too evil a thing to have in politics. But then at the same time, us reporters also look at the money that a candidate raises to judge that candidate's credibility going into a campaign. So we're sort of both ways on that. How much can you raise and how much can you then spend? So it's a, if you remember the famous local political or local cliché, it says, if can, can, if no can, no can. And it certainly certainly is true about fundraising in local politics. Well, you know, what's interesting is that today the only major candidate that I know of, no, they probably are others, but the only major candidate which believes in having these huge rallies and so forth that used to be commonplace in Hawaii politics is Donald Trump. He can't stand to be anywhere. You know, he probably doesn't actually raise money that way, but he can't stand not to have thousands of people that are rallying something. You know, it's ironic that my party, the so-called party, the party of people that we'd like to describe as Democrats, seem to be going the yellow. You know, we don't do things that seem to bring together hundreds, four thousand people. No, I agree. In fact, one of the last really great local political rallies I can recall was way back when Bill Clinton came out and had the speech at the Ilikai Hotel on the beach there. That was a big local rally that just sort of took on a life of its own. They've tried a couple of times at McKinley High School to have other rallies, but we haven't seen the same kind of big two, three thousand people rallies that there were at one time. Yeah, I remember Bob Bushiro used to pride himself on being able to at least look like he was going to fill a little stadium up with people and, you know, turn elections around. Seemed to have worked, you know, worked for me, his idea. Yes, yes. He was a great aide to your campaign. Well, I tell you, we're going to take a short break right now. We'll be right back, but when we do come back, I want to talk about money and politics. I want to talk about the fact that there is this aura of corruption, that money is corrupting politics in Hawaii, and but not so much to dwell on the individual cases, but talk a little bit about maybe some of the ideas that people have been tossing around as to how we can improve things. So right now, folks, we're going to take a short break and we will be right back with Richard Bereka, Dean of Hawaii's Political Commentator, Richard Bereka. And I was going to say, Richard, you know, we've talked about, we're talking about the influence of money and politics. And as you know, there's been a number of this, you know, very disappointing situations recently regarding money and politics and how it seems to be corrupting. And I was wondering what you would, you know, there was talk in the legislature of reforming some of the, some of the fundraising tactics that politicians do. And yet nothing seemed to have happened, you know, this bad session. So one of the things that people talked about was the idea that politicians, whole fundraisers doing the session, which means basically, you know, if you, I don't know if it means this, but it implies that if you want their help, you need to do something about it. What do you think of all of that? Well, it, it, it, I think that the legislature was sort of spurred into it with the announcement at the beginning of the session or right before the session started with the indictments of the former Senate Majority Leader Kalani English and then the former representative Ty Cullen. They both led guilty to federal charges and they're supposed to have a sentencing date later on this summer for the charges on political corruption. Basically, taking, taking bribes for, I mean, they were blatant bribes to change a set of things. Now that, that was different than the same thing, than, than campaign fundraising thing. So, but the legislature in reaction to those F guy indictments did go out and pass a bill that was late in the Senate session. Wasn't exactly sure whether or not it was going to pass. And then finally it did that limited campaign fundraising and stopping it when the legislature's in session. It's something, but how much good is it really? You know, when campaign fundraising, doing the session actually started because of the neighbor island senators and representatives. At least that's how I remember it way back when, because, you know, they didn't live here all year round. So they took advantage of the Honolulu money, so to speak, by holding fundraisers. But if you know somebody's going to control your destiny, I don't know if it matters whether you hold a fundraiser in the, doing the session or right before it, you know, or right after. Legislators are not dumbbells and they're going to figure out ways to raise money, whether it's in session or out of session. It's just something that's going to happen. I have seen some legislators who were very blatant about making sure that everyone who testified before their legislative committee was immediately sent a book of fundraising tickets. I have seen that happen. Well, well, I ran into Gary Hooser just a couple of days ago and he told me that his new campaign is going to be, you know, push, legislative push is going to be to have all public financing of campaigns, as opposed to what we now have. He'd like to see all offices funded. Now, Chuck Friedman and some of the other people in my, oh boy, those are old names, in my former administration advocated for that. I remember we submitted a bill. I don't, and I have to confess, I wasn't what you'd call a passionate supporter at the time, but we submitted the bill and it's got nowhere. But it seems like maybe that's something that we ought to reconsider, the idea that take private money out of campaigns entirely. And there's some advantages to having all campaigns publicly funded, you know, and what do you think? Well, you're the, you're the attorney in this conversation and I'm not sure that you can actually legally prohibit people from giving money to a candidate if they want to give money. Perhaps there's a way if you say that now only state money is allowed and you can't give your own money because all of the money is being given on a statewide basis or a publicly funded basis. But there have been limits that say that, you know, it's freedom of speech to be able to give money to a candidate. And if you say that, I can't give money to a candidate anymore, you're limiting my right to speak essentially. So there's that difficulty. My understanding is that the, in the past, in the past, if you made it a requirement for everyone as a qualification, you could do that. But with the new Supreme Court, you're correct. I mean, they just came out with a recent decision that regarding Ted Cruz of all people, which says you can't limit the amount of money that a person can get reimbursed for if it's his own money or something like that. But the idea of public financing, I think is so attractive. I believe, though, that one of the most insidious situations, I mean, is when people who are in public office are allowed to hold second jobs. You know, and that, you know, seems to me like getting caught with somebody in the car handing you money is, it's just stupid that, you know, for $5,000 a month, hire the person to look out for your sewage plants. And the same result, the current, you know, I don't see, there is a distinctive difference, I know, qualitatively. But nevertheless, the result may be the same. Oh, there's a there for, for decades, different groups, be them hotel associations or unions have either sponsored and encourage someone to run for office, or then after they're in office, hire them up as their, their community relations person, and then have a person that they would assume is going to vote their way in the legislature. Maybe a little expensive way to do it. But yeah, there are different ways to get your message heard in the legislature. And that's a little expensive compared to just giving them $5,000 contributions. But yes, it's out there. Yeah, it's out there. And I think it's rather insidious, you know, because I remember way back when we were in the conca, and we were looking at the legislative salaries were set in 1970, I think, at $1,000 a month. And there was a question of how much more they should be said that we had to deal with the issue because it was not, it wasn't flexible, but $12,000 a month, not a month. $12,000 a year in 1970 was pretty much a living wage. And the idea back then was that it would make it possible for legislators not to work at all. So one of the second ideas in addition to public financing is this idea that no legislator or politician or public office holder should be able to hold a second job. And whether that would improve anything. No, in order to corollary of that would be the fact that they need to be paid some kind of a living wage at the same time. Now, if you did that, would that mean that if someone were like an attorney, they would have to stop being an attorney or if they were they could still be an attorney, but they couldn't have any clients that would then go on and represent various groups that would be before the legislature? Well, I think right now, right now, the attempt is to tell an attorney, for example, that you ought to, you know, be avoid your context of interest. But it would seem to me that even for an attorney, if you want to be in public service, you ought not to be representing people that who are and I don't know of anybody who would not be affected by public action. I mean, even if you represented just corporations and gave that all up and went to represent people who were in a sense, well, you know, maybe welfare. You know, you still would be representing an interest group. You know, I think the other area is bored. The legislature, the legislature, the constitution says that the governor can't hold more than one job. So it's obviously it's been done. I don't know. So we have all these reform efforts, you know, no no fundraising during the session, no public financing, no jobs. I wonder how serious we really are about all of this. What has been your experience just discussing this? I think I think that there is a very little attitude coming from the legislature. And it's definitely the sort of thing that's going to have to come from citizens groups, the common cause type groups that are going to be able to single out committees and say this has got to this has got to happen. The committee chairs have got to come out and do something to change it. This is the only way I'm going to see it. I haven't seen anyone in the legislature picking that up as a campaign issue. It's really hard campaign issues are going to be bread and butter type issues. Are you going to help with mortgages? Are you going to help with childcare? Are you going to help with schools? It's easier to get, you know, covered walkways for schools and it is to get someone to start worrying about the legislature. Well, I tell you, you know, you've been covering the political situation in Hawaii for how many years? Well, probably a little bit more than 40. Over the 40 years, has there been any qualitative change in the caliber of? I think that legislators one are much more professional and much better educated. And it's not like where you get it five or six people who would just say, I don't know about that bill. I'm going to do whatever the boys want us to do type of an attitude. And on the other hand, at the same time, you're still going to be held sway by the power of whomever the committee chairs are in the legislature. If you've got a committee chair who's looking to run for another office and use his or her work in in the legislature as the reason to elect them to a bigger and better office, then yeah, you can you can see some kind of following from that. But generally, you think that the well, I guess what generally you're thinking that some people today might be better educated on the issues so far that they were back? Oh, definitely. Definitely they are. But it's educated as they may be, it's whether or not they feel that they have the ability to go ahead and do their do their own thing, you know, or they have a different group of people that that are going to be beholding, they're going to be beholding too. Well, I tell you what, you know, actually, I'm a junkie of this kind of, as you know, and I wish we had at least another half an hour or so. And I would love you to come back, Richard, in we should do this again, if you don't mind. But right now I am at the closing. And I want to thank you for being a show on the show. And I'm saying we talked about campaign spending, but sometime I sure would like to talk to you about just the quality of politics in general, and maybe some of the characters that have you that you had the chance to, you know, work with over the years. Only if I can then ask you about the characters in the legislature that you've had to deal with. I would love to do that. I would love to do that. You know, there's so many, there's so many great stories out there. And I'm sure that the people would love to hear it. So again, thank you, Richard. I really appreciate you being on the show. And everyone welcome back to, you know, welcome to another talk story with John Wahey. And we will be having this very special guest back again in the future. Thank you and Aloha. Thank you for joining us on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn, and donate to us at think.kawaii.com. Mahalo.