 This is Think Tech Hawaii. Community matters here. All of them, spouting to those of us that have been around a long time, is that the political pundits are mostly young and male and fairly new to the islands. Therefore, they often miss the historical nuances, the subtle distinctions that pass by us. So I asked my friend Scott Foster, who is a political consultant and has been for many, many years and worked with some of the best to talk about that, to talk about the things that the pundits miss. So, good afternoon, Scott, and welcome. Hello, Marcia, and thank you for having me on the show. So, Nat, I said that you worked with some of the best. Tell us about some of the best political consultants. Oh, goodness. Probably the best in the world, the man who invented the term political consultant, was Joe Napolitan, Joseph Napolitan. Not so well known now. Joe has been dead maybe ten years, but we were friends for, oh, twenty years at least. I worked with him first on Governor Cayetano's first campaign for Governor in 1994, and several campaigns afterwards. Joe, for example, was the consultant for John F. Kennedy's first campaign. He was the consultant for the Burns campaign. He did that wonderful video to catch a wave that brought the Burns to the fore in prominent and elected governor. And then he did Ben Cayetano's campaigns, where I met him for the first time. So you learn a lot working with people like that. Another one that comes to mind, and I don't know that she would like being considered a political consultant, but A.Q. McElrath taught me, I worked on, as did you, worked on many campaigns with her issue, more issue campaigns than electoral campaigns. But to learn at the feet of people like that, when one sees some of these pundits who are drugged out every election, you don't hear much from them in between a few, but not much, pontificating and espousing as they know what they're talking about. I literally laugh at a lot of it, but I also know that it has some effect on the electorate. And I agree with you, I think because these people simply don't have the history or the experience to draw on to make some of the silly remarks they make. Well, one of them just really annoyed me, no end, was in this morning's paper today, this one. And it talks about women losing major races, and it's all about gender bias. They quote Mr. Hart, what is John Hart's title? John Hart is director of communications at Hawaii Pacific University. And he said, he called Sharon Morawaki a political newcomer. Yes, I read that and laughed. Now, for those of you that say, well, who is Sharon? Because you don't know. I first met Sharon when she was the chair of the Democratic Party's coordinated campaign. That's been a long time. A long time ago. Oh, a long time ago. That was actually, I think, before I came to Hawaii. She was in the cabinet for Waihe'e. She has been within the political system for all of those years. Yeah, people get married and their names change. But she's been there as a human being, as a woman. I think she's used her name. This is her maiden name, I think. So there's some consistency. But the fact that he did not know that she is not a political lightweight, that she is not a political newcomer, that she does know how to do this and how to campaign. And she knows everybody in her district and how to get to know people. And her opponent didn't bother. Well, Sharon's most recent organizing effort was Unite, and Kakaako United. That began a number of years ago to oppose all of the big buildings that are now going up in Kakaako. And she had some great victories there and obviously some losses. But she was very prominent throughout that and after. So it's those kinds of things that we're talking about that they don't have a political history or context or understand the bias. And for the viewers who are not aware, Sharon pulled off an incredible political coup and defeated an incumbent senator, Brickwood Gallateria, just trumped him. And so the lady knew what she was doing. Yes. And Brickwood comes from a long, he's Hawaiian, and comes from a long line of prominent Hawaiians. And it is one of those names, one of those people that are part of the Hawaiian community. And again, that goes back to the history and the historical context of who Brickwood is. Brickwood was also chair of the Democratic Party before he got elected and then he told both of us, oh, I'm not going to run for office. What can I say? But again, we are talking the historical context of who these people are. Well, let's not pick on just John Hart. No, that one just got to me. That one was the most prominent. That one got to me. No, I'm not going to pick on John. He's a nice man, I've met him. No, that comment was like, oh, come on. The blame maybe ought to be laid with the media. Or lack thereof. Or lack thereof for not looking around and finding out no one ever calls me and I've been working prominently for 35 years and I don't get a call. But they don't look at the candidate and then they say, well, there's a low voter turnout. That's because people don't know that they have something to vote for or against, whichever the case may be. But if you don't spend the time to get to know who the candidates are and something about them, and now, of course, I am going to say it, those of us, those old-timers, that every time Ed Case shows up, something goes wrong. He gave us Linda Lingle. Yes, he did. Yes, he did. People don't understand that. That was the last campaign I worked on, by the way, with Joe Napolitan. In fact, I went to Governor Caetano the last year of his term and said, Ben, who are we going to run for governor? And he said, well, I'm not sure. I said, what about Ed Case? Because I had worked with Ed in the legislature. Ed was a different creature in the legislature. I found him very progressive, very easy to work with. And so, well, what about Ed Case? And Governor said, well, yes. So I walked over that moment to Ed's office and said, have you considered running for governor? And he said, well, I thought about it. And I said, what if I could get you Joe Napolitan to advise your campaign? And he said, oh, I'd run in the New York minute. I called Joe. I said, Joe, you want to come back and do one more? And Joe said, sure, who? And the rest is history, as they say. Ed called Joe. And pretty soon, Ed and his wife were on a plane to New York. Now, the reason we're talking about this is revealing the reality of a political campaign long past. The late Bob Reese, who was a very noted writer and PR guy, had never worked publicly on a political campaign. It wound up being Joe Napolitan, Bob Reese, and myself, who were advising the Case Campaign for Governor. Now, we knew that Ed could beat Lingle, but we knew it was going to be a challenge for him to beat Maisie for all the reasons we know. The ethnic aspect of it, et cetera, et cetera. And Maisie and Peter Doos is the Lieutenant Governor. Well, all of a sudden, in virtually the early beginning of the Case Campaign, Joe Napolitan, Bob Reese, and I were stunned to see, all of a sudden, the Case Campaign was populated with, I wouldn't say strangers, but they hadn't been around in the early days, and they were calling the shots. And Joe and Bob and I sat in the corner for the rest of that campaign watching them make terrible decisions. And in fact, after, and there is a point to this, after the election that Maisie won, I emailed Joe Napolitan and I said, well, wasn't that fun? And Joe wrote back, if Ed Case had listened to me, he'd be the Governor of Hawaii today. So this is the reason we say that he gave us Linda Lincoln. Yes. Yes. And Ed, if you're listening, that's the reality. I've got the emails if you want to see them. Oh, I've got one more, Ed Case. And everybody says, why did the Democrats turn on him? Ed became Congressman for quite a while, and Senator Akaka was Senator. Yes. And so those of us that are the worker bees down in the trenches, we thought this is a great election. Ed is safe, Akaka's safe. Now we can put energy into our house districts. So all the money, all of the worker bees were busy at home. Ed decides to leave the house and run against Senator Akaka. And everybody was upset because those of us that were working in the trenches had to now defend Akaka. Senator Akaka. The money went to defend him. We lost house seats, and we in Hawaii lost that house seat, and we still haven't gotten back. It still belongs to a Republican. So those of us, and they say the party turned on him, you bet they did. All of those that were in the trenches, yes. Like I said, every time he shows up, something goes wrong. We don't know what is going to be this time. The hubris of running against Senator Akaka in the first place is what stunned me, regardless of what anyone might say or think of Senator Akaka. He was a magnificent human being and was represented Hawaii beautifully for decades. And to challenge him just made no sense. No. But your point is taken that our energies had to move. Everything had to shift. And we lost house races. Yes. That's the one reason that at that period of time there were more Republicans than there are now. Right. And for those of you that may not understand how this works, the Democratic Party is created for one purpose, and it says so in the charter. And that is to get people out to vote. And so it is organized by district and precinct. And so everything lines up for people to get out the vote, to work, walk, door to door to do all the things that it takes. And when you somehow change that in midstream, and all of these workers down here have to go over here, everything changes. Everything changes. And so if you heard in the news about some residuals people not liking at case, that is what it was about. And every time I look and say, we still have this Republican after all those years. So enough of that. So what else have they missed? What else, what other things have the pundits not seen? Well, one thing has been the reality of the change of guard of the Democratic Party. Oh, that's great. Hold that point. We need to take a break. And when we come back, let's talk about the changing of the guard. I love that. Okay, we'll be right back. This is Think Tech Hawaii, raising public awareness. You can be the greatest. You can be the best. You can be the king. Come play in all your chess. You can be the world. You can be the war. You can talk to God. Don't bangin' on his door. You can throw your hands. I'm Andrea Gabrieli. I'm the host for Young Talents Making Way here on Think Tech Hawaii. We talk every Tuesday at 11 a.m. about things that matter to tech, matter to science, to the people of Hawaii with some extraordinary guests, the students of our schools who are participating in science fair. So Young Talents Making Way every Tuesday at 11 a.m. only on Think Tech Hawaii. Mahalo. Aloha. And this is Community Matters. And today we're talking with Scott Foster, a political consultant for more years than I can count. I guess I can count. I just don't know. Thirty-five. Thirty-five. Here in Hawaii. Many before. Okay. And we're talking about political pundits not having the historical background to see how they miss the nuance, the historical bias as it were. So Scott, you were talking about this time how they miss the changing of the guard in the Democratic Party. Well, they didn't miss it on the surface, but if you go back to the previous chair of the party who was swept in by the so-called Hawaii progressives, the Bernie people, which I associate somewhat with. I don't agree with everything they say. Well, but they did win. They did win. But what the pundits have missed is that they won, but they didn't know how to operate the machine once they got behind the controls. That is the progressive, the quote, Bernie people. We call them Bernie people because that's kind of a nice phrase. Right, right. And it's a positive phrase. I'm certainly not knocking the progressives. No, no. And I think they identify with that phrase. Well, in came the new chair, Tim Vandevere a little over two years ago. And Tim, to my knowledge, had very little to do with the actual Democratic Party. He may have been involved somewhere, but I had never met him. I had never met him, either. Prior to that. And frankly, he didn't know where the light switches were. And a number of us attempted to assist him, but he kept his own counsel and chose other people. But, you know, he also had, he was a final year in law school, and he had a family. And the chair of the party does not get paid. So he had to juggle all of that. So I have to get some credit for at least attempting to do this job, which is thankless and never-ending. Absolutely. But promises were made, promises were not kept. People were offended. People stepped away. And then his decision to hold the party convention last year on the Big Island was very disruptive and cost the party a lot of money. Not that we shouldn't have the conventions, or the Democratic Party shouldn't have conventions on neighbor islands from time to time, but the practicality and the expense of people traveling there is just prohibitive. So it was no surprise to me that he lost the re-election. And Kaylee, he, senior moment last name, Lopez, was elected. And there's a lot of consternation there. I know her well, you do. She is an administrator. Yes. And the chair of the party is an administrator. Yes, and I wish her the best. It is a huge job. And she probably will do an excellent job. It is... But again, the pundits are not talking about any of this. The disruption to the party, all new... Everything. All new everything. Now, we talked about this many, many years ago. And when Lessie Haram was... Senator Lessie Haram, not his father, was chair of Oahu County. And we talked about not having the election of the chair at the same time as a major election. That it should be the year before so that the chair gets acclimated to all of the things that have to happen. Many deadlines. Unbelievable. Yes. So we at least got Oahu County moved to the year before the election. We could manage to that, but couldn't get the big one. Right, Chair. So again, if you don't know how all of this works, and it does work, surprisingly enough, it does work. It does work, yes. So again, if they don't know, if the pundits don't know the experts, the royal experts don't know how this works and why it works. Well, this gets back to the media's failure to identify people who do know how it works. Now, some do, but obviously some don't, and I see those young TV personalities. Well, I think that's more to it. It's a TV personality rather than looking at the depth of this. Well, the governor's debate, the big governor's debate, was just terrible. Nobody knew the questions to ask. And the media didn't know the questions to ask. The governor of the state of Hawaii is the most powerful governor of all 50 states, according to Google. He has 18 departments and boards and commissions, 18 that answer to him. Yes. So... Appointed by him. Appointed by him. And yet we have all the strangeness going on. Nobody asked those questions. Well, what about the health department? What about the corruption within the Department of Agriculture? What about the fact that the office of Hawaiian homes had to return $300 million and they've got Hawaiians living on the beach? No one asked those questions. Which brings us to the governor's election. Yes. Which was a phenomenal turnaround with Governor Igay 20 points behind as opposed to a few months ago. Someone said Madam Pilly helped save him. Yes. But the governor seemed to find his voice and his leadership style and a little more aggressive than he was while Colleen Honabusa just really wasn't there. Well, in today's paper it talked about how they tried to feminize her instead of allowing her to be who she is. Yes. And they did the same with Donna Kim and Hillary Clinton. What's her name? All of the really strong women, the things that they adore and admire in men, they denigrate women. And one of these articles even complained in the today's paper, even complained about the fact that there were girls in Honabusa's commercial. Can you believe that? That he would complain. Kevin Davis complained about girls in the commercial. Every commercial has girls in it. Girls need to see that they can grow into powerful women. That's the reason they're in the commercials for girls to see that they can grow into this. They miss that. Girls meaning young ladies under... Young ladies in the commercials. School age kids. And they complain that they're girls in the commercial. So, back to the pundits. Okay, let's move maybe to Oha. Okay, real quick. We're almost out of time. Okay, all those, as you and I were talking earlier, all of those candidates, and you've interviewed how many of them? I don't remember. Lots of them. Several of them, anyway. And that's a big field. And the pundits talked about all the blank votes. That's not surprising. As we know, up until just, I don't know, 15, 20 years ago, only Hawaiians could vote in the election. And then that was changed by the U.S. Supreme Court. Yes. So that everyone... Rice versus kaitana. So that everyone could vote. But out of respect, I believe, for the Hawaiian people, most people do leave that blank because they don't feel like Hawaiian issues are any of their business. That, of course, is changing since the bad audits at Oha and all of that. But that, to me, was one of the more... I watched that race as closely as I did the governor's race. We are going to invite some of them back to talk about exactly that, about the fact that... about everybody voting in it and how the rules of the November ballot seem strange to me, but what can I say? Yeah. So we're going to invite somebody back that knows... We've got six candidates running against the three top candidates who just won. And which seems strange, that they were on the ballot with these 23 candidates all together. And we get to vote for three. Well, of course, the big question is where are the ones that are no longer on the ballot, where are their votes going to go? Well, yes. We need to spend the whole time talking about Oha. And it's important to all of us in everyday life because you can't just say that's over here and we're over here. And one last thing, in the 1978 concon, at that point from the beginning of statehood, we had two member districts, house districts, two members. Two representatives. Two representatives. And then part of concon. When the Republicans really worked at advertising that if we had a single member district, it would be cheaper. I mean, they really campaigned on that. So in the 1980 election, guess what? No Republicans won. And now they're still complaining about the Democrats, but they are the ones... I did it. They did it. In today's primary, some of the seats that Republicans did not feel. And they can't keep saying it's the Democrats. If they don't put up candidates that we can vote for, like this young lady... Well, some would say all the decent Republican candidates are already Democrats. Democrats have run for Democrats. Like this young lady, Topola, I think she's going to go places. I'm sorry though, that she and Beth Fukumoto left the House of Representatives, because that leaves those spots empty. And we need people like that in the House. We need to talk about Beth Fukumoto a little more at a later date, because she could pull off a lindelangle victory. You mean, this one, Topola, not Fukumoto. Yes. Okay. Well, thank you, Scott. As always, it's a pleasure being with you. Thank you. And we will do some more of this. Aloha. We'll see you next time.