 Aloha, everyone. Welcome back to Talk Story with John Whitehead. Or do I have an interesting program today? My guest is Richard Fureka, the dean of political reporters, commentators in the state of Hawaii. And he's been involved in covering our political scene for years, generations maybe. And guess what, folks? I am so excited. I couldn't sleep last night. I woke up because for the first time in my life, I get to interview Richard. You've got to understand, this guy has interviewed me a thousand times. Well, he ran me down. Well, talk about flipping the script. And it's a first for me. Really? I've certainly never been interviewed. I'm your first governor to interview you. That's right. Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Well, I've been thinking about it. Well, first of all, tell us when you started covering politics in a way. Well, it would be started as an intern at the Star Bulletin when it was the Star Bulletin in 1971. And worked my way through 75 and then took a year off and then went to work at KHVH News Radio for three years. And from there, I went to channel two and worked at channel two, KHON for seven years. That's right. Fifty years you've been covering. So tell, you know, how has politics changed? Jack Burns was the first governor I interviewed. Really? Yeah. Oh, what a legend. You've got to write a book, Richard. That's another subject. You know, you really should. Okay, tell us, has politics changed in any way? It's changed in a hundred ways and in a hundred ways it hasn't changed. Thank you. My fault in covering politics is that I actually appreciate politicians and what they do and can sympathize with what they do. So the human part of covering politics and the people part has not changed. It's still so much of the time comes down to the decisions that are made by people in committee rooms or people who have different forces pushing and tugging on them one way or the other. What has changed obviously is the internet has changed everything. Really? The degree of communications and how much more sophisticated a politician or a community leader has to be able to communicate with different people. Social media? Social media and deciding your audience. When you started in politics, you knew who your audience was. You didn't need polls. You could look them in the eye and you knew who you were appealing to. Right, they're your neighbors. You knew who you represented. Now with social media, everything you go is flung out worldwide and then from there, you have to figure out yourself how you narrow things down. So it's a different kind of issue. Richard, you mentioned that you were always cognizant of the human element. But I do want to be clear that that didn't influence the objectiveness of your stories. One of the things that I know I appreciated was the fact that you wouldn't do this interview one and interview another thing. You actually went out and got stories. And then I thought that was pretty interesting. I always appreciate doing that. Even as I do my column now for the Star Advertiser, there is still a great deal of calling people up and asking them what they think. And I get to do a lot more research-based reporting now. But also, you still have to go talk to people and get their feelings into your work. You're opening up a whole bunch of doors here. I just want to jump through it. First of all, in terms of these 50 years, who are some of the more interesting characters you got to write about or cover? Obviously, Jack Burns is a legend in Hawaii. I was a total cub reporter covering Jack Burns at the Capitol. I do remember one event he had at the State Capitol in the atrium there. And there was a platform set up, and there must have been like 100 people out in front for whatever the presentation was. And never once did he look at the audience. He spent all of his time looking at the people up on Nadeus and talking and talking story with them. And it was sort of like, he's not campaigning for votes. He's just going to be Jack Burns the whole way. So there was that kind of a thing. But I also remember a time when Frank Fosse, the great mayor of the city of County of Honolulu, banned you from talking to him. I was out for a while. In fact, we went to federal court. And the result of that, the star bulletin sued the mayor. Yes, he did. And Bereka V. Fosse is case law as far as reporters have now a right to go to a news conference. If someone, if a public official calls a news conference, you can't ban a reporter from that news conference. So you can't do what Donald Trump does, which is... Well, it may be questionable because he's not a public official. Oh yeah, good, good, good. That may be the thing, but if the mayor or the governor says, everyone can go in except for that reporter over there, you can't do that. And there's federal law on that, or federal precedent on that. Well, you know, I thought it was funny because I was working for Frank Fosse about that time. Was that Model Cities? Model Cities, yeah, yeah. And you were covering... And you were... I mean, it was famous, you know. It was just a kid then. Well, talking about covering the interesting politicians, yesterday millions of people watched the debate, the Clinton-Trump debate. And I could... One of the things I hope you watched is that I'm assuming you watched it. And, you know, how would you compare that debate to prior ones? I mean, even like... Well, I think... Well, I don't say I wasn't around for that one. But the... Okay, we got that clear. The thing is that I did think anecdotally that Clinton was... I looked to me over-prepared, had studied her notes a little bit too long, and was not... She could have been a little looser in her... Especially with that format. Yeah, that format. And Donald Trump, you could sort of see by the end of it, he decided he's just going to pitch away all pretenses of making a debate out of it, and he was just going to run through his specific things. But, you know, thinking about something with Hillary Clinton and being over-prepared, I remember when she was First Lady, and she was giving an address on Kauai. Okay. And we went to cover her. I was at Channel 2 at the time. Yeah, this was right after the hurricane. Yes, right, right. And she had stopped. Her motorcade had stopped to look at some of the damage. And we get out, and we hope to be able to ask her some questions. This is like... Remember the tree tunnel part on Kauai? Yes. Yeah, okay. Okay, so they had stopped there when they were looking at it, because a lot of the trees had fallen down, or the leaves had been stripped off of them. Anyway, her press handlers set up a rope line for me and Jen, Tim, Brug and Kate, and a couple of other reporters. I mean, it's like, this is the most inoffensive reporters in the world, but we still had a rope line pushing us away. Well, but you were famous from the Faustians. It was, so I think the over-protection was there. There was a tendency. There's been a tendency. In fact, you know, one of the things that I think is that my tenure as governor, and some coincides a little bit with the Clinton tenure, we were still in the, you know, protect the information. Yes. I mean, it seems like today, like take Donald Trump. I mean, if it comes into his head, he says it. We were still in the day when it was your job to be careful about what actually said. And there were ropes and things all around. Yeah. And I think that you're right. I think maybe Hillary might suffer from that. Brug, if you remember during that same time period when Clinton gave his speech in front of the Hilton Hawaiian village. On the beach. Yeah, the speech on the beach, right? Right. That was, and he talked about reversing the rope line. He worked that rope line. His speech may have been a half hour. He must have spent 45 minutes afterwards talking story with every person who came up. And I think there was 10,000 people there to see him. Well, you remember that he was right on the beach in the Kalahui. Yes. Willow Andresk and her gang had gotten set up right in front of that and were, you know, ready for action. And he came out with the idea of an apology to Native Hawaiians. And so, you know, this is a different kind of guy. He just, you know. But one thing that happened yesterday's debate is this, I think Donald missed a really good line when he talked about Abraham Lincoln because of everything else he said. He just got lost. I don't know how that affected you. He could have said, you're no Abraham Lincoln. He would have stuck out more if he didn't say everything else he said during the whole thing. But there is a Trump phenomenon going on in America now. And you can see it in this. How much of that do you feel is being translated to Hawaiians? You know, surprisingly, it's more than I had expected. First of all, I did not expect that he would win the election. Right. And so overwhelmingly win in Hawaii, win the plebiscite here in Hawaii. Right. And then go on to take the nomination. That was... Well, there's a kind of anger in the country and deceiving a little bit here as well. And so your sense is that it might be translating or, you know... I think that political leaders now have not worked the responsiveness that they should have to issues. And when they see issues boiling up, not being able to think that you can stonewall your way through them now is a mistake. Right. And that there are some people in politics who can respond to that. When you look at the days of Frank Fosse, when Frank Fosse was the mayor... He ran to an issue. Yes. He had an exquisite sense of timing, and he knew how to play the issues. But he also knew what was reverberating in the community to a large extent. So I have this thing that it may be that it's all there in Hawaii, as it is on the mainland or on the continent. But there is no place to focus that energy into. And so we might see it come out in the presidential race. We might have more people voting for Trump. I hope not. I'm obviously a partisan on that issue. But do you think that some of that might spill off to the mayors' race? I think that when you look at who the voters are going to be in that mayors' race, is it going to draw more Republicans or conservative voters or people who are fed up with the system out into the race? Yeah. But I think that's going to be balanced by the fact that the voter turnout I think is going to be phenomenally low. Okay. The first thing, I mean, the rule of thumb is that negative races always lower the voter turnout. When you have people throwing mud at each other, there's going to be a part of the electorate that's going to say, why bother? Why bother to vote? Well, one of the things that I think we both can agree that Hawaii could benefit from would be a stronger two-party system. Yes. In fact, I'm really actually glad. I had Beth Fukumoto on this show. And I'm really glad that she is starting to exert some kind of Republican leadership. But it seemed like the Republican, the loyal opposition was even stronger back in the days of the 70s and the 80s than they had in recent years. They certainly, in the legislature, the Republicans certainly had a much stronger presence there. I mean, what was the most they had? I believe it was in 2011, I think. It was pretty good, yeah. It was in the House. So they did have that kind of thing. And for the Republicans, you know, unfortunately for the Republicans, what happened was that Linda Lingle was unable to capitalize on her strength as the governor for two terms. And she was not able to do any party building from that position as governor. She really didn't take advantage of it. No. Well, I think we're going to take a break right about now. But when we come back, one of the questions for you is going to be whether Donald Trump might add a spark to the Republican dynamic in Hawaii. So right now we're going to be taking a short break. You can call us and ask Richard your questions directly at 415-871-2474. Looking to energize your Friday afternoon? Tune in to Stand the Energyman at 12 noon. Aloha Friday here on Think Tech Hoy. Aloha. My name is Josh Green. I serve as Senator from the Big Island on the Kona side, and I'm also an emergency room physician. My program here on Think Tech is called Health Care in Hawaii. I'll have guests that should be interesting to you twice a month. We'll talk about issues that range from mental health care to drug addiction to our health care system and any challenges that we face here in Hawaii. We hope you'll join us. Again, thanks for supporting Think Tech. Aloha. I'm Kaui Lucas, host of Hawaii Is My Mainland every Friday here on Think Tech Hawaii. I also have a blog of the same name at kauilukas.com where you can see all of my past shows. Join me this Friday and every Friday at 3 p.m. Aloha. Welcome back to Talk Story with John Waihe. My guest today is the Dean of Hawaii Political Reporters and, you know, all around very perceptive. Actually, you're a historian of Hawaii. 50 years. You ought to at least publish your articles. No, seriously. I think somebody could trace Hawaiian politics just by not that we agreed, you know. No. But there was one thing that, well, we were discussing just before we went on break, whether or not the Trump phenomenon would increase the possibility of developing a stronger Republican base in Hawaii. Now, I know that's probably some of my colleagues are going to think that I'm being heretical here. But I don't think that we should use non-partisan elections as the excuse for trying to, I mean, we ought to have strong partisan, in my opinion, political opposition as well as, you know, governing. Well, I remember that you always insisted that the best thing for a political party was a good, hard primary fight. Yes. Because then you could test your own moves and define your own message and find out what your supporters are about. Well, I think, for example, nationally, I think that Bernie Sanders' campaign actually improved. Oh, definitely. Definitely improved Hillary Clinton's chances to be president, you know. But regarding Trump, I don't think that Trump is going to do much for the Republican Party at all. I think it's going to be the opposite. We've already got Ryan pulling out of supporting him. And, you know, the poor, vice presidential candidate, Pence, we find out in a debate yesterday that Trump doesn't even know what his position is on Syria. So what kind of teamwork is that? So I think party building via Donald Trump is not going to happen. Well, I think, as Tip O'Neill used to say, all politics is local. Yes. And what the Republicans, and again, you know, we discussed this with Deb, what they need to do is to develop an ideology that's local. Yes. That's for Hawaii. Yes. You know, and show that, for example, you know, if you don't like the size of government, how do we deliver services with less and the rest? You know, otherwise, you know, we have Sam Sloan clinging on to his one seat. One seat in the state center. And it's almost like, you know, we ought to sort of graduate him in. You know, if I can butt in and ask you a question about this, you took a risk when you were governor and pushed for a task force to start an open records law that really had some teeth in it, and it turned out to be the Office of Information Practices. Why did you do that? Well, because I was young and foolish and didn't know that. You know, and there's some of that because the right thing to do, no matter what, the right thing to do is to make sure that government information is the people's information. So we ought to have, and in those days, it was so unclear, you know, as to what we would release and what we wouldn't. And so this was a way of bringing clarity about, and actually you played a big part in it. And, you know, the first thing that happened once we passed the law was all my records got... Yes, the first story I did after we had the open records law was to look and find out what boards and commissions are that you were on and you hadn't registered some of that with the state. And so that was probably a little unfair, but it was the first one we did. No, but, you know, and those things are, I think, necessary. And one of the... I'm actually disappointed, and I should tell you this, I'm actually disappointed with where the open records law has sort of ended up. Because on one hand it seems to me, and this is from my little experience of going back into state government and doing things, that on one hand there is all this formality of compliance. You sit in a meeting and people are saying, well, was there enough notice? Right. And all of that is important. But you asked for some documents and it seemed like they have expanded the exceptions. The Capital Bureau at the Star Advertiser has got an arm load of requests for documents from the state government and the city. And almost every one of them has either been denied or ignored or in some cases lost. It's very frustrating this status of transparency or open government in the state of Hawaii right now. And what you need is some sort of a spirit somewhere that would have to come from the top, from the floor, to say, hey, give it to them. Yeah, really. Open it up. Really? Truly. It used to be when you asked for the details on a project, and I said, I want to see the files on this construction project at Kaimuki Library or whatever. What you would get, and they would say, wait a day, let me put it together. And you would get an enormous cardboard box with everything. Here they all are. Don't get them out of order, but sit down and go through the hall. That to me is what the law was meant to do. And strategically, I'll talk about from the government official's point, strategically one of the best things you can do is dump all the information out. Right. Let them go do research. They're going to find out how complex these things are, number one. And number two, it takes time and it takes effort. It's not cheap, you know, but nowadays everything is so reluctant. And we end up... And he gets redacted. And somewhere, and I've lost track of exactly how it happened. Now you get charged. Your request may turn out to be... We'll give you that, but we have to redact the information and redacting the information is going to cost $10,000. Well, see, that's the problem. Yeah. And that's the thing. And what is now being emphasized is the idea that two politicians, no more than two politicians can talk to each other. You know, it's that kind of thing. Which was all part of the spirit of this. Right. But what it really means is that the bureaucrats now control government. Because they decide what gets released, politicians can't meet. So who do you think decides all these issues? And I really, well... Well, you know, the open meeting law, and you have to have... If you have more than three or a majority of you, they can't meet. To me, that's always been a little bit disingenuous because... There are other ways. To do it, you still have the internet. You still have email or Twitter or direct messaging or text messaging. And so there you go. But the control of deciding all those issues now are left with the very people that we were passed the law to open government. Right. Which, by the way, brings me to another concern of mine. One of the great things I think about Hawaii and the political system was the idea that we always had people like you around. All the TV stations, they had reporters that were out in the field. And all of a sudden, all of this is getting lost. It's winnowing to a tremendous degree. There is less and less of folks down at the Capitol. I think you might be one of the few people left that actually has some historical... Well, I mean, the initial wisdom of the state Capitol was that it was provided for places for the press to work out of. Now it has been... Well, the little nest of offices down in the basement of the Capitol, which we pay for, for our office, there used to be two. There used to be the Star Bulletin and the Honolulu Advertiser. Now there's only one. There's the Star Advertiser office. The other office where I used to work out of has now become a locker room for the deputy sheriffs. The Associated Press has an office at the Capitol, but it's only staffed during the legislative session. See, this is why the open records law is going to be much more important. That's a good point. Much more important in the future, you know, because if we're going to make it so that we don't have reporters, then we ought to make it easy for the citizens to get information directly. That makes a lot of sense. Which, by the way, you know, anyway, we have a caller. Okay. We got a caller? All right. Governor Hawaii, you know, you guys are talking about a lack of confidence. And you're talking about people who are disenchanted, both at the federal level and also here in Hawaii. And, you know, at the end, this is not good. And my question is, what can we do to alleviate that disenchantment? How can we bring people together again? How can we make them confident of government and feel that government is us and we are them? How can we do that? Well, did you hear the question? No, I could not hear it. Okay. So what the question was, how there is a lot of disenchantment with government? Yes. People have lost confidence in it on the mainland, as well as in Hawaii as well. What can we do about making it, about restoring confidence in government? What help? Well, as we were talking, the government's responsibility is to be much, much more transparent, to bring itself out into the open. Things like the news media has to do is to aggressively pursue stories and be able to devote enough time and resources to pursue those stories. We don't have as many reporters as we used to. Right. That's a great problem. It's something that probably is not going to be answered. Well, I used to feel slighted because I thought that you guys only wrote about me, you know, as the years went by. And now I actually am flattered. We used to attend all the proclamations and all those things. Hardly anyone goes to any public meetings like that now. No, because you just don't have the people. We don't have the people. I was at a conference this past weekend with the people, young people, were meeting and talking about the future of Hawaii. What do you see for newspapers in Hawaii ten years from now? It's going to be very difficult for a printed newspaper. In some other form, it will survive. But printed newspapers, the younger people, fewer and fewer are reading them in the tweet. Yes, or Instagram or Snapchat. There are very few people who are 20 years old who are reading an actual newspaper, which is a damn shame. But that's the way it is. My wife would agree with you, by the way. She thinks reading a book is what we ought to be doing. Okay, going on in that, a friend of mine and yours, Chuck Friedman, wants to know what are the elements of a good communications office in the governor's office? Well, how do you have it? What makes a good communications office today? The number one thing that Chuck had when he was working up in your office were open doors. Open doors. It used to be that you would be able to stroll into Chuck's office and talk to him all day long to find out what's going on. It's all locked now. And justification is security. It's all of this stuff about security. But if you ever, you know how big the security guards are, I wouldn't worry. You know, so the main thing is accessibility. Open doors. And then sadly enough for political reporters who is free coffee. When are you going to write your book? I'm not sure about a book. Perhaps just a column. No, take all the columns and combine it. You heard it first here, folks. The new format for Richard's first book. So maybe a blog. A blog. Fantastic. We are all getting modern. Well, folks, it's been really nice having you on my show. I appreciate it. And I enjoyed this reverse of roles. I'm not sure it's where I want to be, but... Well, folks, thank you very much for joining us. And it's really been a pleasure talking to one of Hawaii's... Oh, Hawaii's only political dean. Thank you. Thank you.