Party Unity
By B.J. Reyes
State Democrats gathered Sunday for their traditional post-primary Unity Breakfast, an effort to come together and mend any fences that may have been damaged in spirited primary contest.
Gov. Neil Abercrombie, the titular head of the state party, noted that although the Honolulu mayoral race is non-partisan, the vote comes down to two staunch Democrats: former Gov. Ben Cayetano and former City Managing Director Kirk Caldwell.
“We’ve got good Democrats that are running for mayor right now,” Abercrombie said.
Abercrombie and Cayetano have been friends and political allies since their days together in the state Legislature and he wrote the introduction to Cayetano’s autobiography. Abercrombie also has gotten to know Caldwell, who once represented the same Manoa district in the state House as Abercrombie.
Although he knows both well he has shied away from making an endorsement in the race. But he did have a message for those who would seek to continue running attack ads in the race.
Said Abercrombie:
“Now this situation with rail will work out one way or another, but I’ll tell you one thing that I am not going to stand for, and I hope nobody stands for it here. This business of denouncing other people’s character has got to stop. We’ve got two Democrats that are running right now. We’ve got a situation in which there are outside parties that are coming and trying to denounce the character of Ben Cayetano in this. And I won’t stand for it. It’s a lie. It’s s slander and it’s not worthy of anybody in this party to be associated with it.
… I hope today that all of us are going to take a pledge, in terms of unity, that we are going to say to people, ‘There’s no place in Hawaii for personal denunciation and character assassination in our elections.’
The Pacific Resource Partnership, an advocacy group for contractors and unionized carpenters and construction workers, is behind a campaign called “Read Ben’s Record,” which raised the issue of more than $500,000 in illegal campaign donations made to Cayetano during his last run for governor.
The state Campaign Spending Commission cleared Cayetano of any wrongdoing, and Cayetano accused PRP of orchestrating a smear campaign against him.
“That was impromptu on his part,” Cayetano said of Abercrombie’s message, adding:
I didn’t expect it but, yeah, I think that he knows me and so I think it was a good message. But you know what? PRP can spend all the money they want – they can spend another $1 million, $2 million. I think the people have figured them out already and in the end, after this election, win or lose, we’re gonna hold these guys accountable.
The PRP ads are classified as independent expenditures and are not coordinated with a campaign or campaign committee.
Caldwell said he also thought Abercrombie’s message was good, noting that he has tried to stay above personal attacks in all of his campaigns.
Caldwell stopped short of publicly denouncing the PRP ads, but said:
I think the governor has a good message. I have never said anything personally about any of my opponents ever in any race and I haven’t run in that many. … For me it’s about doing good. You don’t do good by talking stink or being negative. I’ve never made any personal comments on any of my opponents and I’m not going to be doing so good forward either.
I am not going to coordinate or talk about what someone else is doing. It’s not appropriate for me to do so, so I’m focusing on me. I’m going to talk about what I’m going to do, just like I have in the primary. I’m going to do that in the general.
Political Radar
August 12th, 2012 at 9:45 pm
Where’s was Francis?
Ben, even if he wins the race to becoming Mayor, will
have to deal with Senator Inouye who favors Rail. Ben in order
to win, will cut strings and become a real person, not a marionette or
hand puppet, stopping the pull by rich Mainland Donators.
Either way he has to win 50% plus 5 of the votes.
August 12th, 2012 at 9:53 pm
No matter what the governor or Cayetano or whoever . . . a Grease doesn’t we’ve all heard the last of PRP. That being said, for PRP’s “$500,000 accusation ‘gainst Ben” (read $AGB, heh) to become discredited, well, heck yeah, Cayetano’s right in saying the public’s figured them out.
That being said, Carlisle was right last night (at Caldwell HQ, right?) in affirming that rail is being built. Now. Don’t think there’ll be any stopping it, you know? You get the feeling the Federal money — and rail, for that matter — ain’t gonna go away due to some measly mayoral election (yeah, “measly; watch Robocop, see how a mayor gets easily bossed around by bigger machines, and I ain’t talkin’ Officer Murphy). Why didn’t PRP focus on that in their ads, as much as they could’ve, also, concentrated on, if Cayetano’s saying things are run by the unions and big business, well, it wasn’t exactly unions Cayetano wasn’t thanking at the end of the night in his last election.
THAT having been said . . . oh, mercy. Behind the curtain, a Grease ended up voting for Cayetano. I believe in his concerns. And ultimately, a Grease didn’t like their ads against him (’specially the one where that school teacher was speaking, wasn’t that one of ‘em?. Ugghhh).
And, so, heck, looks like Cayetano will get elected to this office. So what happens to that extra 1/2% or whatever excise tax we been paying for all this time?
Oahu is union-focused as much as it is Democratic party. How do you stop rail once it has started?!?!?! Structural poles going up already. And, again, that being said, looking for heads (this week?) to roll (yeah, ya’ll have a certain individual in mind) at PRP.
Republicans had a lunch (answer to the D’s breakfast) today at their headquarters. Gandering all that on one of the TV news stations, didn’t look like was well attended.
Should be a da(n good General ‘lection in November.
August 12th, 2012 at 9:57 pm
Quotin’ a Gease =)
Cayetano’s LAST election meaning the one for governor’s office (his 2nd term, no?).
August 12th, 2012 at 10:51 pm
one of the televisions stations was interviewing roth, who was asked whether cayatono could unilaterally kill rail. roth kinda hedged by say, he is not sure. are they now saying that cayatono will not be able to stop rail on by himself, yet, during the campaign the antis were saying to vote for ben because he will stop rail. is there something amiss? is roth trying to placate the antis, that if cayatono is not elected mayor, that it would not have mattered because in reality he could not unilaterally stop rail. if this is the case, then was not, slater, et al, lying to the antis about electing ben? many of the antis responded to their call for political contributions to help ben get elected – now it seems that those antis were duped by slater, et al., and the antis political donations were futile. it appears that some of the antis were not forthright with their constituencies. there is a very good chance that cayatono will not be elected mayor come november. those who voted for carlisle will all vote for caldwell, don’t believe that cayatono can muster up 20,000 votes to overcome the votes for caldwell.
August 14th, 2012 at 11:36 am
It would appear that our governor would like to suspend the first amendment as it applies to free speech for political advertising if he could. The public needs to hear all information, even “negative” advertising and be allowed to weight the veracity of that information for themselves. If the information is proven false or misleading it should be dismissed as such. But, unilaterally branding all unflattering information regarding a candidate as “slander,” that should be ignored, without proving that it is inaccurate, is nothing but a lame attempt to censor the democratic process.
There is a big difference between negative ads and smears, and that being the former can be validated and defended by being true.
August 14th, 2012 at 11:41 am
It should also be noted that Dennis Mitsunaga (the subject of many of PRP’s commercials) is also one of Governor Abercrombie’s largest campaign contributors.
August 14th, 2012 at 8:37 pm
Those who donate get to pull strings.
Old News and has been in Hawaii beginning when Hawaii
became a State in 1959. Hawaii Politicians know of
the word Kowtow. You scratch my back and I scratch yours.