by Charles Memminger
Friday, September 20, 1996
Only Frank Fasi is really kicking up some dust, but the best he can do is call everyone liars. The mayoral candidates are bogged down in arguing about who wants to put more cops on the street or who's got more "high-three" employees on his staff or who is responsible for putting planters in Waikiki.
Please. That's not mudslinging. That's nit-picking.
The congressional race is a yawner. Who's more haole: Abercrombie or Swindle? Patsy Mink is running against, I don't know, somebody, I suppose.
And in the other "hot" race, the one between three nearly interchangeable candidates with mustaches for prosecutor, the only excitement is a promise by Randy Yoshida that someone's gonna say something nasty about him before primary election, which is tomorrow.
He plans a "preemptive strike" to defuse any 11th hour mudslinging. All right! Go for it Randy! Tell us whatever someone is gonna say about you before they say it.
Remember how well that worked for Ross Perot in the last presidential election. Old Rossie was convinced that George Bush was going to feed compromising pictures of Perot's daughter's wedding to a tabloid. So Perot started whining about it. Nobody ever really understood what could happen at Perot's daughter's wedding that would merit a spread in a tabloid, but what the hell. It was fun while it lasted. Oh yeah, Perot lost.
All three prosecutorial candidates appeared individually before the Star-Bulletin editorial board in the past few weeks. I won't make an endorsement, but I will share the following algebra problem I devised from sitting in on the meetings.
One candidate's family used to run a big ol' local store in Waipahu, which apparently has some relevance to the job of city prosecutor.
One candidate, armed with a golf putter, once clobbered a man assaulting a woman. He could not explain his choice of clubs.
One candidate talked really loudly, even though we were all only about four feet away from him.
One candidate appears to be the adoptive son of former prosecutor Charles Marsland.
One candidate claimed one of his competitors was the kind of guy who would "run to the press" if he became frustrated in his job. He said this as if it were a BAD thing. I reminded him he was talking to newspaper people.
None of the candidates seem to condone castration, hanging, firing squads, the electric chair, eye gouging, flogging or dismemberment. Even for criminals.
One candidate used to work for the Liquor Commission, which means, I guess, his family didn't own a big ol' local store in Waipahu.
SO, if Candidate A leaves Waipahu at 3 p.m. going 20 miles per hour and Candidate B is dragged by a car 35 feet while pummeling a man with a golf club and Candidate C gives back all campaign donations he receives from hostess bars, which two candidates will get enough votes in the Primary Election to bore us for the next two months?
The answer is we don't care!
We need dirt. We need some fur to fly. We need to see how people cope with stress.
The trouble with all these candidates - for mayor, Congress and prosecutor - is that they are just too damn civil. They are all capable individuals, each with certain attributes that give them the ability to probably do the job adequately.
But where's the entertainment value in that? Come on, folks, take the gloves off. Where's the passion. Where's the spectacle? Where's the mud?
