LOOK out, Neil Abercrombie. The guy trying to take away your congressional seat has just snagged a large share of the Joe Platelunch vote. Miss U lends vowel
power to QuentinQuentin Kawananakoa already was going to be a formidable opponent to Abercrombie because he's got a lot more vowels in his name.
Abercrombie fended off a challenge by that haole interloper Orson Swindle last election, mainly by accusing him of being, well, a haole interloper. It was still a close race. It might have turned out differently if Swindle was perceived to be more of a "local."
There's an old saying: All politics is local. It doesn't get more local than in Hawaii. The first question voters in Hawaii want to know from a candidate for just about any office is, "What high school you wen' grad from?"
That's not a put-down. It's a fact of life. Abercrombie didn't graduate from any Hawaii high school, but voters will allow him to hold his congressional seat until someone more local comes along.
That person may be Kawananakoa, who is local to the max and has the vowels to prove it.
Not willing to sit back and assume that he claimed the local high ground, Kawananakoa convinced outgoing Miss Universe Brook Mahealani Lee to campaign for him.
That's a lot of local firepower, specifically 17 vowels in the Kawananakoa camp versus Neil's measly 7.
There are lots of serious issues out there that the candidates will be jabbering about in the coming months. Nobody cares. If they did, Neil wouldn't have been sent to Congress in the first place.
Hawaii kicks butt in Congress mainly because of the awesome strength of Daniel Inouye. The rest of our representatives make up a sort of boutique delegation not only out of the congressional mainstream but out of the mainstream of modern political thought.
Inouye brings home the bacon by the shipping container load while the other reps cling to his coat tails and yammer about being part of "the team." When you've got Inouye, you don't need a team. He IS the team. A hulking, 4,000-pound gorilla who can squeeze federal dollars for Hawaii out of even a Republican-controlled U.S. Senate.
And since we are fresh out of any more Inouyes, voters have to make do with junior varsity politicians.
This, I think, sets up the extremely important Hawaii political paradigm: Which candidate is the most local?
An intramural primary election scuffle is underway between Kawananakoa and Gene Ward. And Ward scores a lot of local points by speaking pidgin, even when he doesn't want to. But let's face it, he doesn't have enough vowels in his war chest to take on Abercrombie.
I'm not taking sides, but I think that by wooing Miss Universe onto his campaign wagon, Kawananakoa has snuffed out Ward's hopes.
Yes, the state's economy is on life support. But Brook Lee is a personal friend of Quentin's. You go down to the nearest lunch wagon and take a poll: Who would you rather vote for: A guy on Dan Inouye's "team" or a guy who hangs out with Brook Lee?
A lot of people are going to whine that that is just not fair. Fair has nothing to do with it. If life was fair, Jerry Springer wouldn't have the hottest show on television.
Unless Abercrombie can pull some big-time local talent out of his hat, he'll be hanging out in Manoa coffee bars next year. The trouble is that Brook Lee is the brightest local star in the universe right now and she's in Quentin's orbit.
Charles Memminger, winner of
National Society of Newspaper Columnists
awards in 1994 and 1992, writes "Honolulu Lite"
Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
Write to him at the Honolulu Star-Bulletin,
P.O. Box 3080, Honolulu, 96802
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