Honolulu Lite
YOU KNOW you're going to have a bad hair year when Margery Bronster shows up on your doorstep and says she'll be conducting a little investigation into your life. Battleship Bronster
turns her big guns on
Linda LingleBronster is a giant killer. She's fierce. She's dogged. And if there's such a word as unintimidatable, she's that, too. As state attorney general, she took on Big Tobacco. She took on Big Gasoline. She took on the (Very) Big Bishop Estate. And now, for some strange reason, she's taking on Big Linda Lingle.
I didn't know Linda Lingle was that big. She was mayor of a little island. She's head of a little political party. She's never won a statewide election. But she's big enough to scare the bejesus out of anyone.
Why else would the Democratic Party be rolling out the heavy artillery against Lingle so early in the race for the governor's seat? The sharks are circling and Linda Lingle is on the menu.
There's obviously a master plan in the works to destroy Lingle. She is the enemy. As something of a stealth candidate for governor last time around, Lingle taser stung the Democratic party by almost beating Ben Cayetano. Taser? No, more like a cattle prod. A couple of thousand volts right on the kiester. Zap! enough to shock the Democrats out of the drowsy complacency they had allowed themselves to drift into.
Ben won by about only 5,000 votes, they said. But that wasn't true. He won by only half that, 2,500 or so votes. Yikes. If Lingle had gotten fewer than 3,000 more people to vote for her, not even enough to fill up the crummy seats behind the goal posts at a football game; Washington Place would be her crib.
SO LINGLE AWAKENED the sleeping beast and now it is stalking her. There will not be another close call if they can help it. And they can help it. They can do all kinds of things to destroy Lingle before the next election.
Already, a letter campaign has begun with all the letters seeming to come out of an official Get Lingle Talking Points manifesto. Attack her for being "queen of the party." For being a dictator with her boot on the throats of her unfortunate subjects. The same words designed to tear her down pop up with not-so-surprising frequency: dictatorial, heavy-handed, autocratic and iron-fisted.
And that's just what is said in public. Wait until the really nasty stuff starts during thinly disguised "telephone polls." ("We're conducting a poll for the governor's race. Would you vote for Linda Lingle if you knew she bites the heads off of small children, makes fun of Mother Teresa and spies for the Russians?")
And then there's Battleship Bronster, guns loaded, bearing down on Lingle, bankrolled by the Maui County Council. Bronster's getting big bucks to dig up dirt on Lingle in connection with a housing project Lingle was involved in as Maui mayor. You don't take $30,000 from someone and then go back and say, "Sorry, she's clean. Thanks for the dough."
But this could all be overkill. Maybe the voters are tired of the politics of destruction. Maybe the public will be repelled to see a lawyer of Bronster's talent sicced on Lingle like an underworld hit-person. There could be a backlash to the "viciousness as usual" campaign tactics of the past. At least, Linda Lingle better hope so.
Alo-Ha! Friday compiles odd bits of news from Hawaii
and the world to get your weekend off to an entertaining start.
Charles Memminger also writes Honolulu Lite Mondays,
Wednesdays and Sundays. Send ideas to him at the
Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Suite 7-210,
Honolulu 96813, phone 235-6490 or e-mail cmemminger@starbulletin.com.
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