[ OUR OPINION ]
MAYOR Harris's voluntary eight-week pause in raising money for his gubernatorial campaign is likely to cause him little if any damage. The state Supreme Court's consensus that he need not resign from office until July to run for governor will allow him to comfortably resume fund-raising activities at full steam. This legal exercise was an unnecessary distraction that should not be allowed to affect the governor's race. Distraction should not
hurt Harris campaign
THE ISSUE The Hawaii Supreme Court has ruled that Mayor Harris is not required yet to resign to run for governor.
The high court took a broad view and applied common sense to the state's resign-to-run law, overruling a circuit judge who had examined it with a legal microscope and created a nonsensical obstacle to politicians seeking higher office. The Supreme Court's ruling that no resignation by Harris is necessary until the July 23 deadline for filing nomination papers for governor is practical.
The 1978 state Constitutional Convention adopted the resign-to-run provision in an effort to stop Frank Fasi from running for governor in the middle of his mayoral terms without resigning. Consequently, Fasi was forced that year and twice in later mayoral terms to resign before filing nomination papers for governor. If the convention delegates had meant that Fasi should have left Honolulu Hale any earlier, they would have challenged those delays.
Former state Sen. Russell Blair finally posed the quirky legal theory after stepping down from six years as a state district judge. Blair argued that Harris should have resigned from the mayor's job upon filing his gubernatorial campaign organizational report with the Campaign Spending Commission a year ago. Circuit Judge Sabrina McKenna agreed with Blair in March but allowed Harris to continue politicking while the Supreme Court reviewed her decision. Harris chose to put his campaign fund raising on hold.
While the resign-to-run law was aimed at politicians running for higher office in the middle of terms in offices they hold, it also could be applied to slightly overlapping terms of office. McKenna's ruling could have complicated the candidacies of Lt. Gov. Mazie Hirono and City Councilmen Jon Yoshimura and Duke Bainum for other offices.
The high court added that it could have created problems for a person who "contemplates running for another office" or "seeks to ascertain whether he or she can garner sufficient support," so files a campaign-spending report. These are common practices in politics.
Rich Tsujimura, co-chairman of Harris's gubernatorial campaign, says the campaign was not hurt by the Blair challenge. However, other legal problems remain for Harris, whose mayoral campaign two years ago is being investigated by city prosecutor Peter Carlisle for possible criminal wrongdoing in fund-raising practices.
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