'Split-level Lingle-ism' emerges as the voters decide BOR question
LINDA Lingle won re-election by the greatest margin of any governor in Hawaii's history, as Richard Borreca reported Nov. 10, and she described her victory to him as "a vote of confidence."
But alongside her victory, voters repudiated just as heavily her discretion in appointing members of the Board of Regents at the University of Hawaii and, by implication, their performance during the past four years. Like Democratic governors before her, Lingle, a Republican, had exercised wide discretion in appointing members to the BOR if they were approved by the state Senate.
But voters in the Nov. 7 general election changed that by approving limits on gubernatorial discretion. In a landslide vote of no confidence, voters approved an amendment to Hawaii's Constitution that requires Lingle and her successors to select future regent candidates from a pool of people screened and proposed by an advisory council, a method opposed by her and the chairwoman of the Board of Regents.
Lingle won 61.7 percent of the total vote for governor in the 2006 general election, but she lost by 61.5 percent when voters chose either yes or no on the constitutional amendment that rejects the wide-discretion method of selecting regents.
For example, in two heavily Republican precincts in Kona, voters gave Lingle 70 percent of their votes. But those same voters making a yes-or-no preference turned around and rejected by 70 percent the wide discretion Lingle had exercised in selecting regents, and instead they approved a new method that markedly restricts her future choices.
This general election result signals a curious sort of split-level Lingle-ism, with voters approving of her personally but disapproving the process and probably the performance of policymakers she selected to guide the state's only public university.
The breadth of the votes for Lingle but against her regents selection is striking, a precinct-by-precinct analysis of the 2006 general election returns shows. Of the 352 precincts statewide, Lingle won all but 29. But she lost in all but five precincts and tied in a sixth when residents voted yes or no on the constitutional amendment concerning regent selection. In one precinct, Kalaupapa Settlement, no one voted in person or by absentee ballot.
Also in balloting across the state, a governor's wide discretion in selecting regents was rejected overwhelmingly by voters, according to listings posted on Hawaii's election Web site (www.hawaii.gov/elections).
The depth of voter sentiment against a governor's selection of regents also is striking. Residents in many precincts voted by a 2-1 margin to approve the constitutional amendment that restricts the wide discretion given to governors, and occasionally they voted by a 3-1 margin, when the yes-or-no votes on that question are compared.
Because some voters expressed no preference on the constitutional amendment question, the official breakdown of the total vote on it was 56 percent yes to change the method of selecting regents, 35 percent no, 8.7 percent blank votes and one-tenth of 1 percent double voting of yes and no.
Approval of this constitutional amendment might have real impact soon in at least two significant ways. By June 30, the terms of six of the 11 members now on the Board of Regents expire; one seat is currently vacant. For quick effect, the Legislature that begins meeting in January must enact legislation specifying how the candidate advisory council will be formed.
Regents during Lingle's term have been engulfed in controversy. They have been criticized for mismanagement in the firing of former UH President Evan Dobelle -- which garnered worldwide notoriety -- for failure to hold a national search for his successor, for providing an inadequate infrastructure to mitigate against a Halloween Eve flood and recent power failure, for doubling student tuition over six years, for conflicts of interest and for secrecy.
Thus, the anti-regents landslide suggests that Lingle has largely failed in the perception of voters to deliver on her campaign promise that she would increase openness and public trust in government, a promise that she made in 2002 when she was being elected as Hawaii's first Republican governor in four decades.
Repudiation of the governor's discretion in selecting regents also could affect future decision-making on the most controversial issue that continues to engulf the board: whether to establish a Navy University Affiliated Research Center. The landslide vote against the regent amendment, coupled with the massive election rejection nationally against the U.S. war in Iraq, provides fresh evidence that UH should abandon plans to establish a UARC for the Sea Systems Command, the Navy's war-fighting arm. Navy UARCs are an antiquated concept dating back to World War II; the one at UH would be the first in nearly 60 years.
UH President David McClain has recommended establishing such a UARC with certain restrictions, and a contract is in the works but has yet to be taken to the BOR and the Navy for final approval.
The heavy vote against the war in Iraq has shifted control of Congress to the Democrats, forced the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and prompted the Pentagon and White House to rethink U.S. strategy. Among the winners in the congressional election is Hawaii's Mazie Hirono, who advocates establishing a Department of Peace.
U.S. military and civilian leaders are now rethinking how to conduct the which-way war in Iraq: to send in more troops or to prepare for withdrawal. Their decisions might trickle down to the UH campus as they realize that conventional arms and sophisticated technology have not prevailed over home-grown guerrillas or Iraqi-on-Iraqi incendiaries, but instead have produced more of them.
Rather than establishing an antiquated UARC, the BOR should direct the intellectual capital at the only U.S. public university in the middle of the Pacific, perched amidst the world's most populous Islamic nations, to better aid U.S. policymakers by devising strategies that prevent future guerrilla wars and civil strife.
Such a new direction not only would aid Washington policymakers, but also initiate a fitting way to galvanize campus and community support when UH seeks to celebrate its centennial in 2007.
A correspondent who covered the Vietnam War for seven years, Beverly Ann Deepe Keever teaches journalism and global communication at the University of Hawaii and is the author of "News Zero: The New York Times and the Bomb." Her views do not necessarily reflect those of her employer.