WHAT if Gov. Ben Cayetano is not re-elected? What would the state be like with a governor of one party and a Legislature of another? Democratic Legislature
+ GOP governorWould this be chaos? Would we fall into a miasma of bickering, finger-pointing and political posturing? And if we did, would we be able to tell the difference from what we have now?
All kidding aside, it makes sense to think about how the governor and the Legislature would fit if they were of different parties.
First, splitting the political partisanship of state government may not appear to be conventional. In fact, it is fairly ordinary.
Tallies by the National Conference of State Legislatures show that 19 of the legislatures in the country are controlled by Democrats. But nearly 74 percent of the states with Democratic legislatures have Republican governors, according to a list provided by the National Governors Association.
If Alabama, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Tennessee and West Virginia can continue to function, there is a chance that Hawaii could still run with a Democratic Legislature and a governor of another party.
What then would the no-longer ruling Democrats do? It is likely that they would do what the Republicans in the Legislature have unsuccessfully tried to do for years: level the playing field.
One of the first things that might be proposed is a constitutional amendment to allow voters to pick a lieutenant governor of another party.
Anne Feder Lee, in her precisely researched reference guide to the Hawaii Constitution, notes that in the first years of statehood, the governor and lieutenant governor candidates ran independently in the primary and general election. "While it never happened," Lee wrote, "there was always the possibility that those elected would be from different political parties."
The Constitution was changed to require the governor and lieutenant governor candidates to run as a team in the general election.
Democrats could argue that representative government demanded that voters be able to make a choice.
Another choice Democrats might want the people to make is who should be attorney general. Today, the Constitution calls for the governor to select the AG. But if the attorney general is to be truly the people's lawyer, isn't it only fair that the people make the selection?
Such an argument would be all the more compelling for Democrats if it were a Republican, Green or Libertarian governor picking the attorney general.
Democrats might also discover that the state's late primary election date unfairly favors incumbents and should be moved back into May or June. Hawaii holds its primary election later than almost all other states, something that is likely to be much more troublesome if the Democrats no longer run the governor's office.
FINALLY, you might speculate that with a powerful governor's office appointing university regents, judges and land board members, the Legislature might be more interested in what is going on, so there is a chance that a strong open meetings law would be passed.
Whatever the speculation, if the Democrats lost the governorship, it is a safe bet that suddenly the legislative Democrats will be carrying a lot of clout and looking to get more.
Richard Borreca reports on Hawaii's politics every Wednesday.
He can be reached by e-mail at rborreca@pixi.com