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Honolulu Lite
I'M trying to get excited about the mayor's race but it's like trying to get excited about a flu shot. Sure, it's important and necessary and once it's over life continues as usual. But, damn it, it's a seasonal nuisance and it hurts like hell -- the mayoral campaign, I mean. Mayor’s race is
a real snoozerThe three main candidates are Mayor Jeremy Harris, former City Councilman Mufi Hannemann and the other guy.
I've got to call the other guy "the other guy" because a while back I declared this column to be a "The Other Guy's Name Free Zone." But you know who I mean: the crotchety, quarrelsome former mayor of Honolulu whose main occupation is slamming the daily newspapers when he's not engaged in his other occupation, which is slamming everything else.
The other guy forfeited his opportunity to be belittled in this column by name when he sprinted to the newspaper parking lot and gloated to television cameras the day it was announced the Star-Bulletin would be closed. Class has never been the other guy's long suit but that stunt was particularly odious and insensitive considering the number of people whose professional lives are at stake.
We're still here nearly a year later and the other guy is still on his anti-newspaper rant, which, I suppose, is his idea of how to conduct a political campaign. He has about as much chance of becoming mayor as I have becoming the next Dalai Lama. The other guy's going to find out that hating the daily newspapers isn't the most brilliant political platform mainly because most voters don't hate the papers as much as he does.
Anyway, that leaves us with Harris and Hannemann to write about by name. Ironically, Harris is mayor because the other guy, when he was mayor, wanted to run for governor. So the other guy had to resign as mayor and Harris, his managing director, became mayor and hasn't let go since. The other guy didn't become governor by a landslide, in part, thanks to the energetic lack of support by Harris. Now the other guy can't even become mayor again, so in retrospect, resigning to run for governor was a silly thing to do. (How'd we get back to talking about the other guy again?)
HARRIS is a serious guy and about as exciting as warm poi, which, in a mayor, isn't necessarily bad. Hannemann could exploit Harris' lack of excitability except he suffers in the excitability department himself. Hannemann is tall and can do pretty good impressions. I once saw him do dead-on impressions of former governors John Waihee and George Ariyoshi. I'll bet he could do a pretty good impression of the other guy. Harris would be hard to do because, well, he's about as exciting as warm poi.
So the race boils down to two unexciting men -- one tall and one serious -- and the other guy. That may not sound like real deep political analysis but there it is.
The race will depend on whom the voters dislike the least. All three candidates have been in the political limelight long enough to tick off plenty of people. Political cartoonist John Pritchett has made a career of being annoyed by Harris. He just put out a booklet of about 30 cartoons featuring the mayor, which are ruthless, savage and nasty, not to mention pretty funny. I suspect Hannemann is considering buying several thousand copies of the booklet to distribute to voters. That would be a master stroke of politicking and add a lot of excitement to the race, which is why he won't do it.
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
or send E-mail to cmemminger@starbulletin.com.
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