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Hawaii’s World
WITH due regard for my good friends Frank Fasi and Mufi Hannemann, I think we will be nuts if we don't re-elect Jeremy Harris as Honolulu mayor. Harris deserves re-election
Fasi is feisty, fun and just turned 80. He was an audacious mayor. For example, he ripped up the stub of Kapiolani Boulevard in a midnight coup to beautify City Hall grounds. Yet he loved the sizzle so much he sometimes burned the steak, including state-city cooperation.
Mufi is ambitious. I wish we had him in Congress, where his physical stature alone would make him a standout. But as an administrator he can't hold a candle to Harris. Few can.
Harris is the best mayor we have had since World War II -- and I knew them all. Johnny Wilson, the last major politician associated with the monarchy, was scrappy and honest. Fasi licked him in the 1954 primary with Wilson's age, then 83, the issue. Fasi then lost to another part-Hawaiian, Neal Blaisdell, who served 14 years. Blaisdell was No. 1 in likability, also tough.
Harris is detail-conscious and far-sighted, not personally exciting but superb at getting results on slimmed budgets without tax boosts.
Honolulu today claims to be the safest city in America. Our transit system rates No. 1 in America. We made the Top 10 in Governing magazine's list of best-administered cities.
Nowhere else is a mayor available five days a week to take suggestions and sometimes solve problems forthwith during a radio call-in hour. It's 5 to 6 p.m. on AM 770, KGU. Sixteen department heads or their top aides must be tuned in and ready to respond to callers by phone.
Harris additionally gets to the grass roots through Vision Teams for 17 segments of Oahu, each urged to recommend $2 million a year in capital improvements for their districts. These overarch the 40 elected neighborhood boards. They have monthly meetings open to voting by all who attend.
In cooperation with Waikiki planners, Harris has led the city to magnificent upgrades of the visitor area that is our major income generator. Plantings and benches along the Ala Wai have been followed by a must-see Kuhio Beach park widening and upgrading with nightly free hula shows, day-long piped Hawaiian music, a waterfall, more palms, flowers, grass and benches.
In Kapiolani Park, the Natatorium is cleaned up at last and the dumpy old Royal Hawaiian band stand replaced in Victorian elegance. Old-fashioned street lamps now line most of Kalakaua Avenue, where sidewalks earlier got multi-color bricks.
BUS transportation is undergoing continuing upgrades. Harris and the City Council also are moving forward a super-size recreation park for Waipio peninsula, a three-mile strip park for the Leeward Coast and construction of government offices to bolster Kapolei as Oahu's future second city.
He has delayed but not killed, he says, my favorite project for the future. It is a $290 million highway-tunnel plan for a scenic route bordering Sand Island Beach Park to divert airport- Waikiki traffic away from the Nimitz Highway industrial area. Bus improvements get priority, he has decided.
If re-elected he almost surely will resign in mid-term to run for governor. He itched to four years ago but was persuaded not to contest a second term for Ben Cayetano.
Harris will debate his two foes at least once -- at a Sept. 12 lunch to be televised in full at 9 p.m. on News 8. They will pummel him as hard as they can -- which is hard -- but his record of accomplishment and accessibility is the best politics of all.
A.A. Smyser is the contributing editor
and former editor of the the Star-Bulletin
His column runs Tuesday and Thursday.