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Nonpartisan elections
may benefit Kauai
Republicans

Primary Election 2000

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By Anthony sommer
Star-Bulletin

LIHUE -- Conventional political wisdom on Kauai is that the more challengers there are, the better the re-election chances of the incumbents will be.

Sixteen candidates, including all seven incumbents, are running for Kauai County Council. Two years ago, there were a record 21 candidates, and not a single incumbent seeking re-election was shot out of the saddle.

That means this year's incumbent Council members are safe, but not quite as safe as in 1998.

Toss into this year's equation two former councilmen seeking comebacks -- Kaipo Asing and John Barretto -- both vocal critics of Mayor Maryanne Kusaka.

Both Asing and Barretto left the council (years apart) to make unsuccessful bids for mayor. But both did well in past Council elections, with Asing frequently the top vote-getter in his nine Council races.

Kauai County politics are a bit of an enigma. In 1994, Kauai voters approved nonpartisan Council and mayoral elections. Such elections usually are strongly opposed by the majority party and heavily favored by the minority party, which stands to gain the most from erasing party labels on the ballot. Evidence? Kusaka is the state's only Republican mayor, and the GOP holds two of the seven "non-partisan" Kauai Council seats.

Kauai County is by far the most traditional Democratic stronghold in Hawaii. But with the new election style, many probably had not realized they had handed the Republican Party a major victory.

One result of the switch to nonpartisan elections is that the primary, which used to determine all of the new Council members because all the contenders were Democrats, now is more of a warm-up lap rather than the real race.

To win outright in the primary and avoid a runoff race in November, a candidate now must receive at least 30 percent of the votes. Elections officials say that's almost, but not quite, impossible.