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Capitol View
TO say that Ben Cayetano and Ed Case grew up worlds apart is missing the point. Case and Cayetano
are strange bedfellowsGovernor Cayetano's father didn't go past the third grade. He worked early to take care of his family and later his children. Cayetano grew up in Kalihi, went to Farrington where he was a marginal student. During school he worked odd jobs and when he graduated he worked on a survey crew.
Case's father graduated from Harvard Law School. Rep. Ed Case graduated from Hawaii Prep on the Big Island, a school not unfamiliar to Hawaii's polo set. His law degree is from Hastings in San Francisco.
Cayetano went to California, first to a junior college and then to UCLA, where he won his law degree. While Cayetano went back to Hawaii to practice law and eventually start a political career, Case was first a legislative assistant to the late U.S. Sen. Spark Matsunaga and then law clerk to Hawaii State Supreme Court Chief Justice William Richardson.
The two men found a common ground, not in their youth and class status, but in politics.
Cayetano ran first for the state House and won. When he ran for the Senate, he won again. In the Legislature, Cayetano was on the inside and outside. He ran the Ways and Means Committee and after an aborted legislative coup was shuffled off to the Agriculture Committee.
Case ran for the state House and Senate, losing both times before winning his present House seat in 1994. Case also has gone from insider to maverick. He was Democratic leader for two years, but he broke with other Democrats over the issue of civil service reform.
Cayetano and Case may have grown up in different worlds, but today they find themselves on the same page.
The issues they agree on, says Case, while the style is different, but aimed at the same result.
"If you take the message he has delivered and package it with a different style, I think his ratings would go up tremendously," Case said last week.
"I believe he represents the mainstream political view in Hawaii today," Case said. "People sometimes can't get past how he presents something to hear what he has to say."
Cayetano knows precisely how difficult it has been to communicate his message of economic restraint, workplace responsibility and government efficiency. Cayetano's a realist, but never lost the Kalihi bravado and swagger.
Case, smart and intense, has the unlikely role of making a moderate political philosophy a cause that wins supporters and defeats Democratic liberals.
"He is gutsy and intelligent. I think if you read his speeches you will find that they have a great deal of substance," Cayetano said.
Case is also ambitious. He's thought about a campaign for governor or Congress in the watershed year of 2002. While staying out of the endorsement game, Cayetano is clearly not adverse to a Case race.
"I think Ed Case has the potential to be an excellent governor," Cayetano says.
Case seems to think that setting up an organization on each island, raising $4 million needed to run for governor and maintaining a high positive public profile are doable. Caye-tano, a veteran of four state-wide races, knows it is not easy.
Case would face a tough campaign from both Lt. Gov. Mazie Hirono and Mayor Jeremy Harris and he would be a major underdog against Linda Lingle in a general election.
But, Cayetano smiles as he recalls, "When I first ran, I didn't exactly have people carrying me to the ballot box."
Richard Borreca reports on Hawaii's politics every Wednesday.
He can be reached by e-mail at rborreca@starbulletin.com