On Politics
BY RICHARD BORRECA
Who’s winning
the Senate tug-of-war?State legislators consider themselves the cream of local politics. Ask about the City Council, and legislators roll their eyes; mention the Office of Hawaiian Affairs and lawmakers snort. If you say something about a neighbor isle county council, legislators break out in hives.
The state Senate, however, is edging somewhere between the City Council and OHA: practicing simple, naked politics.
Mark Twain said, "Principles aren't of much account anyway, except at election time," and the Senate apparently seems to have forgotten that an election is coming in November.
At any given time the Senate has three or four factions. Some include just Democrats and some factions have Democrats and Republicans.
Robert Bunda, who was elected Senate president as a compromise candidate last year, has found it a weekly struggle to keep peace between two factions guided -- if not respectfully led -- by Sens. Avery Chumbley and Colleen Hanabusa. On the GOP side, the joke goes that Sens. Sam Slom, Bob Hogue and Fred Hemmings make up three more factions.
The Rev. Frank Chong, who publishes an annual guide to the Legislature, was openly skeptical about the Bunda coalition's ability to remain in power, noting in 2001:
"At one time the Senate worked like clockwork and one could always count on the Senate to be well organized and forthright. With a new organization and with coalitions that have yet to be tried, the session will be one of pulling and testing."
That pulling and testing resulted last week in Bunda using the decidedly unusual tactic of attacking his own committee leaders and voting to pull a bill out of committee over the protests of the chairman. This is old hat in the House, where the 19 Republicans regularly seek to embarrass the Democratic majority by yanking a politically popular bill out of committee.
House Republicans are expected to attack the leadership, but it is profoundly destabilizing when the captain of the ship incites a mutiny, as Bunda did by defying his committee chairmen and forcing a bill to the floor. Hanabusa and cohorts argued unsuccessfully against it, but Bunda, who had been aligned with Hanabusa, moved over to the Chumbley faction.
The bill that triggered the change was a provision to help the health fund benefits of public school teachers. The bill passed in the Senate, but was not heard in the House. Teachers, being the potent lobbying force they are, now will be expected to work for their Senate supporters' re-elections. Still teachers union leaders should consider what will happen if the unstable Senate returns next year with this year's leaders out of power.
Richard Borreca writes on politics every Sunday in the Star-Bulletin.
He can be reached at 525-8630 or by e-mail at rborreca@starbulletin.com.
