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Lingle vows not to Thanks to a defeat four years ago, candidate for governor Linda Lingle and crew now say they have learned how to win the 2002 election.
repeat ’98 mistakes
Targeted direct mail and heavy
spending mark her campaignBy Richard Borreca
rborreca@starbulletin.comKitty Lagareta, Lingle's communications director in 1998, is amazed at the difference in campaigns.
"We are so different now, we laugh: 'How did we come so close the last time?'" said Lagareta, chief executive officer of Communications Pacific and co-founder of Hawaii Online.
Lingle, then Republican mayor of Maui, entered the 1998 race with only 40 percent name recognition but she was able to pull more votes in the GOP primary election than Cayetano had in his primary and then came within 5,000 votes of winning the governorship.
Lingle said Monday that the plans this year are not to repeat the 1998 campaign.
"We are not going to take the 1998 race and do the same thing, but just try harder," Lingle said. "The truth is, we couldn't have tried any harder than we did in 1998, but now we are going to take what we learned in 1998 and apply it to this race."
For Lingle, it was her first loss in seven campaigns. Afterward, Lingle read a history of former Hawaii Gov. John Burns and recalled how he lost his first race for governor after being favored to win.
"He didn't fade away. I wouldn't say I was modeling my plans on that, but I was motivated by it," she said.
"His focus was on unity," she said in an interview at her campaign headquarters.
"I think people expected me to fade away. That's what happens with the Republicans: they run, they lose and they fade away. Then four years later, they come with another candidate, a good candidate that gets only 40 percent," she said.
"Now my commitment isn't just to winning the governor's race, it is to have a two-party system, because I think then we will have better government," Lingle says.
To reach that end, Lingle is ramping up a campaign with all the professional organization that in year's past have been hallmarks of the tightly run campaigns of Democrats such as former Govs. George Ariyoshi and Burns.
A spokesman for Gov. Ben Cayetano's campaign says that while Cayetano benefited from the Democrats and the unions supporting him, the organization was never as complete as that of former Gov. John Waihee and Ariyoshi.
Campaign tactics that Ariyoshi and Waihee used to perfection in five winning gubernatorial campaigns simply were not understood or valued by Lingle four years ago, according to her supporters.
"Back then we didn't have any statewide campaign experience, we didn't understand there was a bigger game plan to be implemented," says Bob Awana, the former tourism industry executive and Democrat, who switched parties to help Lingle four years ago.
Now, he sees that targeted direct mail can help get finely tuned messages to different voters groups.
"Targeted mailings let you speak to the person in Naalehu about their concerns, which are different from the concerns of someone on Bishop Street," Awana said.
Such targeted mailings have been a specialty of sophisticated election campaigns, but this year, Lingle has a full-time volunteer tracking supporters and potential support groups by both home and profession.
Democratic Senate President Robert Bunda cautioned, however, that learning from past mistakes may not be enough.
"I remember she was blank -- not advertising the last two weeks of her campaign. I don't know if she figured she had won the race already, but it was a very noticeable omission," Bunda (D, Wahiawa) said. "Whether what you learn from past mistakes will translate into a win, I don't know."
Lingle sees two campaign mistakes that she and her supporters made in 1998. First, she said, the campaign underestimated the strength of the unions and others supporting Cayetano.
"I didn't understand I was running against an entire power structure. It was every labor union in the state except for the university professors," Lingle says.
"The second thing I would do differently is not signing the campaign spending pledge. Cayetano admitted to spending $4.5 million, we spent $2.7 million, but the unions spent millions of dollars. The companies that were benefiting by Cayetano staying in office were buying page after page of ads," Lingle said.
At the time, pledging to limit her campaign expenses seemed "like the right thing" because she did not think she would be able to raise that much money anyway, she said.
Lagareta said that after Lingle's convincing primary victory over former Mayor Frank Fasi, Lingle was able to raise money, but because of the campaign spending ceiling for candidates taking public funds, Lingle was not able to spend all her money. She actually ended the race with nearly $450,000 left in her campaign.
Today Lingle is running what she expects to be a $5 million campaign. Her communications director, Lenny Klompus, sports marketing executive, who like many others on Lingle's staff took a leave of absence to work on the campaign, said the campaign expects to spend all of the $5 million between now and the end of the year.
To raise money, Lingle is looking for help both here and on the mainland. She is attending a $1,000-a-plate fund-raiser tomorrow in New York that is hosted by former Mayor Rudy Giuliani. Klompus said the dinner is expected to raise $75,000.