On Politics
BY RICHARD BORRECA
Andy, Mazie and Ed
need to take the gloves
off, says a friendly foeOnce upon a time there was a Republican lady in Hawaii who was making news, upsetting Democrats and becoming a political power after reviving the local GOP from a near-death experience.
In hopes of stopping the congresswoman in her tracks, the Democrats, led by U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, challenged her with the best and the brightest they had.
There was a Harvard-educated lawyer and City Councilman, Leigh-Wai Doo; an up-by-the-bootstraps labor leader, John Radcliffe; and an impeccably educated, well-spoken government official, Mary Bitterman.
"They called us the Three Amigos," Radcliffe recalls. "We never laid a glove on each other and when it was all over, Pat Saiki beat Mary Bitterman like a drum."
Radcliffe's recollections are accurate. He grabbed all the union endorsements, Bitterman had Inouye in her campaign from the beginning and Doo was a strong Democratic candidate melding the best of both worlds. But their campaign dribbled along as the trio spent all their time together attacking the Reagan administration.
The nearest thing to a confrontation was when the three would attack each other's resumes.
After Bitterman won the primary, Saiki announced "the love fest is over," and said that Bitterman would not "have the luxury of hiding behind her resume."
Today Saiki recalls that despite the Democrats pulling out all the stops and Inouye actually standing on the highway with a sign for Bitterman, Saiki won re-election to Congress.
She went on to become a director of the federal Small Business Administration and lost a race for the U.S. Senate. She is now back home in Hawaii taking care of her 98-year-old father, but she has some words of advice for today's Democratic gubernatorial opponents: Mix it up, start the debate.
They may want to listen to Saiki and review that 1986 race for Congress.
The new "three amigos" -- Lt. Gov. Mazie Hirono, Rep. Ed Case and D.G. "Andy" Anderson -- need only look at how easy it was for Governor Cayetano to capture the political spotlight with his current dust-up with Linda Lingle, instead of having a solid debate among the Democrats, to see how far they need to go to start the campaign.
"They are all saving their venom for Lingle," Saiki says. "But it doesn't give voters a chance to compare the candidates, and that is sad. The voters won't know about the differences unless someone points it out."
After the primary, the remaining amigo will find, as Saiki said 16 years ago, that the love fest is over.
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.
