Uninvited guests irk
Natural Law Party

Party officials are not happy
about the efforts of 2 candidates

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By Treena Shapiro
tshapiro@starbulletin.com

A marijuana advocate and a local comedian are not the Natural Law Party's ideal candidates.

But for Green Party rejects Jonathan Adler and Kaui Hill -- better known as Bu La'ia -- the Natural Law party is the best vehicle for getting one of them to the general election in the race for governor.

"We have two candidates running this time that don't support our platform," said Natural Law Party Chairwoman Laurie Clegg.

"They're just running because they want to promote their own agenda."

It is a problem that the Hawaii Republican and Democratic parties both said they have not had to face and that the Green and Libertarian parties have tailored their bylaws to prevent.

"It's very disappointing for us because our party has very high ideals ... then people come along and just use us," Clegg said.

She pointed out that party officials told Adler that they did not want him to run under their banner.

While the party believes that marijuana should be decriminalized, "we don't see that as a key to a better world," Clegg said. "In fact, we feel it's damaging to the brain.

"We were kind of upset that someone would run just because they couldn't get into any other party."

Turned down by the Green Party, Adler said he chose the Natural Law Party because "it's the only party with no political baloney to deal with, and it was available to be molded and shaped into a public-service platform.

"Actually, to be really honest, it has nothing to do with the party," he said. "It's beyond parties. I'm too smart to do that," he said. He decided not to run as a nonpartisan because "I did that three times already, running for mayor."

He said that it is too difficult for a nonpartisan to make it to the general election. To advance from the primary, a nonpartisan candidate must receive at least 10 percent of the votes cast for the office or as many votes as the lowest vote received by a partisan candidate.

As Green Party chairman, Ira Rohter has had experience dealing with undesirable candidates. "We want people who run as Greens to really represent the Green Party ideals rather than their own. To suddenly have a bunch of flaky people running, that's not our agenda."

The Green Party has been to court five or six times to remove candidates from the ballot, such as Big Island mayoral candidate Darryl "Buck" Wheat in the 2000 election.

Hill filed as a Green Party gubernatorial candidate four years ago. Rohter said he told him at the time that "his motives for running were not valid at all. He wants to go on a rant. He wants to make money," he recalled. "He had no idea there was a platform."

Shortly thereafter the comedian ended up in jail, Rohter said.

Hill said Adler recruited him for this election. "He actually told me what it's about and why I should be part of the Natural Law Party," Hill said.

Hill said he was not aware that the party did not support Adler. He insists, however, that he believes in the Natural Law ideals. "They're for education," he said.

"The founders of the party is basically a bunch of schoolteachers, and I'm 300 percent behind education," he said. "I can't really say what's the other parts of their platform."

Adler will likely be removed from the ballot when he is sentenced for marijuana possession later this month. Clegg said that she wrote to Hill urging him to run as a nonpartisan.

"I just wrote to Bu, appealed to his conscience," she said.

Hill's response: "I told her that I was sorry I didn't get the OK from her, but I got the OK from Jonathan Adler," he said.

Adler and Hill could have done what Daniel Cunningham did when he and the Libertarians could not come to terms: start his own party.

A former chiropractor who claims he lost his license for curing cancer, Cunningham said he decided to run for governor when he realized that he was Daniel of Revelation of the Ecclesia. "I'm the guy from the Bible," he said. "I realized the only solution for change was to bring it."

He had been a Libertarian, but they did not support his plan to use decommissioned nuclear submarines to provide free energy for the state, so he founded the Free Energy party.

Libertarian Party Chairman Roger Taylor said that the bylaws "have a statement that if you do not agree 100 percent with the Libertarian platform, you just have to agree not to bring up issues that are not Libertarian."