Talk Story
Hawaii doesn’t need or want
just any old changeIN AN OLD "Peanuts" comic strip, Lucy asks little brother Linus, "Do you think anybody ever really changes?"
Linus replies, "I've changed a lot in the last year."
"I mean for the better," Lucy says.
As a letter from a Star-Bulletin reader points out, change is a double-edged sword. Things can get better, get worse or stay the same. Now that both candidates for governor are campaigning for change, some people are getting worried.
We were watching a Mazie Hirono commercial before the primary election. In it, Hirono tells a group of older people gathered at a local restaurant about her devotion to Hawaii, her commitment from the heart.
I didn't notice the Tabasco bottle in the picture until my wife pointed it out. "What a perfect touch!" she said.
I asked Hirono who decided to include the Tabasco bottle in the picture. She smiled and said it was already on the table when they set up to film the commercial, but the director -- she uses a local company and claims Lingle doesn't -- thought it sent the right message.
THAT COMMERCIAL proposed no upsetting changes, explored neither issues nor specific plans. Instead, it established Hirono as the candidate of the status quo, someone who cares about the old ways, local style, local values and local people.
Despite Republican attempts to label her a do-nothing, Hirono's eight years of invisibility as lieutenant governor have become a political asset. She left no fingerprints on anything damagingly disruptive.
"I tell her not to stand too close to the current governor -- because of the tomatoes," her running mate, Matt Matsunaga, jests.
By contrast, her opponents -- first those pushy primary candidates Case and Anderson with all their disruptive proposals, and now pushy Linda Lingle who wants to throw sand in the smoothly running local political machinery -- are outsiders intent on making Hawaii more like the mainland.
I WATCHED two painters put a fresh coat of white on the clubhouse at Olomana Golf Course in Waimanalo a few weeks ago. "What you think of Linda?" one asked the other.
"Can't vote for Linda," the other replied. "No jobs."
That's the real anti-Lingle smear. It isn't about her ethnicity or personal life, but the persistent belief that by "change" she means cutting jobs, union busting, privatization, outsourcing and cutting employment by increasing efficiency and productivity.
One thing that's changed is the Hirono campaign itself. Instead of avoiding "change" completely, she's now positioned herself as the candidate for "responsible change."
Was this a concession to the groundswell of primary support for Ed Case, who campaigned as the candidate of change?
"There you go," she says. "We're not stupid."
HOWEVER, despite her insisting, "I'm not the candidate of the status quo and neither is Matt," she is still the one who advocates moderation, incrementalism and collaboration.
Take education policy, for example. Lingle wants to break up the public school system into seven districts answering to seven locally elected boards. Hirono wants to let schools have more say in budgeting and decision making.
Lingle wants to get the Department of Accounting and General Services out of the school maintenance business because it is inefficient and ineffective. Hirono wants to have DAGS do whole-school renovations.
Lingle says to fix a leaky sink at a school in Kahuku, for example, takes a DAGS plumber a full day with a couple of hours of travel in each direction -- a classic case of centralized inefficiency.
"It's not about fixing sinks," Hirono says. "It's about a $600 million dollar backlog in repair and maintenance."
Hirono says she wants to be governor "because a large part of me wants to make a difference." But that doesn't mean she's for "change" per se.
No, she'd rather call it "moving in a positive direction."
John Flanagan is the Star-Bulletin's contributing editor.
He can be reached at: jflanagan@starbulletin.com.