Under the Sun
Cynthia Oi
When in need, indeed,
choose a friend to heedANYONE who's bought a new car has been through the frustrating ritual of price negotiations. You know the drill. The salesman tries to get you to pay an outrageous sum, then you present the amount you're willing to spend and he shakes his head in doubt, but tells you he'll go talk to his manager and disappears for half an hour, leaving you to suspect he's not really trying to convince the boss to accept your offer but catching a nap instead. Then he returns, rubbing his hands together and smiling, to say that if you'll pay the asking price, he'll throw in deluxe floor mats for free. Pooh.
To avoid that vexing exercise again, I went to see Sidney.
Sidney is a guy who had been a year behind me in high school and the dealership where he worked was in the neighborhood where we both grew up. He knew me, I knew him, so I trusted him to give me a price for a car that would earn him a fair commission without gouging. The entire transaction took about the same amount of time that the manager consultation had consumed in the first go-round. I got the car I wanted at a reasonable cost, Sidney made an easy sale. Good.
Familiarity can breed contempt, but it can also deliver contentment. Dealing with people with whom you've shared experiences saves time and energy, especially when you're assembling a team. That's why it is not surprising that Linda Lingle has surrounded herself with many of her friends and political supporters. She knows them, they know her.
Not that everyone she has chosen to join her in governing is a longtime buddy. She did open her doors to individuals who were unknowns in political circles and most appear to be refreshing selections -- skilled, capable people with the new perspectives necessary for her to produce the changes she seeks. Only in one instance did it turn out that a nominee had some baggage, which can be expected despite rigorous vetting.
Still, the large core of Lingle's company are benefactors. She chose Micah Kane, the former Republican Party chairman who led her campaign for governor, as director of Hawaiian Home Lands. Georgina Kawamura, with whom she had worked for years on Maui, is her budget director.
More recently, Lingle signed up a troupe of partisans, friends or spouses of friends to a number of positions, among them: Joelle Kane, wife of Micah, to the board of the Research Corporation of the University of Hawaii; Rae McCorkle, Lingle's campaign finance director, to the Land Use Commission; and Roland Lagareta, husband of Lingle's political adviser, Kitty Lagareta, to the board of the East-West Center.
For the UH Board of Regents, the governor selected Lagareta herself; Edward Sultan, McCorkle's husband; and Shelton Jim On, Oahu finance chairman for Lingle's campaign. The nominations raised eyebrows since the board hires and fires the university president and there's no love lost between Lingle and Evan Dobelle, whose endorsement of her opponent so peeved Lingle that she hung up on him when he called to tell her and whose political ambitions are said to extend beyond the campus.
Lingle isn't the first politician to reward friends and supporters, and she won't be the last. The grievance here is that all through her campaign and even in her inaugural address, she pounded on this promise: that her governing would eliminate the "good old boys," the insiders who had the ears and helping hands of political leaders, that what would matter would not be who you know, but what you know.
Lingle may have discovered that in order to get things done, she needs people she can count on, people she knows, and that there's nothing wrong with choosing them if they do not exploit their positions.
There's a vast difference between political prevarication and changing your mind, which Lingle seems to have done. Knowing her team has got her back must be assuring, just as assuring as it was for me to go see Sidney about a car.
Cynthia Oi has been on the staff of the Star-Bulletin for 25 years.
She can be reached at: coi@starbulletin.com.