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On Politics Richard Borreca |
Governor’s road show
stays fresh in voters’ mindsBaseball fans such as Governor Lingle know you can never get too much of a good thing.
So just as Major League Baseball can stretch its season from spring through October, Lingle has devised a series of community chats that put her administration on a weekly road show from July to November.
Not since Gov. John Waihee's "Capitol for a Day" tours more than a dozen years ago, has a Hawaii governor made such an effort to actively engage the community in the business of government.
After divvying up the state between herself and Lt. Gov. James "Duke" Aiona, Lingle started with two-hour meetings in schools and auditoriums across the state. Her communications office arranged the meetings, the flourishing e-mail system on the governor's Web site helped raise interest and supporters cooked the chili and rice.
The meetings started in July and will finish Nov. 4 with a meeting in Waianae.
While Aiona handled the drug issue, Lingle took on all the rest, with questions coming about land development, prisons, water use and transportation.
The neighbor island meetings drew crowds of up to 400, while the Oahu meetings have been in the 100-200 range, according to officials in Lingle's office.
Most of the news coverage has come from the neighbor islands, where having any top official show up in a non-election year is big news. The impact of the meetings, however, will not be in just headlines and column inches of news coverage.
Voters expect their political leaders to utilize their public positions to influence politics and policy. The public already identifies the governor with state government, so it solidifies a governor's standing to bring the government to the people.
The whole exercise flies under most political radars. The community talks don't put Lingle in position to announce new policy; they're more a forum to explain or talk about the controversy of the day and then toss the issue back to the community and ask, "What do you want?"
The whole operation, according to observers such as Lloyd Yonenaka, who served as Lingle's press secretary when she was mayor of Maui and is now Lingle's neighbor island liaison, is vintage Lingle.
While on Maui, Lingle would take her administration budget around to community meetings before submitting it to the county council, resulting in a document that she could argue had already been vetted in the grassroots.
And during her successful campaign for governor last year, Lingle drew strength from her "talk story" community rallies, which would trigger a new round of Lingle yard signs and bumper stickers within a day after each event.
If Lingle is able to continue to appear in public as the symbolic leader the public has been demanding and is able to build and maintain the loyalty of voters, the tour of 2003 will have prepped both the public and her supporters for a big victory in the 2004 elections.
See the Columnists section for some past articles.
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.
