 |
| Malia Zimmerman |
Stealth Candidate Considering Run at Congress Seat Scopes Out Case’s District
While the Hawaii media is focused on nearly one dozen candidates planning to run for the House seat in Hawaii’s Second Congressional District, former State House Minority Leader Quentin Kawananakoa is methodically laying a strategy for his own Congressional campaign out of the media spotlight.
Republican Party Chair Sam Aiona confirms Kawananakoa, the former House Minority Leader in the Hawaii State Legislature, is considering entering the Second Congressional District race.
Sources also tell Hawaii Reporter that Kawananakoa is following Congressman Ed Case through his constituent "talk story meetings" on Oahu and the neighbor islands. Case will vacate when he challenges U.S. Sen. Daniel Akaka in the 2006 primary election -- Kawananakoa is the only candidate that has so far figured out this is a sure way to meet constituents and hear their concerns.
Should he formally enter the race, Kawananakoa will bring some personal and professional baggage. In the House of Representatives in the 1990s, Kawananakoa announced a previous run for Congress in 1998 for the seat, then held by incumbent U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie. But Kawananakoa dropped out of the Congressional race in August 1998, saying in a written statement that he was "ill" and had been admitted to Queen’s Medical Center.
Because of his conviction in 1989 for cocaine possession, for which he pled no contest, some speculated Kawananakoa was entering rehab to overcome a drug addition, but Kawananakoa maintained he was in fact sick.
"I have been undergoing treatment for hypertension and its related conditions including heart palpitations, high blood pressure and severe headaches," Kawananakoa said in an Aug. 26, 1998, statement to the press.
Since dropping out of politics in 1998, Kawananakoa has kept a low profile, but he did make an appearance at the most recent Republican fundraiser, the Lincoln Day Dinner. Political analysts say despite Kawananakoa's previous struggles, he is an attractive native Hawaiian candidate and will likely be a serious contender for Republicans in the 2006 Congressional race.
Should Kawananakoa run for the seat, he may take on well-known media personality Sen. Bob Hogue, popular Honolulu City Prosecutor Peter Carlisle and former City Councilman Mike Gabbard -- all who said they are considering a run at the seat.
Whoever wins the Republican primary challenges the Democrat who emerges from the pack of politicians entering the race. Sen. Ron Menor and Sen. Gary Hooser have officially announced their candidacy, while Sen. Colleen Hanabusa, Sen. Clayton Hee, former Lt. Gov. Mazie Hirono, former state Sen. Matt Matsunaga, Rep. Brian Schatz, Council Member Nestor Garcia and former city council member Duke Bainum are considering a run for Congress.
Mardi Gras Follies
While Congressman Ed Case was meeting with constituents and planning his run for Sen. Daniel Akaka’s Senate seat, the 81-year-old Akaka was partying in New Orleans during Mardi Gras along side Sen. Hillary Clinton and other Senate Democrats.
According to a Feb. 28, 2006, report in BayouBuzz.com, Akaka, Clinton as well as Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark. and Tom Carper, D-Del., joined Senator Mary L. Landrieu, D-La., to "celebrate Mardi Gras and to reaffirm their commitment to Gulf Coast recovery, six months after Hurricane Katrina’s landfall."
The group reflected on the progress New Orleans has made since Hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit the South, demolishing several areas in Louisiana, including New Orleans. Then they partied. No word on whether anyone of the Senators bought shiny bead necklaces or took off their shirts, as is the tradition in New Orleans during Mardi Gras.
National Media Investigates Hawaii’s Democratic Party for Tit for Tat Money Swap
Tit for tat -- that is what Jane Sugimura said about a $5,000 contribution made by the Democratic Party of Hawaii to Rhode Island’s Secretary of State Matt Brown -- in exchange for $6,000 donated to the Democratic Party of Hawaii from a Brown supporter.
Sugimura should know -- she is the treasurer of the Democratic Party of Hawaii -- and that is the story she told the Associated Press not once, but twice, last week in two separate telephone interviews.
It seems a day after her statements hit the national news -- and someone likely explained to her that such an arrangement made to skirt campaign spending laws is illegal -- she changed her story. Suddenly, she told the national and local media, there was no such deal.
But her initial statements set off a firestorm across the country -- in part because Hawaii is not the only local Democratic Party that participated in the scheme. Brown raised $25,000 from three state Democratic parties including Hawaii, Massachusetts and Maine, in exchange for money from his supporters going back to those local Democratic parties.
Brown, who is running on a "clean government platform," told the Associated Press that the contributions are legal, but he would return them anyway because he did not want to "raise questions" in people’s minds about his integrity.
Under American law -- federal and state -- there are limits that candidates and parties must abide by, but none are allowed to reroute donations through a third person, union or business to avoid campaign spending limits.
Sam Aiona, chairman of the Hawaii Republican Party, says he wonders what else the Democrats are doing to fundraise for the 2006 elections and questions if there are any tactics being used to get around state fundraising laws.
Property Tax Bill Enacted, but Will it Bring Relief for the Average Property Owner?
Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann allowed a property tax bill to become law this Thursday in an effort to bring much-needed tax relief to the private homeowners in Honolulu, many who have seen their property taxes triple in the last three years.
Bill 12 (2006) CD1, FD2, which will become law without the mayor’s signature, adjusts city property tax rates annually depending on the city’s expenses in order to ensure that revenues from real property taxes do not outpace government expenses.
The mayor did not sign the bill because the Mayor’s Tax Policy Committee and staff reviewed the bill and felt it presents a number of technical challenges. One problem, Hannemann says, is the city faces huge increases in what the bill calls "uncontrollable" costs in the years to come.
Hannemann adds that he’d like to see property tax reductions limited to homeowners and farmers who are suffering financially because of the recent series of rain storms, and refrain from doing giving relief across the board.
"If the Council sees fit to lower tax rates, then I suggest they lower the rates for homeowners from $3.75 per $1,000 of assessed valuation to $3.59 for the improved residential and apartment classes. In addition, I would recommend that the Council lower the rate for agricultural land from $8.57 to $7.57 because of the damage and losses caused by the recent rains," Hannemann says.
Finally - Those Blue Garbage Bins Will Be Used for What They Were Intended
Honolulu Mayor Mufi Hannemann signed Bill 72 (2005), CD2, FD2, on Thursday, requiring the city to establish an islandwide curbside recycling program by July 1, 2007, accepting two types of products, such as glass containers, newspapers, plastic containers, green waste and food waste.
Finally, Oahu residents who received one of 50,000 blue bins will have use for them, other than "green recycling" as Mayor Mufi Hannemann has since instituted.
Former Honolulu Mayor Jeremy Harris purchased and distributed the 50,000 bins without a plan in place for islandwide recycling. He then canceled the program just before leaving office in December of 2004. Two years later, Hannemann was stuck with cleaning up and reinstating the program, and taxpayers were left with a whole lot of empty blue bins.
Hannemann originally said the curbside recycling program started by his predecessor is too costly, and that the state’s recycling efforts at local schools and at bottle recycling centers should be expanded instead. But now he says he will support the program because the Council agreed to find a way to fund it.
Clean Election Candidates Resorting to Sign Waving to Gain Support for "Voter Owned Elections"
In Kailua this week, two people with handmade signs that read "Support Voter-Owned Elections" and "Support Clean Elections" stood out in the rain and waved at drivers passing by.
They are hoping to gain momentum for "Clean Elections" legislation requiring taxpayers to financially subsidize the campaigns of all political candidates who want public funds.
HB 1713, which made it to conference committee last year, could still be passed this year. The bill died in the final hours of the 2005 Legislative session when lawmakers decided they could not allocate $25 million to the bill, but it will still be alive in conference committee, which comes in the final weeks of the 60-working day session.
That concerns people like former Campaign Spending Director Robert Watada, who fought against the passage of a "clean elections" bill in 2005, because it will further corrupt the election fundraising process. Other political lobbying groups, such as the Christian Coalition, fought hard against the legislation, saying its members do not want to subsidize campaigns of people who oppose their values and pass legislation they disagree with.
In 2005, Clean Elections advocates in Hawaii proposed through HB 1713 and SB 1689 that taxpayers give $25 million to subsidize the campaigns of governor, lieutenant governor, senators, representatives and even the city council members. Under their bill, candidates running for governor could get as much as $4 million to $12 million in the primary election -- an amount that would then double in the general. The most that has been raised and spent in a governor’s election in Hawaii is $5 million.
Lieutenant governor candidates could qualify for as much as $1.2 million per race and House and Senate candidates could receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in taxpayer subsidies, considerably more money than it has cost to finance such a race in the past.
Clean Elections advocates are back at the Legislature (with a new name -- Voter Owned Elections), asking lawmakers to pass their bills. They are endorsed by the Green Party, whose candidates cannot gain enough support from the community to raise their own funds without mandating taxpayers pay for their campaigns. Several lawmakers also endorse the legislation, because they also will qualify for hundreds of thousands of dollars for their next campaign, should the legislation pass.
Gov. Linda Lingle has maintained she is opposed to the legislation, but should the legislation be resurrected, passed and vetoed by her, two-thirds of the lawmakers in both Houses could vote to override her veto.
Hawaii Ranked as One of the 'Meanest' States to the Poor
Hawaii was ranked in a recent national survey as one of the worst states in terms of how it taxes its low-income residents. Hawaii begins taxing its residents’ personal income at $11,000, with the families living in poverty paying nearly $500 in taxes on wages of $11,500.
Just three other states were ranked lower than Hawaii, including Alabama, West Virginia and Montana.
Republican Gov. Linda Lingle, who has unsuccessfully lobbied Democrat lawmakers for tax relief for the poor since she was elected in 2002, says the rating is one of the most embarrassing Hawaii can receive and it shows the government is "mean."
In her 2006 state of the state speech, Lingle says she wants to raise the standard deduction by 75 percent and widen the tax bracket, so those living in poverty and with a low income do not have to pay tax. Senate President Robert Bunda supports the governor on both of these measures.
Three bills are moving forward in the state Legislature including SB 97, HB 2015 and HB 2018, which would help accomplish these objectives, according to Linda Smith, the governor’s senior policy advisor.
See the full study here: "The Impact of State Income Taxes on Low-Income Families"
On a High Note -- Mystery Novelist Gets Inspiration from Hawaii’s Crystal Meth Problem
BlackAmericaWeb.com reports that novelist, poet and journalist Emory Holmes II, is being honored with the highest recognition in his career for his piece entitled "a.k.a. Moises Rockafella," which will appear as one of Houghton Mifflin's 20 winning entries in the "Best American Mystery Stories of 2006" anthology.
Holmes told the BlackAmericaWeb.com that he "unearthed the motley gallery of killers I’d banked in an archive of traffickers and thugs, collected during my 30 years as a reporter and writer. Some of those characters and settings in ‘a.k.a. Moises Rockafella,’ were plucked from the novel I'm writing about a meth epidemic in 1980s Honolulu."
He spent time in Honolulu in 1989, where he says he "discovered the remarkable crimes and characters that have become 'a.k.a. Moises Rockafella.'"
Maybe Hawaii's nationally renown crystal meth problem finally produced a good high for someone.
Reach Malia Zimmerman, editor and president of Hawaii Reporter, via email at mailto:Malia@hawaiireporter.com
