The bad news: Most of the candidates are duds. Here’s my analysis of each one.
Mufi Hanneman is qualified. And I’ll always have a soft spot in my heart for Mufi for TheBoat, which was a wonderful innovation, even though it ultimately failed. Gotta give him credit for trying. But Mufi is too pro-tourism. I don’t believe that the health of our elders can be trusted to him. Of course, he gives lip service to remaining vigilant in the fight against COVID-19. But he won’t protect our elders from COVID-19 if their well-being gets in the way of profits for the hotel industry. And wasn’t Mufi responsible for the huge mountains of garbage that rose up on the streets in my neighborhood? It took years to get that problem under control. And I can’t get over the fact that he was against gay rights (he opposed gay marriage). Boo!
Kym Pine is probably qualified. She has been accused in the past of being a gun-toting member of the Tea Party, but I can’t determine if this was true. It’s true that she was a Republican until 2016, and one must assume that she changed party affiliation in order to improve her prospects of winning elections in Hawaii. But since then she seems to have largely governed like a Democrat. She has done some impressive stuff on the City Council, some of it genuinely good. It’s hard, though, to find an ideological through-line in her legislative record. What does she stand for? And then there’s this: According to Civil Beat, in 2015 Pine approved Ho’opili after accepting $160,000 in campaign contributions from people connected with the project. Ho’opili is a huge housing project in Kapolei that required paving over some of the best farmland in the world. The developer made big bucks by convincing (bribing?) politicians to rezone agriculture land. SUPER YUCKY!
Rick Blangiardi was a football coach and TV executive. Sorry, that doesn’t qualify you to run a city of 980,000 people. Also, on his website he says on the subject of development, “I will streamline the planning and permitting process to save time and money for builders, and get construction underway faster.” Um… no thank you. That ain’t what we need right now. Politically, Blandiardi is an Independent. This might mean that he’s able to take the best ideas from both the Left and the Right. Or, it might mean he doesn’t have a coherent philosophy of his own, just a big bag of platitudes.
John Carroll is a conservative Republican in favor of deregulation. Nooooo! Interestingly, Carroll advocates a restoration of agriculture, which I like. And it doesn’t bother me that he’s 90 years old, either. But, we just can’t allow a Republican in office right now, ruining everything with their dumb theories. With the fiasco of the disastrous mismanagement of the pandemic by Republicans at all levels of government nation-wide, their party needs to be barred from power, until such time that they pull their heads out of their posterior noggin depositories. (The only Republican I might support right now is Djou, just because I believe he is competent and has genuine integrity. But he isn’t running.)
Ho Yin (Jason) Wong isn’t qualified and sounds a little nutty. He’s a relatively new transplant to Hawaii, which also counts against him. He wants to discontinue the rail project, and he has interesting ideas of what to do with the elevated tracks we’ve already built. What are those ideas, you ask? Put homeless people up there. Or prisoners. Or a technology institute. One of his other ideas it to give honeymooners money when they arrive on the island to spend here.
William “Bud” Stonebraker is a Trump Republican, it would appear. He doesn’t believe climate change is a problem for Hawaii. And he thinks that COVID-19 isn’t a big deal. Oy!
Audrey Keesing is hard to find info about. In the Civil Beat Q&A she gave some decent answers. The closest thing to a campaign website I can find is her Facebook page, which reveals that she’s a stand-up comedian and a former dancer. Sounds like an interesting person. But… not qualified for the job. At this point, though, I’m actually tempted to vote for her, only because the other choices are so dismal. If she has a background in Theatre, she’s probably cool.
Choon James has something going for her: an endorsement from Kioni Dudley. That counts for a lot in my book. But she just isn’t remotely qualified for the job. And while the platform on her website mentions a couple of good ideas, like capping property taxes for elderly owner-occupants, it leaves many vital questions unanswered.
Keith Amemiya‘s experience is a little better than some of the others: He was Senior VP of Island Holdings, whatever that is, and he has served on various boards and commissions; so at least he’s familiar with the way government works, and he has some experience running an organization. But does that make you ready to run a big city? Idunno. As for his priorities, I like what his website says about climate change. But his “Housing For All” plan sounds like the same horse poop we always hear from pro-development politicians, who keep giving sweetheart deals to developers under the guise of promoting affordable housing — the very developers who help fund their campaigns. YUCK. This article at Civil Beat is full of helpful info about Amemiya. The story about the condo he bought in Kakaako is super fishy and makes him sound sleazy as hell. It sounds like he helped the developer build in Kakaako, and then he was given the chance to buy one of the units for cheap. Ugh. That stinks of corruption. On that basis, I can’t vote for him.
Last but not least is Colleen Hanabusa. She’s qualified. There’s no question that she has the experience needed to understand the complexities of government. Where does she stand on the issues? It’s hard to know! Her website is wordy without being informative, and it isn’t clear or user-friendly. In the Civil Beat Q&A with her, she was asked a direct question about how Honolulu should prepare for a climate change. Her answer demonstrated knowledge about the topic, but she wasn’t able to articulate her vision. When asked how she would alleviate traffic congestion, she said only, “there must also be a reduction in the flow to downtown Honolulu.” Umm… DUH. That was assumed in the question. HOW will you reduce the flow? My main concerns with Hanabusa are: 1) that the lack of clarity in her answers might betray the lack of a clear vision, and this will translate into a weak administration that makes little progress on anything important; and 2) that the one area where she is clear is “affordable housing.” I’m cynical about so-called “affordable housing,” because I think in truth it translates to over-development, without solving any problems for poor people.
So, that’s all of the candidates. Notice how almost all them are conservatives?
How come we can’t have a candidate who’s a true-blue progressive liberal Democrat, with strong values, big ideas, a bold plan, and enough backbone to see it through?
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