The race for Honolulu mayor comes into sharper focus as former Gov. Ben Cayetano on Friday switched the argument from opposition to either/or.

Last week Cayetano was against rail. Now he can say he is for a new bus system, which he claims is cheaper, more effective and can start delivering results in six months.

Cayetano’s reason for being mayor was to stop rail. Now he can ask voters to choose his plan, which he describes as a coherent new bus system with multiple nonstop express routes to college campuses, alternate fast street systems in town and a freeway extension into town.

The system is complex with lots of moving parts, but it is logical and has the credibility of having been successful in other places such as Los Angeles.

In practical political terms, it offers more of a full debate on the future of Honolulu, because without an alternative, Cayetano was left to defend his position of just halting the $5.3 billion rail plan.

His own estimate for the bus plan is $1.1 billion, but no objective pencils have had a crack at checking Cayetano’s arithmetic.

The bus alternative is only part of the political equation, because Cayetano is also locked in a tough race with Kirk Caldwell, former Honolulu managing director.

Caldwell enjoys the backing of the state’s major unions and the political endorsement of Hawaii’s most influential politician, Sen. Daniel K. Inouye. Meanwhile, Caldwell is getting protective cover from a heavy-hitting negative campaign by the construction-oriented Pacific Resource Partnership.

In the August three-way primary election, Cayetano, a controversial but successful two-term liberal Democratic governor and lieutenant governor, won almost 100,000 votes, to Caldwell’s almost 60,000. Incumbent Mayor Peter Carlisle came in third with 51,000, meaning Honolulu’s new mayor will be decided in the November general election among top two candidates.

Cayetano says his own research shows that the negative attack ads by PRP cost him the needed majority to win in the primary. About 5 percent of those who Cayetano surveyed said the PRP ads caused them to change their vote and that small variable was all that was needed. PRP, backed by the Carpenters Union and contractors, paid $1 million for the attack ads.

Today, Cayetano’s team is carefully going precinct by precinct, looking at where they can improve on that margin. Cayetano supporters are hoping to get 187,000 votes in a general election that could include as many as 286,000 voters (the average number of Oahu voters in the last three presidential-year general elections).

The PRP campaign is based on tearing down Cayetano’s credibility, saying Caldwell is "trustworthy," while Cayetano as governor accepted political money that was illegally donated to him. There is no law in unknowingly accepting illegal contributions, the violation rests with the donor not the recipient.

Interestingly, the head of PRP, John White, ran unsuccessfully for the City Council two years ago and he accepted legal donations from at least one of the individuals named in the PRP ad as giving illegal contributions to Cayetano.

When asked about the donations, a spokesman for White, Jim McCoy, didn’t answer the question, instead saying: "Voters want to know about their current choices for mayor. Everything else is just a distraction by Mr. Cayetano’s supporters."

—————
Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Reach him at rborreca@staradvertiser.com.