Ige’s administration lacks needed victories

Four years ago, the state Senate was wrapping up business for the year with a series of farewell toasts for its Ways and Means chairman, Sen. David Ige.

The affable and unassuming Pearl City Democrat was leaving the Legislature for a chance to run the state.

The task, opposing an incumbent governor, under most conditions would be unbelievably difficult. No sitting Democratic governor had ever been defeated in a primary election. Primary elections are a different beast: they draw out the committed partisans, union members and ideologues, wanting candidates who are true to the party causes.

In Ige’s favor was his opponent, Neil Abercrombie, the bombastic, a 20-year veteran of Congress who had also served in the state House, Senate and Honolulu City Council. Abercrombie was packing what would amount to a $5.2 million campaign, plus the power of strong name identification and incumbency.

Abercrombie had an almost pathological tendency to insult and pick fights with the core constituencies of the Hawaii Democratic Party. Teachers, retired state workers, environmentalists, Native Hawaiian activists all came away smarting from Abercrombie brawls.

On Election Day, Ige was the mouse who roared as he crushed Abercrombie, by 36 percentage points. It was the largest primary loss by any sitting governor in U.S. history, according to the Center for Politics.

Still an unknown, voters just cared that he was a solid Democrat not named “Abercrombie.”

Now Ige is preparing for a second statewide campaign.

It appears to be as low-key as his first attempts at state leadership.

So far, Ige’s time in office has been marked by quietude and missteps — while not fatal, they reveal a tendency to stumble.

Early on, Ige enraged supporters from the environmental wing of the party by picking Castle &Cooke lobbyist Carleton Ching to lead the Department of Land and Natural Resources. Ige’s old buddies on the Senate’s Water and Land Committee voted 5-2 against Ching, and Ige, at the last moment, yanked the nomination and eventually substituted the longtime leader of The Nature Conservancy, Suzanne Case.

Four years ago, Ige said he was running for governor because “I learned that you can pass great legislation, but then it falls flat on its face in implementation.”

So far the Ige administration is still marked by its own face plants, not stunning victories.

Public schools are a big Ige issue; as a former education committee chairman, Ige has led task forces to change the school system. His wife, Dawn Amano-Ige, is a former public school vice principal and, according to observers, a force of her own in the Ige administration.

After being socked by a historic heat wave two years ago, Ige proposed a $100 million campaign to air condition 1,000 classrooms. So far the money and administrative interest have produced middling results.

The Department of Education reports that as of March, 1,152 classroom AC units are out to bid, 804 classroom AC units ordered and just 209 classroom AC units have been installed.

Perhaps a bigger fumble was Ige’s ham-handed attempts to deliver Darrel Galera as the new superinten- dent of education.

While Ige has dismissed questions about his involvement, he named Galera to the Board of Education and Galera was soon heading a committee on replacing superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi. Galera, who worked with Amano-Ige while they were both in the DOE, then resigned his board post to become a candidate for superintendent — only to be greeted with such hoots of disbelief at the arranged appearance of the job search that he stepped out of the race.

The race for governor is another question.

So far, Ige has attracted no public challengers for his job and has just $321,150 in the campaign treasury. This summer’s announcements, or lack, of candidates may give Ige four more years in office.