Revelations pummel Ige politically

When things go wrong in a big way, it is usually the top leadership that takes a beating, which means Gov. David Ige may now be in deep trouble in the wake of the frightening Jan. 13 ballistic missile attack false alarm, according to political observers.

Despite Ige’s apologies, despite the state and federal investigations, despite the firing or resignations of staffers who were involved, the missile alert appears to be a made-to-order issue for U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa that arrived just as the Democratic primary campaign began.

Any chief executive will try to sweep away such problems as quickly as possible, but that hasn’t been possible for Ige in this case, said Todd Belt, a University of Hawaii-Hilo political science professor.

For example, when Ige failed to mention the false alarm in his Jan. 22 State of the State address, some listeners griped that he seemed to be prematurely trying to change the subject.

Not a chance. Ige has been pummeled by a series of revelations about the false alarm that culminated in Tuesday’s disclosures that the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency worker who triggered the false alert actually thought the state was under attack, and that worker had mistaken drills for real events at least twice before.

The worker who triggered the alarm was terminated while two others, including HI-EMA administrator Vern Miyagi, have resigned, but it isn’t clear yet whether even that effort to assign responsibility and accountability will help Ige.

Belt pointed out that scandals today play out at a “speed of light” nationally, “which means that anything that hangs out in the news for a long period of time is really magnified,” he said. “It’s not totally fair, but people always expect executives to act quickly, and that’s not always possible. Investigations have to be done and they have to be thorough.”

He added, “When things trickle out, it looks bad for politicians. Even though that might be the right process, it still has political implications.”

Colin Moore, director of the Public Policy Center at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, said the latest revelations Tuesday about the mistakes by emergency management employees and problems with the warning system “just makes the state look more disorganized.”

Ige is an engineer by training who has cultivated an image of a detail-oriented technocrat. His critics, meanwhile, have tried to portray him as indecisive and ineffective, alleging that his administration responded too slowly to problems such the dengue fever outbreak and the Thirty Meter Telescope protests in 2015.

When HI-EMA took 38 minutes to officially cancel the Jan. 13 false alarm, that played right into the political narrative of Ige’s opponents, and Hanabusa’s supporters were quick to thump on that point.

That included U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who told reporters last week that “the failure of leadership that we saw throughout that entire incident further affirmed what I know, and what I trust in my call today.” She went on to offer a warm endorsement of Hanabusa.

And Tuesday’s criticisms of the state emergency system by the Federal Communications Commission continued the damaging “trickle” of revelations about the missile alert.

While Ige is not directly overseeing the HI-EMA operational procedures that apparently caused the false alarm and the delay in canceling it, “that’s not really how most voters think about this situation,” Moore said.

“My sense is that after people got over the shock, it is still something that affected them in this deep way, and I don’t really see this report doing anything to help politically. I think it just makes the state look even more incompetent,” he said.

Ige had relatively low public approval ratings going into this election season, and Moore described the missile alert as “a mortal blow.”

“This would be something that would be difficult for most governors to recover from,” he said. “We know that people blame chief executives for natural disasters or other mistakes of this magnitude. They’re pretty harsh in their judgment, and Gov. Ige is a victim of that.”