Political history could offer lesson in campaign backlash for outspoken candidate Ing

Again and again candidates for public office are told “Just speak your mind and it will be OK.”

Really? Perhaps considering local political history before speaking is better advice.

Right now Maui state Rep. Kaniela Ing is running for Oahu’s 1st Congressional District with an outspoken campaign as a young, progressive Democrat. He is also calling former U.S. Sen. Daniel K. Inouye “an accused serial rapist” and mulls over why the state’s main airport is named after Inouye.

First the cautions. When Ben Cayetano, former lieutenant governor then governor, was first running for LG in 1986, Republican candidate Vicky Bunye, then Honolulu’s human resources director, held a news conference to say Japanese-Americans were overrepresented in the state workforce and the state discriminated against Filipinos, whites and minorities to keep them out of government jobs.

In his autobiography, Cayetano said Bunye’s remark “injected race into the election.”

“Racial discrimination by individuals in state government was something I had experienced myself — but it was a bit of a stretch to argue there was institutional racism in the DOE against any ethnic group,” Cayetano wrote about the Department of Education, adding that Bunye’s remarks turned the election around, helping him to win.

In another example of “Think, don’t act,” in 1996 state Sen. Rey Graulty was the Senate’s leading proponent of gun control. To drive home his concern, his campaign, with the help of the public teachers union, sent a mailing to everyone in his district and included a bullet casing.

Many voters thought Graulty was sending them live ammunition; others thought Graulty was physically threatening them. No one thought this was a brilliant campaign tactic.

Graulty’s conservative primary opponent, Norman Sakamoto, was quick to agree that voters were being unnecessarily alarmed. End result was that Graulty was defeated, although he was later appointed to the state Circuit Court.

Kaniela Ing was just 4 years old when Inouye’s U.S. Senate reelection campaign was caught up in charges that Inouye had forced himself on his barber, Lenore Kwock.

The story broke because the campaign of Inouye’s Republican opponent, Rick Reed, surreptitiously taped a conversation with Kwock in which the then-40-year-old barber said Inouye forced her to have sex with him and later tried to fondle her.

Ing in his social media comments said the affair was hushed up, which is nonsense; it was the biggest local political story of the year. In very large print, the old Honolulu Star-Bulletin front page in October of 1992 declared: “Kwock: Inouye forced me to have sex with him.”

Inouye denied the charges, but other women anonymously said they, too, had allegations against Inouye. The senator went on to defeat Reed and was president pro tempore of the Senate in his final years, which made him the highest-ranking Asian-American politician in U.S history.

Ing isn’t offering legislation to change the name of Hawaii’s airport or other government buildings and highways named after Inouye.

In Twitter conversations last week, Ing said: “My statement about the airport isn’t about attacking the late Senator. It’s about what the state can do to amplify, rather than continue to silence the voices of women.”

So what does Ing want?

“It’s a tricky conversation, because the Senator is no longer with us. But he’s just a symbol. … Whether or not the allegations are true, by renaming the airport, our State is telling Lenore Kwock, and victims everywhere, that ‘we do not believe you.’ That’s exactly the opposite of what the #MeToo movement is about,” Ing tweeted.

The #MeToo movement is much needed and long overdue. But how much is Kaniela Ing, who voted for the Inouye airport name change, about #MeToo — and how much is it about #Kaniela4Congress?

Richard Borreca writes on politics on Sundays. Reach him at 808onpolitics@gmail.com.