Rail a winner for Caldwell, at least in terms of cash

The 2016 race for mayor of Honolulu starts this morning in Foster Botanical Garden.

That is the location where at 8 a.m., Honolulu Mayor Kirk Caldwell is expected to give his State of the City address framing his upcoming year in office.

No matter what Caldwell talks about, he’s going to be smiling because right now political life is good.

Caldwell is enjoying 64 percent job performance approval, according to the January Hawaii Poll.

The good percentages are reflected in a big bank balance. Caldwell is reporting a campaign treasury of just more than $1 million.

The third reason Caldwell is beaming is his list of opponents, which right now totals zero.

There are rumored candidates, but so far no one is saying "Let me in the ring with him, I can take him out."

Caldwell’s apparent political strength comes from what is likely to be one of the big issues of today’s speech: rail.

Still, if there is anything to throw off the 2016 Caldwell coronation, it is rail. This issue is both the best thing to happen to Caldwell and a lousy issue for voter support.

Now with the city’s rail plans over budget by maybe nearly a billion dollars, Caldwell can no longer brag that he is "doing rail the right way." Uncertain finances will now force Caldwell to adopt "Just do it" as his rail message.

Three years ago, Caldwell ran a steady but predictable campaign against then-Mayor Peter Carlisle and former Gov. Ben Cayetano.

The Carlisle campaign was rudimentary at best, and the Cayetano effort was something of an idealistic effort to stop rail before it got started.

The issue of rail is a divisive one. For the first time, rail showed up as the No. 1 issue in the January Hawaii Poll. As expenses mount and traffic congestion worsens and rail construction throws up more lane closures, rail as a campaign issue grows larger.

For Caldwell, however, the silver lining is the array of players willing to dump millions into the campaign of rail’s anointed ones.

Caldwell’s first campaign for mayor was won with his own $1.7 million checkbook.

But, the real muscle in the room was the $3.2 million smear campaign launched against Cayetano by the Pacific Resource Partnership political action committee.

The campaign was so vicious that Cayetano sued for defamation, winning a public apology from PRP.

Another $700,000 was also spent to help Caldwell and hurt Cayetano by the Hawaii Regional Council of Carpenters, through its PAC, Workers for a Better Hawaii.

PRP, which is partially funded by the Carpenters Market Recovery Program Fund, has been the biggest and one of the richest supporters of rail.

Because Caldwell is wearing the engineer’s hat on the city’s rail line, the campaign bucks are likely to continue to shower his campaign.

Besides carpenters wanting work, developers across the island look to the rail plan as key to their new projects, so they are also ready to help a pro-rail mayor.

All that means that close to the first words out of Caldwell’s mouth this morning will be: "Give us rail."

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